My Hubby hid his debt from me for 18 months!

Not really sure how to start this but here goes.....

Over the Christmas and New Year break my husband decided to confess to me (whilst planning a holiday) that he was in quite a bit of trouble with money. When I asked how bad the response I got was astounding, he said he had 5 or 6 credit cards and about £30k across them all :huh:

On asking why/how/wth I was told that he'd just got himself into a cycle and didn't know how to get out of it. He earns £70k, I earn £30k, with a mortgage, savings (!!), we aren't wealthy but we are comfortable.

I don't look after his money but I do look after the credit cards, so he'd been doing this without my knowledge. In the past, when he'd plan things and I couldn't afford them we wouldn't do them but I'd noticed he'd been saying he'd cover it but I didn't question it.

When it came down to it there were 7 credit cards and £36k :mad:
He'd been paying off the minimum and they were mostly interest-free, so we had that saving grace, but he also admitted to taking money out of them to lend to friends in need - £4k :mad:
On top of this, I'd just bought a car to the tune of £15k because he said he would go halves with me on the cost, I would never have bought the car if I'd known about all of this.
We'd also booked and paid for flights to America which we couldn't cancel or move as we'd bought them during the BA sale - hence the start of the post when he mentioned all of this to me.

So what did I do I hear you say...........

I spent two days, TWO, going through everything, going through our finances, savings - of which he has hardly any - finding out all the amounts on all of his credit cards, checking the amount owed on our monthly card and just as a side thought checking the holiday card. Good job too, he'd put £5k on that too, admittedly he'd used it when travelling abroad with work but he hadn't paid it off when he got his expenses paid. I'd not checked the online statement as I thought it was cleared after our last holiday in April!!
Now the total is up to £41k and 10 credit cards between us.......as you can imagine my weekend, at this point, isn't going well. Three weeks into dry January and the wine came out, he's had the balls to say to me I couldn't have any wine :mad: brave man :mad:

By halfway through the bottle I'd had enough and called it a day, I wasn't going to make rational choices and decisions whilst drinking.

Day two and I started early....

Everything was on a spreadsheet, credit cards, mortgages, bank accounts (money in and out), car payments, bed payments (Oh yeah I forgot about that, bought a new bed, interest-free if we paid over 3 months - which we did). Now the fun really started, long story short we are now down to 5 credit cards.

1 is our monthly Tesco card, gets paid off each month. He isn't allowed to use it other than as a Tesco card so that's all down to me.
1 is our holiday card.
3 now contain all of the debt from the 9 cards he'd racked up debt on. The spreadsheet has all of the details of what cards were transferred on to which, when the interest rate comes out of the 0% stage, a reminder of when to look at transferring again and the monthly amount that is paid.
The other cards I have kept ready for when I need to start this again as it will be easier for me to use existing cards than get denied an application. Each one has a red E, written in nail varnish, so I know what's what.

I have estimated that this will take 3 years to pay off, hopefully, less time if we can put extra on as and when. I have agreed to pay £10k of it as it includes a couple of holidays he said he'd pay for, yes I know he said he'd pay but I went on them and enjoyed them so it's only fair.

The 'friends in need' have started to pay the money back and everyone should have paid their debt by June, this debt is going straight on to the credit cards.

He has been told, by the pain of divorce as that will cost him more than if I killed him as then that will be my debt, he will never do this again, he will not have control of his spending until this is all paid off and any spend over £50, of any kind, gets discussed first.

Now some of you may be thinking back to the top and the holiday planning, the non-refundable flights. As I mentioned before, hubby travels a lot with work, he can be away 4 or 5 nights a week. He has a good stash of IHG and BA points.
We go on holiday 2 weeks on Friday, 2 weeks between LA, Las Vegas, New Orleans and Miami. All hotels have been booked using IHG points and with a limit of £40 per night extra. Transfer flights have been booked using BA points, the cheapest was £4.63 from New Orleans to Miami. The most expensive was £63 from Las Vegas to New Orleans. The most expensive hotel was Las Vegas at £120 a night for 2 nights as we forgot it was Easter weekend.
We are going to have an amazing time and have made a game out of how much money we can save. I wasn't going to lose the money on the flights so it's a lesson in money saving and holidays on a budget.
I know there will be those of you thinking 'but that's further expense' yes it is but that's my choice. Everything else is now in order and I plan to keep it that way.

I am proud to say, with my amazing spreadsheet, transfer of debts from card to card and general penny pinching we have paid off £2864.15 since the beginning of January :j we are getting there.
You are also the only people who I have told the whole story too!!