TL;DR – the amount of debt my boyfriend has stresses me out. I struggle to see how it is going to be paid off and it makes me question our future together.
Quick background: my boyfriend and I have been together for almost 3 years. He makes about 50K a year and I make close to 100K. He owns a home and I have been renting the last few years. I moved in with him 4 months ago, with the intent of getting married and moving into our own place in the next 2 or so years.
This summer we went on vacation together, which we had about a year to plan for. All I asked was that he paid for his plane ticket and 25% of the hotel. When it came time to buy the plane ticket, he told me he couldn’t go. “Too many expenses came up and he couldn’t afford it.” I was upset, because we had been planning the trip for a year and I was really only asking him to come up with 1K. Since there were things that were already paid for for the both of us, I came up with the extra 1K for his birthday and his gift was the vacation. While we were there, he seemed to have no problem spending money. Which was suspicious to me… what happened to the money you didn’t have ? At this point, I realized he was using a credit card. Over the month following our return from the trip, I gradually inquired about how much debt he has. I said minus student loans, house and card. What debt do you have that is related to a credit card? He said around 4K. I thought hmm that sucks but it’s not insurmountable. Still though, things weren’t adding up. So I told him that he needed to really sit down and look at how much debt he has, because it seems like more than 4K. He said he would but he wanted to do it himself, without me around. Understandable. Today, he told me he looked through everything and minus student loans, house and car he has 20K in credit card debit at an average of 17% interest. My heart sank.
In that moment, I feel like I watched all our hopes for us go out the window. Not just the fun stuff we were planning on doing, but things like getting married, having kids, moving. Not that I am materialistic but if he tightened his belt and put every extra cent towards paying off debt, and not spending any more he wouldn’t pay it off until 2026.
4 comments
Not really the best time but is there equity in the house to do a refinance?
You can also keep separate accounts but you obviously are better with money than he is.
Yes that is a lot of money but the bigger issue is figuring out how it got that bad and preventing it from happening again.
two ways to make it work. sell the house and be debt free, or really commit to paying the loan. I married my wife with debt equivalent to a year of my previous work salary. It took three years but i’ll be cleared of that debt this year while not being a burden to my wife. Also having a higher paying job after the wedding made a difference. At least next year we’ll be moving on with our future plans. Hope your bf realizes that his debt will be a shared burden if he has no plans of settling it in a timely manner.
>Not that I am materialistic
I’ll stop you right there. You’re trying to avoid this label because it’s not “romantic” to be concerned about money, but being concerned about finances is a _good_ thing. You _should_ be concerned, because this guy let you move in with him, where you presumably blended finances a bit, while hiding a not-insignificant amount of debt that he also is apparently unwilling to explain. Because it didn’t just pop up one day. And you’ve been dating for years, not 3 months.
Reminder that you had to insist on sitting down with him to get more info on his debt and you _still_ have no explanation for how it happened. Either he’s really bad with spending, to the tune of not realizing how much he spends and will owe — or he doesn’t want to tell you. There are several factors here:
– did he buy the house or inherit it?
– is he still paying off the house or anything related to it (other than property taxes)?
– does he have savings?
– what is his spending like?
– how is he paying off his debt?
– how is he adding more to that debt?
– now that you’re living with him, how do you factor into all this? Do you pay anything related to the house? Rent, utilities, groceries? Is he expecting you to pay off part of his debt?
>I believe he took 10K out against it to “renovate” his house. But from what I can tell 10K of renovations didn’t happen.
Was it cheaper or did he spend the 10k elsewhere?
Ultimately, you need to find out where all his debt is coming from, how he plans to pay it off, and how his views on finances align with yours.
The biggest problem for me is the dishonesty. He’s been lying to you about money for years. At a bare minimum, disclosure should have happened before you moved in together or became engaged.