Partner and I have been married for 2 years but we’ve been together for over a decade. I’m religious about checking my credit score and making sure all our debts are paid. I have 5 credit cards and partner has 3. My credit cards are 100% paid off.
We had a spreadsheet for budgeting and it has a page for credit card debt. We had a little bit of credit card debt for what I thought was about a year due to a few life things getting in the way but we worked really hard and kept track of it all on the debt spreadsheet.
So much so that I would ask my partner to update the spreadsheet with what the balance was on their credit cards every month.
I was so happy the day it looked like all of the credit cards were paid off.
Like I said, I check my credit score at least once a month and I constantly make comments like “are you checking your score?”, “is the debt spreadsheet updated?”, “how are your finances?” Partner has been telling me for months that things were going great.
Yesterday, I was looking at my credit score and I told him to show me his. He literally ran away. He made excuses saying something was messed up. He also said the credit score was so low because the number goes down when you pay something big off (we paid off our car last year but both our names were on it and mine dipped for a few months but then shot back up) I told him he can have 24 hours to get his story straight but then Im looking at his full credit report.
This man has 16k in credit card debt. And 2 late payments on student loans (I knew about the student loans but he always assured me they were paid on time).
I don’t know what to do.
Financially: we have a huge savings account and we both make a LOT of money so I immediately paid off all three of his cards to stop the interest. If this wasn’t the case, I would be in a much worse state. He’s going to pay back the 16k by putting an extra $1400 in savings every month for the next year (he can do this. We have a budget). But WHERE did that $16k go?!? I told him he’s not allowed to use his credit cards anymore and I’m going to be looking at his accounts every month. I feel like his fhckinf mother but what are my options? He hid 16k of debt from me.
Emotionally: I’m devastated. Every month, he was making up numbers in the debt spreadsheet. He said “I know you get anxious over financial stuff” in which case I was like “wtf I 100% do not get anxious over financial stuff. I run a very tight ship with MY finances”. He said he was scared. I only FOUND OUT because I demanded to see his credit report.
This is the first “bad” thing my husband has done and I don’t know how to feel or what to do about it. Should I just work on forgiving him?
Side note: we’re literally starting IVF tomorrow and I’m so distraught over this. I want to continue with the IVF for this cycle but I might need a few months of TTC off after this.