Paying my boyfriend’s credit card debt…
How stupid of an idea is this?
My situation:
- This month my boyfriend of 3 years is moving from overseas to be with me!
- A lot of the external factors that kept him spending (friends who couldn’t pay rent, etc) are going to disappear, and even though he is moving to a high-cost-of-living city, his expenses are going to drop dramatically
- He has a lot of credit card debt. I don’t know the exact amount. At least $10k, possibly up to $15k.
- We are both in well-paying professions. He already has a job for when he moves up here, and if it falls through, he’ll be able to get another one easily.
- I have significant savings and a high savings rate.
- He is looking forward to his credit card debt disappearing once and for all.
- There’s a very good chance that in the future we will get married, and then “my” and “your” money will turn into “our” money. So him being in a financial rut effects my future.
So here’s my idea: Currently, I have a spreadsheet for my family and I that tallies up the monthly expenses (rent, utilities, extra things like if I pick up cat food etc). When the boyfriend moves in, the sheet will be adjusted to add him in.
Instead of him paying me that $X a month, I will extend to him an interest free loan for that amount, and he will contribute that much more towards his credit card debt (along with him paying considerable amounts of his own money; this would basically be helping him pay it down faster) .
Once his credit card debt is paid off, he will start paying me back. If the relationship dissolves, he will still owe me the money, it will still be interest free because I’m a kind soul.
Has anybody else here tried something like this? How did it go? Am I crazy for doing this? It just kills me that he’s probably paying 20%+ in interest (did I mention that he frequently forgets to pay things on time? Fortunately two months ago we sat down and I helped him set up autopay for all of his accounts).
The only flaw I see with this plan is that this upcoming year, I was planning to start paying my parents back for Uni (I owe the about $28k, in the form of an interest free loan.
After you subtract this loan, my networth is till around $140k). My family and I were planning to discuss the terms of this repayment over Christmas.
My dad hinted that faster payoffs mean that they will reduce the amount I owe them (ie, just gift me money) so I don’t know if paying for my boyfriend’s major reoccurring expenses will get in the way of this. I don’t think it will; I’ve got a decent amount sitting around uninvested, so since it’s not making me any money anyway, I’ll probably just hand my parents a significant percentage of the loan in a lump sum.
To make it clear, my idea was not to simply be paying a lump sum to eliminate his debts. It would be to defer his portion of rent/utilities/etc until after his cc debt was handled, so that he could pay it down faster.