My (30F) boyfriend (31M) of 3 years just disclosed to me that he has 20K in credit card debt and I’m heart broken.
TL;DR – the amount of credit card 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. 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 year 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 he 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 credit card 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.