I am our single income and just found out my partner has gotten $35k into debt. We’ve been together for nearly 10 years now and have lived together for 5, previously being long distance.
Partway into our relationship, my partner was badly injured and lives with daily pain. This had a pretty major impact on daily life as they can’t remain upright for long periods and were previously in quite a physical line of work.
We moved in together after this point and I made it clear that I would be happy to cover all the finances for at least a year or two so that they could have space to work on their physical and mental health, as well as get situated in the new location and hopefully end up in a good position to find part time work that would supplement my income.
Unfortunately it took longer than expected and then the pandemic hit. Now they have long COVID and can barely make it around the house.
I cover food and daily expenses and don’t even really expect them to be able to handle chores any more. They have no available support from family and their own basic living payments are extremely limited, with a very small amount of money coming in.
I let them manage that themselves as sanity money because God knows it’s rough being stuck in bed as well. I know they don’t want to be in this position either.
I’ve been stressed about money for a while, I had a feeling that there was money I couldn’t account for. Things would arrive in the mail and my partner was spending up on fashion, boardgames, and other luxuries for both of us.
When I confronted them about it, they would tell me not to worry so much as they had it under control, or that we deserve nice things sometimes, or that it was ordered a long time ago when money was a bit less tight.
It would bother me but I didn’t want to make a scene about it and I do occasionally really enjoy having someone spoil me with gifts.
I also know I don’t always have the best perception of money and wasn’t sure if they had managed to put together some savings with their own accounts to splurge occasionally.
Recently I brought it up more directly and laid down that I need better visibility of both our spending habits because I was feeling like I pinch pennies at every corner and I hate feeling this imbalance…
And it came out that actually they’ve just been getting deeper into debt this whole time. I don’t know if they were scared to tell me or just genuinely hadn’t acknowledged it was a problem… And it is way, way more than I was thinking it would be.
I was trying to keep us afloat and put aside some money for a future, and now I’m really struggling to picture one for us.
I’m hoping I can ask for some advice about how to talk to them about this – should I go authoritarian and cut up their card and any hope of some limited financial independence from me? Has anyone tackled something like this in their own lives and has learnings they found invaluable?
Hopefully this is the right info. I’ve never posted here before.