Help me be constructive in dealing with dh & credit card situation

[mumkimum]

Right now I'm - we're OVERLIMIT on one card that dh said he didn't have stuff getting charged monthly on anymore and he actually did. This is screwing my plan to pay down the lowest of our 4 cc debts (which sucks having in the first place). I'm going to have to throw extra money at this cause it's the worst of the 4 when I *would* have been able to get the lowest one gone in the next 3-4 months.

We have the tools to deal with this, so that's not the problem at the moment. We could cut back more, but it's a real fight to do that sometimes - we do have a lot of things cut back though.

I am just really po'ed at dh - he's been ignoring the bills, the cc, this one (that went overlimit) is his only and is so huge because of a major financial decision he made this year and didn't bother to talk with me about (which we really couldn't afford). I'm having to try to deal with them with the new baby & trying to keep the house clean (which we're trying to sell, ho hum. . . and which he isn't chipping in with as much as I *need* either). My attention is half there, and most of the time I have to let the baby cry on the floor or do stuff instead of sleep to take care of it. I'm kinda annoyed about that in the first place.

Impulsively, I want to lay out all these rules about do not do this with the cc's, only do this with this money, we have to do this with the other money blah blah blah.
That is soooo not going to work with dh, it never has in the past. I am a big sacrificer, and it's easy for me. I can skimp and go without if I know we need to spend/save x for something, if I want something, if I know we spent a large amount already on something else.
I have to find a constructive way of getting him out of acting entitled to stuff and spending money on the credit cards that is different and I have no idea how to find one - imo its this that is leading to and compounding alot of these financial problems. Part of the problem is also that he works extra and then doesn't spend that money paying the cc's like he says he will (and most of that is in his only account instead of the joint one).
I don't really want to take over everything, I want to hold him accountable and I just want him to be more responsible with stuff we don't end up with surprise bills and expenses we can't afford anymore!!
I'm also po'ed that whenever stuff like this happens we end up having to spend my savings to fix it (which I don't ever really get to add to, since I don't work and don't just get given money, either).

Any helpful ideas that can get thrown my way?

[nadia105]

Can you lay out the whole situation for him and ask if he has a suggestion to fix it? Maybe if it is his idea and not you 'making' him do it, he will be more on board?

For getting things done, slings/carriers can be a lifesaver. Baby is happy and you have 2 hands.

If you directly ask Dh to do x or y around the house, does he help? My dh always wanted to help but didn't know what to do, so he was glad when I asked him to do something specific. Now, he helps a lot with dishes and laundry b/c those always need to be done.

[mumkimum]

Originally Posted by nadia105

Can you lay out the whole situation for him and ask if he has a suggestion to fix it? Maybe if it is his idea and not you 'making' him do it, he will be more on board?

For getting things done, slings/carriers can be a lifesaver. Baby is happy and you have 2 hands.

If you directly ask Dh to do x or y around the house, does he help? My dh always wanted to help but didn't know what to do, so he was glad when I asked him to do something specific. Now, he helps a lot with dishes and laundry b/c those always need to be done.

Yeah. . baby is now grabby & sitting at the computer to write out bills is a lot more difficult. The house help, we continue to work at - he'll agree to doing things reguarly and not do them.
I'll add, possibly not fair to throw this stuff in the mix. Just annoyed-ness talking.


Otherwise - yes, I should see what he thinks about the financial stuff.

Part of the issue there is that, in the past, he'll suggest 'well we'll just use your money to pay off xyz and then I'll put money in savings to pay that back' -- BUT it won't happen, and we'll end up with a couple thousand on the cc again. I REFUSE to continue to do that, I have done that once or twice before. Everytime we end up here since, it's worse.

He has a paycheck coming up from his second job next week - he'll probably use that to pay for this - but we bought a few things that were extra expenses, and needed that should see another $150 of that, he also needs that for things he spends money on so that he DOESN'T put stuff on cc. If he pays for this, that stuff won't happen.
His attitude so often is 'this is in the past, what else can we do. . . it already happened, I can't do anything about it now other than just pay it'. And I go like at having that attitude about it.

It just feels like he doesn't care about working at preventing this from happening again. IF I felt like he cared more or was working harder at paying the cc bills or at least not increasing them I'd probably not get so po'ed about using my savings to cover our/his debts like I feel now. As it is, I end up having to use it to pay major expenses that we were supposed to have saved for. Is there a better way I can be looking at that, or should I (from a sound financial perspective) suck it up in cases like this? I kinda don't know what to think.

[redvlagrl]

Does all the money go into a joint account? If not, could it? That way you would have more control over 'extra' money. Woudl he agree to you taking control of the finances?

I would suggest getting him to agree not to use the CC any more and go to a cash system, allowing spending money for each of you.

In terms of him not helping out, I think you just have to have a talk about that and tell him how you're feeling.

[mumkimum]

Originally Posted by redvlagrl

Does all the money go into a joint account? If not, could it? That way you would have more control over 'extra' money. Woudl he agree to you taking control of the finances?

I would suggest getting him to agree not to use the CC any more and go to a cash system, allowing spending money for each of you.

In terms of him not helping out, I think you just have to have a talk about that and tell him how you're feeling.

All money from his main job goes in our joint account - money from his second job goes to his account (though I believe he has student loan payments directly taken out of his account). He'd be fine with me taking over the finances, part of the problem here is he started out doing that without telling me (I just sorta glance at bills and go OMG, noone wrote these out? and have to do them) and I kinda don't want to but, sure I'll suck it up and do it (after grumbling about it).

For the most part, he's given all his CC to me over this past month upon realizing he's using them too much. But what he'll do is I'll get $40/60 spending cash every 2 weeks and he'll get 'whatever is in his account that's extra' and maybe take out 20. This will get justified because he 'uses it on stuff for all of us, like going out to eat' and he doesn't end up keeping track, because 'this is what he works extra for'. Some kind of new attitude to how this gets worked out might be a good change.

[redvlagrl]

Soudns like a good start, but I would nix the 'extra' money and instead budget for eating out. His idea of 'extra' might be different to yours. Plus you both have to be on board to agree upon what is spent and keep track of where the money is going. We give ourselves $50 each month for spending money. This is for coffees, eating out (unless otherwise budgetted for) etc.

Yesterday we ate out unplanned but we talked about it in the car on the way to an unexpected gig of mine. So the gig more than paid for dinner plus gave us some snowball money.

It's not hard to change the account that his loans come out of. I would do that and have all the money go into one account.

I would suggest doing the Dave Ramsey thing if you're not already doing it. We love it. We sit down and do our budget on excel at teh beginning of very month. Even if we earn more than expected, we don't necessarily spend it. At the end of the month any 'extra' leftover goes into payng down our debt. We just make sure we allow ourselves enough in each budget category (we have a generous food budget because we rarely eat out and buy good quality whole foods).