Where to start? I was $3000 in debt from our elopement and other things. It was starting to drive me crazy so I threw the start of our emergency fund towards it to knock it down to $1600. That made me feel better. Then my husband wanted to have a serious talk about something he wanted forgiveness for.
Previously, he had told me about how when he was a university student, he had walked into a bank and just wanted a $500 limit credit card. The bank, of course, offered him way more credit to suck him in. What he didn’t tell me was he was still servicing this debt until a couple months ago. Long story short, the job market hasn’t been kind here while my husband is finishing his certification and he missed a couple payments. The debt got sent to collections and he was stressing about this.
I was skeptical of the collection letter at first and made him pull up his credit report to match the debt to the one listed in the letter. He told me that the collection agent had said my name to him and asked who I was and proceeded to tell him “why would you get married when you have no job? That’s stupid.” Pretty scummy, eh? But I admit she had a point. It doesn’t look good to an outsider but I know what our circumstance are and that it’s not permanent. I don’t care what this lady thinks.
I researched the debt collection company to make sure they were legit. They wanted a payment of $6200 within 24 hours and another $1200 in 90 days to settle the ~$9000 debt. So I used my line of credit to make a payment and then used a 1.99% balance transfer to pay off the LOC.
At first I was ok with it. What’s mine is his and what’s his is mine. This is marriage, right? I’m a little disappointed that he didn’t tell me this before especially since I’ve been transparent about how much debt I had from The Ex. He said he felt embarrassed and didn’t want to put me through the same thing as The Ex which is exactly what he’s doing right now. He promised me that he’d funnel all the money he’s making to pay off the debt. I know he’ll hold true to his word.
Now I have $7900 of credit card debt and it’s driving me insane. It’s back to austerity mode for me and a possible Christmas season job to pay this off quickly! Fuuuuccccckkkkk!
