I'm on the way up, and she's sinking.
I think you have to meet people where they are when it comes to finances. I assume you knew your girlfriend was broke when you invited her to move in, so whatever she’s contributing now should be your baseline for what you can expect her to contribute going forward, barring some career change.
There are plenty of careers that pay well and don’t require a college education, but it doesn’t sound like she has any intention of giving up her current job.So I think you have to explain to her that unless she has a plan to figure out how to contribute more, you need to get a housemate, or you will be broke, too, and it’s not fair for her to put you in the position of shouldering most of the responsibility indefinitely, which you didn’t agree to do. But you should go into the discussion with the understanding that she probably did not sign up to make major changes to her career either. Regardless, if you want to move forward together, you need to be on the same page about what is fair and reasonable, and a good starting place is giving her a sense of what costs are going to be as interest rates rise, and how that affects your expenses and mortgage. Then, if you want to help and think she’s amenable to it, offer to work with her to come up with a plan to stop living paycheck-to-paycheck and figure out how to pay her family back, or renegotiate a more flexible payment plan with them. If she’s invested in your relationship long-term, this should not be a dealbreaker. If she says no, I think you have a relationship problem that outweighs your immediate concerns about money.My husband and I have decent incomes, but lots of expenses and debt and just generally are not smart with money. We don’t communicate like we should about our bills or how to get on top of our spending and don’t seem to have the skills to figure it out. We’ve stayed employed through the pandemic and have been able to not go much further into debt thanks to the child tax credits and some lowered expenses due to not having as much to do while trying to avoid catching COVID. But we are at the point where minimum payments are eating up a lot of our income and we just don’t have the skills and discipline to dig ourselves out. I’m actually borrowing money from my teenager’s savings to get me through to the next paycheck when I can pay them back.I’ve started looking into financial counselors—hoping there is someone who can guide us and straighten us out—but most of the search results seem to be companies that want to consolidate our debt, which I’m not sure is the right choice? The people listed on the websites look like they work for banks and credit unions. Can I not pay someone to be smarter than me and help us manage our money? To convince my husband to give up cable or to tell me what I actually have to spend each month on non-essentials? Or is looking for the easy solution why we are in this problem in the first place?Debt consolidation is not inherently bad, though there are scammy companies out there. It really depends on what kind of debt you have, and, to some extent, what your credit score is. If you have good credit, it might make sense to use a consolidation loan to pay off high interest credit cards quicker. If your credit is not so great, what you want is something more along the lines of debt management, which will help you figure out how to handlethe debt you have. There are non-profit credit counseling organizations that can help you do this, and you can find a local resource via theYou have this problem not because you’re looking for an easy solution, but because you’re overwhelmed by these things and don’t know where to start. Calling a credit counselor is where to start. A good credit counselor will give you specific next steps; don’t worry that you have to navigate all of this alone and with no guidance.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again.
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