My Husband Had an Expensive Demand Before We Could Have a Child. I’m Still Paying for It.

Pay Dirt Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Mariia Vitkovska/Getty Images Plus. Pay Dirt is Slate’s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Kristin and Ilyce here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear Pay Dirt, My husband is bad with money. Really bad. He is an exceptional husband and father otherwise. But any time we have any money (or he feels like we have it), he spends until it’s gone and more. Nothing I say matters; I can present the numbers that we do not have spending money, yet in the moment, he seems to be compulsive about continuing to eat out and buy things online. He has worked part time in recent years, and I have maintained a full-time job that pays most of our expenses. Then when I wanted a child, he had an expensive demand first. He demanded an addition to our house with an indoor climbing wall before we could have a child. I was desperate for a child, and so I got financing for the addition. We could just barely afford the payment with my full-time job and his part-time job. Then, when I was two months pregnant, he had an opportunity to try to pursue an art hobby as a career. It would involve a lot of travel. I agreed to try it because he had made my dream happen, and I wanted to do the same for him. He promised that he would stick to a strict budget in order to quit his day job and pursue the art career. He did pursue the art career, but he did not stick to the budget at all. He spent excessively (frivolously, he admits) while traveling and also at home. We are now $10,000 in debt from his business expenses and excessive consumption expenses, plus a monthly payment for the home addition that is higher than our mortgage. Only now does he finally acknowledge he’s been spending money we don’t have. Apparently, this didn’t really hit home to him when I was telling him this and the debt was running up. I’m hugely overwhelmed and anxious about this debt we have no foreseeable way to pay off. His business still is not really making enough to carry his much smaller end of our expenses, and moreover, I’m questioning my marriage. I feel we are in this situation because he demands to live beyond our means. It’s hard to believe him that this will improve. He demanded a home addition for a child, then to quit his job and pursue a small art business and spent frivolously. If we can somehow hang on until the addition payments are done in five years, that’s the first opportunity we’ll have to pay off this additional $10,000 of debt. And that’s if he sticks to a budget and doesn’t run up more. What do I do? —He’s Great, Except With Money Dear He’s Great, Except With Money, Let’s back up a bit: You wanted a baby—which is, financially speaking, one of the most expensive decisions any couple makes. He wanted an addition with a climbing wall. OK. In the end, you both got what you wanted. That was a compromise. What went wrong came after. Before, you probably saw that he had some rather unrestricted spending habits. After, he asked you to bet on his art career and promised a strict budget in exchange. You said yes, but he didn’t stick to any part of that deal and, by his own admission, spent frivolously while you carried the household. In my mind, that was the first real breach: not that he wanted something, but that he made a specific promise to get it, broke his promise, and left you holding the bag. Now, you’re wondering whether you should stay in this marriage. Good question. But, the first question you should ask is whether you should stay in this house. Find out what it’s worth. Between your original purchase and the addition, you may have built some real equity. Selling could pay off the $10,000, eliminate your mortgage and home equity payment, and drop you into a cheaper rental with actual breathing room. While that might feel like a failure, it’s not. You’re using an asset to solve a problem, which is what assets are for. Talk to a few local real estate agents to get a good sense of what your home is worth and how much you might net at the end of the day before you resign yourself to five more years of white-knuckling it. Because here’s the thing: It’s very hard to evaluate a marriage while you’re drowning financially. Everything looks like a crisis. Remove the debt and replace the monthly obligations with a single rent payment, and you’ll finally be able to see clearly whether he is a partner who can change or someone who will simply spend whatever is available. In the meantime, you and your husband should have a heart-to-heart about how his spending frivolity has made you question the seriousness of your marriage. It’s time for you to be honest with yourself and with him about the toll all this has taken. Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear Pay Dirt, I have about $20,000 in credit card debt, but my credit is otherwise good. I am getting offers to transfer this to a lower-interest personal loan, but I am concerned that with available credit space, I will spend more and make my debt worse. Right now I only spend on the credit card about once a year, but I can only make the minimum payments, so the balance isn’t decreasing. Should I take the personal loan to decrease my interest? —Failing to Get Out of Debt Dear Failing to Get Out of Debt, Your instincts are good on both counts—the loan probably makes sense, and wondering if the freed-up credit line will allow you to spend more is exactly the right thing to worry about. Here’s how I’d think about it: $20,000 at a typical credit card rate of 20-plus percent, repaid with the minimum payment, can take decades to clear and cost you more in interest than the original balance. A personal loan at a meaningfully lower rate with a fixed term forces the balance down on a schedule instead of letting it float indefinitely. That’s the real benefit—not just the lower rate, but the deadline attached to it. Before you sign, compare offers carefully. Check the origination fee (some run 1 to 8 percent, which eats into your savings), confirm there’s no prepayment penalty, and make sure the monthly payment is one you can actually cover. Also look at 0 percent balance transfer cards as an alternative—if you can realistically pay it off entirely (or a big chunk anyway) within the promotional window, that’s cheaper still. Once those cards are paid off, don’t leave them sitting in your wallet. Keep one open for your once-a-year charge, but stick the rest in a plastic container of water and freeze them. Be sure to delete the cards from your phone and online wallets. Finally, consider getting a temporary second job and assigning every dollar earned to paying off that debt for good. It will give your life a lift to be truly debt free. —Ilyce Classic Prudie My wife and I have an 18-month-old son, and her younger sister and her husband have a daughter who is 2. A few weeks ago, my wife and her sister decided that it would be a fun project to create a family tree for the kids for when they are older, so we all purchased AncestryDNA kits. The results that came back for my wife showed that the man her mother was married to, whom she thought was her biological father (he passed away last year), was excluded. My wife assumed her mother had had an affair and confronted her. The truth turned out to be even worse. 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