'My girlfriend doesn't know how much debt she's in and I feel like she's hiding things.' MAJOR UPDATE

"My girlfriend doesn't know how much debt she's in and I feel like she's hiding things."

Me and my gf have been together for 2 years. we live in my house (70k debt left, 15 year mortgage, I'm the sole owner) and she only pays 150 to help towards utilities as my request. A few days ago I was talking to my (30F) girlfriend (32F) and jokingly said "do you have any secret debt that I'll find out about when we get married?"

She said she doesn't have any debt, and that she always makes sure she repays the minimum credit card amount. I laughed and said that credit card repayments are debt, and she says no because she is paying towards it. I was shocked at how she could be so wrong and how financially ignorant she is.

We're in the process of starting our NHS fertility journey and we have an appointment soon and I have been saving for a while because I'm pretty sure we'll have to go private as a same s#x couple. I asked her to save money for a baby fund too and she started saving 20 pounds a week which I know she's spent part of already. She doesn't have any savings.

Today I asked her if she knows how much debt she's in. "I don't know" "do you know an estimate? is it 500? 1000? 5000?" "yeah, something like that" "something like what?" "like one of those numbers." I don't think she's hiding anything from me, I think she doesn't realise what debt really means. She thought I only "meant" money she's stopped paying, which is insane.

She was supposed to, according to her, move her 3 credit card debts to a 0% one, but the pin to register didn't work or something like that, she's waiting for a new one. "when did you register?" "idk, when I went away to see my family" "That was last November!!!"

"I know, I've been busy" "ok, you don't have to tell me, but for your own good, can you please check how much do you owe for each card and the interest rate of each" "I don't have access to my XXXX account because blablabla."

"Okay, what about the other two credit cards" "well, I don't use the app" "but you do have an app you can log into and check?" "yeah but I don't use it" "why don't you check it then????" "I don't know."

At that point I had to leave the room cause I didn't want to be mean. She says that she's sure her debt is less than 2k but honestly I don't believe her anymore unless I see it with my eyes, but also she has her own right to not discuss it with me.

I just mentioned that once we get married, her debt is my debt too so I really need to know she's financially stable/educated. She has ADHD and is bad at time keeping and money spending but I didn't know it was that bad and now I worry if this is something that can break the relationship. She started crying saying "is this why you don't want to marry me?"

(I just don't like to be the centre of attention) and now I've left the house to get some air and I know she's crying in the living room. AITA? have I pushed her too much? how should I approach things next time we talk and how can I help her with debt?

EDIT: Thank you all so much for your advice. I sat down with her again and talked for a long time about why this is important and why she needs to tackle the issue asap. She told me she wants to be better with money and not have that weight in her shoulders anymore and asked if I can help her. I explained to her that we could check her debt on ClearScore (thanks for the recommendation) and she agreed.

She registered and turns out she has 5 credit cards and 8k in debt. It gave my a mini heart attack but I didn't show it as I didn't want her to feel ashamed, she asked me "is this something doable then?", I said "yeah, but it'll take you a bit longer than you said, 2-3 years might be more realistic than end of the year as you said."

She told me she's going to give me her credit cards and give me access to all her accounts so I can track where the money is going (I'm a budgeting freak), and we'll have a financial meeting every fortnight.

She also will transfer 5k of the debt (the one with the highest interest) to the 0% interest card she opened and then ignored, and tackle the rest for now. Baby fund is obviously dead now, but I think this has been a big wake up call for her as her dream has always been to be a mum and she realised it won't happen if this doesn't get sorted.

The "good thing," if I can call it that, is that she wasn't lying to me, she honestly didn't know she was in so much debt as after a certain amount she got anxious and didn't check, but she has never missed a payment at least.

TL,DR: my girlfriend doesn't know how much she owes as she thought credit card debt is not debt if you're repaying every month.

The internet had a lot to say in response.

reddit_recluse wrote:

Oh boy. Just a reminder that marriage is a HUGE financial commitment to another person. it's not just a "I love her" or "it's what we're supposed to do" really think hard if you want to be strongly financially linked to someone who doesn't know that credit card debt is debt.

rmas1974 wrote:

Don’t deepen your commitment to her until you know what’s what financially. As you say, you have some assets and run the risk of her frittering away whatever she has and bleeding you dry.

She is already only making a limited household contribution so you are at risk of giving her a long term free ride. There is something that can be done to get this information. Get her to order a credit report from one of the agencies like Experian and this will list out what she owes.

Ornery-Tell-4 wrote:

I have ADHD. Her not knowing the exact value is a sign that it's too big of an amount to look at, and her refusing to address the situation is her rejection sensitivity playing up because she's scared you're going to be mad imo. It's not impossible to be on top of your money even if you have ADHD, like at all.

If you approach this in a cold way she's just going to pull away more. If you really want to work this out you have to be really warm and make it clear that you want to work together on this with her and you're not going to buzz out and leave her or anything. All of your points are valid in how serious this is if you're looking to marry, it's just how you communicate it.

Willeth wrote:

I think this is more a relationship advice question than a financial one. You clearly know what you're talking about, she's understandably quite anxious and ashamed and avoidant about the topic.

How you approach this is all about your relationship and how you navigate it. I would try and position it as you and her against the problem - you have the skills, you can help her out, you can do it together and she can lean on you.

Anything that feels more like you're judging her for getting into debt in the first place, or incredulous because she doesn't understand, is just going to come across like criticism and be upsetting. This isn't "I need to fix you", it's "if we do this together we can do all these great things". It needs to be about the consequences of not having debt, rather than the consequences of having it.

Three months later, OP shared an update.

To summarise, three months ago I realised my girlfriend not only was completely financially illiterate (e.g. she had no idea that paying a credit card was being in debt, she thought that was more like a big mortgage. I know...) but also she was in credit card debt and she didn't even know how much she owed as she was very ashamed and in denial.

She had 5 credit cards (I was only aware of 2, not because she was hiding them but because they never came up in conversation) and was making minimum payments on all of them.

Thanks to advice here, I signed her to ClearScore to check how much debt she was on: £8250, all in +30% interest cards. My disappointment in her was her wake up call. I am extremely money savvy and I have the savings to cover her debt if needed.

But I've worked hard for it and I have made sacrifices so it would have seemed unfair (she never asked me to, for the record). She would also never learn that way so I told her I'd help her by teaching her about finances, looking for better options to transfer the debt, etc., but the money sacrifice would have to be hers.

We started by creating a version of the budgeting spreadsheet I use for finances, because she didn't know how much she spent on different things. At first I'd go through her bank account with her and tell her to write every transaction. After a while, she was doing it weekly by herself, while I updated my own spreadsheet (we call them "financial meetings," and we have a nice tea while doing it).

After two months, we could see a pattern and tackle where the money goes. For example: she was suscribed to Prime, Netflix, Apple TV, Disney+, NowTV... And we basically only watch Disney (which I get free thanks to a Lloyds perk) and Netflix, so she cancelled everything else.

She's also transferred most of the debt to a 0% interest card (the debt with the highest interest), and stopped spending money on unnecessary things. Also, I know that you're supposed to tackle the debt first before saving, but I wanted her to have a little satisfaction of watching her savings grow, which previously were 0, and getting her into the habit of saving money for her future.

So every month, on payday, I recommended her to send money to her savings account (and LEAVING IT THERE), and pay for credit card debt, so she knows how much she has for the rest of the month.

There's also little tricks for unnecessary spending like she gave me all her credit cards so she can't use them, she deactivated GooglePay and contactless payment so she has to physically introduce the card and type the pin to buy (this slight inconvenience makes her more conscious of the money she's spending), etc.

The result? In three months, not only her debt hasn't increased like it was the trend before, but it's gone down to £7000 (and considering she's low income right now, I'm extremely proud).

She's put around 1700 into tackling her debt (although because only now we've managed to tranfser her debt to a 0% interest card, the high interests ate a lot of that) and her savings are £400. Seeing that if she wasn't in debt she would have £2100 right now makes her even more willing to clear this debt.

I just wanted to let people know, especially people with partners that seem a bit irresponsible with money, that change is possible, but they also need support and trust and patience. I'm extremely proud of her and she's in the path of clearing everything way before Christmas 2026, which is the goal I set for her.

The internet was happy to hear an update.

FrauAmarylis wrote:

I did almost the exact same thing with my bf (now, husband) several years ago. He has now taken over paying bills and he loves having our financial meetings now. Our first meeting back then was supposed to be to be 20 min and he only lasted 10. He thanks me all the time for guiding him to help himself. Well done, OP!

Dalianyimam wrote:

You sound like a great partner OP and it seems like your gf really wants to sort this out and learn about finances now. All the best for the future.

vusiradebe85 wrote:

What a great update. I remember your original post and when I saw the new post I feared the worst. Well done to you both!

OP responded:

Thank you! She's not on herebut I showed her the original post comments (even the mean ones, she cried about one) and found the comments that wanted to give real advice very useful. I'll show her these ones too tonight for a bit of validation, cause she deserves a bit of recognition. She's changed her habits, which are really hard to change, overnight.

It also took some patience from me, because sometimes at the beginning I just wanted to shout "how do you know know this?" Or "why would you do this???". Patience and understanding is key (but also not letting them play you). I told her a few times "ADHD and your family background is an explanation of why it HAPPENED, but not an excuse to let it happen again".