Some of these people need to discover the cryptos!!!! What would you do?
My girlfriend (25F) and I (24M) have been dating for 4 years. We initially met in college (a very expensive private college). Her family has never been great with money, and honestly never taught her how to save money, how to think of her future, or how to plan ahead really. (She had multiple summer jobs and jobs in college but never put any money in savings or towards her college tuition, where as I put 90% of my summer/college paychecks towards savings/tuition). Because of this, she took out $20,000 of high interest private loans for each semester at school, but did not receive her degree. She was only attending college and pursuing a specific major because that is what her parents always expected of her, even though it was never what she wanted. She is now going back to school for something that she is passionate about, but that means she won't be able to make loan payments for the next 3-4 years until she is done with school and has a better paying job. Her student loans are increasing by about $450.00/month due to interest, and she doesn't want to ask her parents for help. I also graduated with student loan debt ($70,000) but paid that off in 2.5 years with a $50,000/year job due to being very organized and smart with my financial choices. I am now saving for a down payment on a house and once that is saved, I will take over the rent and the bills so my girlfriend can put most of her income toward her loans. She also has 0 savings because all of her money goes towards rent, bills, groceries, gas, and monthly school tuition (~800/month).I find myself unintentionally emotionally detaching myself from our relationship because having that much debt over our heads terrifies me. I plan on hopefully marrying her one day, but that means her debt will then be our debt. I also want to buy a house and have kids in the next 5-8 years, but that means that I would be financially responsible for both of those things.
I guess I have some resentment towards my girlfriend for putting herself in this situation, but to be fair she was never taught anything different.
Also, I do want to mention that she has always had irresponsible spending problems but that has gotten a lot better in the last year due to my help. Lately she has been on board with my suggestions with how to handle this debt, but no matter what I do and no matter how great she is about everything, it will still be there for the next 20 or so years.
Basically I am just feeling torn because I am completely in love with her and when I am not thinking about her/our finances everything is basically perfect. However when I do think about finances, it is all I can think about and I emotionally detach myself from the relationship. That also causes problems with our sex life because when I am feeling emotionally detached I am also not in the mood for sex and end turning her down which I feel terrible about.
This has somewhat been a problem for me our entire relationship, but I haven't left because at the end of the day and I still love her, she is an amazing partner, treats me well, and she is my best friend.
I honestly don't know what I am looking for out of this post, maybe some advise, or other peoples' experiences in similar situations? Thank you in advance for your help.
Tl;dr: girlfriend has $110K of student load debt and is causing me to unintentionally emotionally detach myself from the relationship.
My SO 25M and I have been dating exclusively the past 8 months, and got more serious about our relationship about 2 months ago (I love you's).I have 120k in student loan debt (both private and gov't) I currently make 46.5k gross a year. I have a degree in business. Originally one of my parents was suppose to help me pay a large amount of my loans when I signed up for school but this has not happened and honestly now I don't count on it at all.
I'm honestly terrified of my debt, embarrassed and ashamed. I'm working on buckling down on paying my debt as fast as possible, which means putting myself on more strict budget. As of right now I'm currently paying $1039 a month toward all my loans and pay the required payment without additional interest accruing. I'm also completely financially independent from my parents, I contribute to my 401k, pay my own rent, health insurance etc)
We have not talked moving in together let alone marriage at this time and I believe that would be about another 1 yr down the road before talking about moving in occurs. I don't want him to feel I'm lying to him or hiding it from him either. We have not had any financial conversations about specifics. He knows I have a good amount of student loans because I have mentioned it from the beginning that I pay student loans but I'm pretty sure he doesn't realize the extent. His parent's are rather wealthy, I do know they paid for his school and they still pay for a good chunk of his bills.
I don't know how to bring this up to him and I know I need to because if he wants to leave the relationship because its too much debt for a future I'm sure he and I would both like to know sooner vs later. I completely understand its a huge amount of debt for someone to potentially marry to down the road and because of that I'm terrified he will leave me.
How do I bring this up to him I don't want to wait until it's too late. Any constructive advice would be greatly appreciated.
tl;dr: I have 120K in student loan debt and need advice on when and how I should tell my SO of 8 months the exact amount of debt and I'm terrified he will leave me once I do tell him.
EDIT: I just wanted to take a minute to thank everyone who were able to give their honest advice on how to approach my SO about this debt and when to have this conversation. I understand there are of course a lot of opinions about this, especially since I put it on Reddit. I was 17 years old when I started to go down this road and I understand this will follow me for the foreseeable future. I take responsibility for that which is all I can do right now and make the best choices for my financial and relationship future.
For all those interested. I will disclose all numbers and talk about it before any moving in conversation begins. I plan to suggest having to keep our finances separate, I don't expect him to pay my debt for me, this is my responsibility. I also made an appointment today with a financial planner to ensure the plan I set makes financial sense and there are not any options I have not pursued myself. Thanks again.
I'm in a very committed relationship and am probably going to be proposing in the relatively near future. Here's what I'm worried about- my girlfriend is graduating in May with 100k in student loans with a minimum payment of about $1000/month. I have no debt. If we get married, I'm willing to help her out, but I don't have a very high income. When she graduates, she'll be working as a bartender and auditioning for performance/acting gigs a lot, so her income will be pretty low too.What's the best way to handle this? If I marry her90Tr,007Bi,671Mi,219Th,815.25, will it ruin my credit? Do we have any options to lower her minimum or are we just going to have to budget like crazy?
My income: $33k/year net (after taxes and 401k deductions at 4.5% for company match)
Rent: $500 each ($1000 total)/month
EDIT: Wow thanks for all the hundreds of comments, r/personalfinance . I know this is going to suck and I know that she probably shouldn't have paid $100k for her degree, but the damage is done and I'm just trying to make the best decisions moving forward. So, thanks to those who offered actual advice and not further criticism of her past decisions. After all, it was a choice she made when she was 18. I don't know about others, but I'm 300% more mature and wold-smart as a 22 year old than I was as an 18 year old. It's crazy that 18 year olds are even allowed to borrow 100k for this sort of thing.
I'm getting all the particulars of her loan agreement soon, so hopefully we can start planning to put this behind us in a while (yes, I know, a very long while).
Alternatively, there's a very small chance I'll win the lottery, so there's that.
EDIT 2: Yes I'm getting a pre-nup just to be safe.
EDIT 3: I found out the debt is actually closer to $120k at this point. FUCKING FUCK. This sucks.
Image h/t Pixabay