How the Credit Card Debt Happaned

Lately my husband and I have been having problems. Typically he is very calm and even keel, but for the past few months he has been short tempered and a bit mean at times. After making the $100,000 debt discovery and talking it out with him, turns out he realized we were in trouble and did not know how to tell me or how to fix it.

Seems like dear husband was working on paying off the debt seriously (without telling me) for the past year. I thought we had been working on paying it off for years and were nearly done. A year ago our daycare bill went down substantially, freeing up a couple of hundred bucks which my husband started applying to paying off credit cards, and a couple of small ones did get paid off. One still has a $0 balance but the other is worse then ever with a $15,000 balance. Then the downturn in the economy hit us and we found our selves short $1000 a month. This is when the debt started growing instead of shrinking. We did adjust our spending, but not nearly enough. I assumed we were in a good spot financially and my husband did not want to tell me other wise. Seems he did not want to appear as a failure or change the family (or his) lifestyle.

I must accept my part in this HUGE mess. I should have insisted on seeing the bills, I was never kept from the bills but I knew that it would cause issues so I did not look. All I had to do was open the credit card statements and I would have see the problem before it became larger then a Boeing 747. Wish I had, I thought the worst that was going on were the debts being paid off slower then I would want. NEVER thought the debt was GROWING.

Here is how I think we got into this $100,000 debt mess, roughly. We moved to a new state a few years ago and got in about $30,000 debt then, from over spending, home repairs and moving expenses. Then we had a difficult pregnancy and after insurance there was a $20,000 bill which was placed on credit cards. The other 45 - 50,000 seems to have been racked up from the next two moves and living above our means. I just didn't realize it was above our means since I had buried my head in the sand about the debt.

Next...Moving Forward....