My wife lied about credit card debt. Now I don’t know what to do.
I feel awful even having to write this. I’m usually pretty good on formulating a plan but I just feel so lost right now. This morning I was going through and placing freezes on my credit reports as I was reading that it’s a good way to prevent fraud. I figured I’d do my wife’s too and asked if she wanted me to. She agreed and as I was on her one account I realized that her credit utilization was over 60% and thought that was odd. Then below that I saw that her credit card account had over $25,000 on it. My heart went to my throat.
I went and asked her about it thinking maybe it was an error or fraud or something but she confirmed that yes it was true. She said that she had been keeping it from me because she knew I’d be upset because I’m very on top of our finances. (Which is true because my parents growing up were not on top of their finances and I didn’t want us to fall into the same situation.) She did apologize profusely but it doesn’t help how I feel.
I’m so heartbroken, angry, and frustrated. We have joint accounts that I manage for family expenses and separate accounts for personal spending. We also each have our own credit card that we use regularly and, up until recently, I thought we were fully paying off each month. I drove this point home about making sure our cards are paid off but didn’t check up on her constantly because I trusted her. She’s an amazing mom and has never given me reason to doubt her.
Now I don’t know what to do. I feel like a controlling as*hat if I make her give me her credit card and micromanage her spending but I don’t know what to do. Do I make us just have joint accounts that I control or what would you do? Thanks for any advice and sorry for my rant.