u/boothfc19

TLDR: GF Broke up with my because she didn't like how i handled paying off $9,500 in debt over the last year. Total debt from truck, student loans, and CC went from $41,000 to $21,000 in 1 year.

Asking Reddit is never what I thought I would do but I want clarity.

So my now ex gf (28F) and I (28M) have been arguing over my money for a while. For background she initiated a money conversation a while back. I thought she wanted to know account balances but maybe she just wanted values and principles.

Anyways at the time I think this came up I had just recently got back to working after being laid off from my previous employer. 6 month job search and previous company paid 3 months of salary, but I still had 3 months of no income at all.

I had a the time a Discover card that held a balance of $9,500. Student Loans totaled $16,800. And the Truck Loan was at $16,500. My 401K balance that had been sitting from my previous job was around $25,000.

My new job I have take home of roughly $4,400 a month. I have a truck payment of $520, student loans of around $200, a storage unit of $200. At the time I had rent and utilities totaling around $1500, but I was able to move back in with my parents to cut that out.

In the time I moved home, I needed to perform various equipment repairs on farm machines on my parents property and also had knee surgery that I had needed for years, and got because I wanted to get it while I had company insurance since I was previously laid off. These items ended up costing around $13,000 over the last year.

Since my Discover card lacks benefits and I had a large balance and knew I didn't have the savings to pay for the repairs, I got a Capital one card that had a 0% interest rate for 15 months. This is what I used for all purchases and paying for the repairs and knee items.

As of today, I have paid off the Discover Card. I have no balance on the Capital One card from the past year. My Truck Loan balance is $9,700. and Student Loans are around $11,500. The 401K balance is up to $38,000.

Her issues were that I didn't have a plan to pay off the debt, and doesn't believe moving home was a sacrifice. She also says that I didn't change my spending habits to have other sacrifices.

I admit that I had bad spending habits prior to her that got me into the hole I was in, and knew I had to dig myself out. I also admit I have an ability to be spendy, but when I look at making purchases I do weigh do I need it versus not very heavily. I think she saw my lack of over stressing as a lack of concern for my debt. There was definitely my inability to sit in the discomfort of this conversation with her at times, as it started to come up more frequently recently, but I felt it was my money since we were still just dating and as long as I was making overall progress on my debt it shouldn't have been a huge issue.

Did I handle it wrongly? Genuinely curious if I was not managing properly, but given all that occurred around it I thought I did a good job paying it off in a year with the other things that occurred.

For more context she is a teacher who has been really overwhelmed with her school year, and said she felt like she had to parent me on money since she didn't trust me. Whenever we went on dates I always paid. Any trip we went on I paid for the hotel or rental car and had no expectation of her contributing since I make roughly $30K more. Her parents also paid for her undergrad and masters degree as well as her car.

Edit to add:

Auto loan is 4%, student loans grouped together are roughly 4%.

I made a discretionary purchase of $1600 in September. I paid a student loan balance of $1300 off in January.

Now that high interest rate debt is gone. I’m building savings again, something I ignored while paying CC debt back down.

TLDR: GF Broke up with my because she didn't like how i handled paying off $9,500 in debt over the last year. Total debt from truck, student loans, and CC went from $41,000 to $21,000 in 1 year.

Asking Reddit is never what I thought I would do but I want clarity.

So my now ex gf (28F) and I (28M) have been arguing over my money for a while. For background she initiated a money conversation a while back. I thought she wanted to know account balances but maybe she just wanted values and principles.

Anyways at the time I think this came up I had just recently got back to working after being laid off from my previous employer. 6 month job search and previous company paid 3 months of salary, but I still had 3 months of no income at all.

I had a the time a Discover card that held a balance of $9,500. Student Loans totaled $16,800. And the Truck Loan was at $16,500. My 401K balance that had been sitting from my previous job was around $25,000.

My new job I have take home of roughly $4,400 a month. I have a truck payment of $520, student loans of around $200, a storage unit of $200. At the time I had rent and utilities totaling around $1500, but I was able to move back in with my parents to cut that out.

In the time I moved home, I needed to perform various equipment repairs on farm machines on my parents property and also had knee surgery that I had needed for years, and got because I wanted to get it while I had company insurance since I was previously laid off. These items ended up costing around $13,000 over the last year.

Since my Discover card lacks benefits and I had a large balance and knew I didn't have the savings to pay for the repairs, I got a Capital one card that had a 0% interest rate for 15 months. This is what I used for all purchases and paying for the repairs and knee items.

As of today, I have paid off the Discover Card. I have no balance on the Capital One card from the past year. My Truck Loan balance is $9,700. and Student Loans are around $11,500. The 401K balance is up to $38,000.

Her issues were that I didn't have a plan to pay off the debt, and doesn't believe moving home was a sacrifice. She also says that I didn't change my spending habits to have other sacrifices.

I admit that I had bad spending habits prior to her that got me into the hole I was in, and knew I had to dig myself out. I also admit I have an ability to be spendy, but when I look at making purchases I do weigh do I need it versus not very heavily. I think she saw my lack of over stressing as a lack of concern for my debt. There was definitely my inability to sit in the discomfort of this conversation with her at times, as it started to come up more frequently recently, but I felt it was my money since we were still just dating and as long as I was making overall progress on my debt it shouldn't have been a huge issue.

Did I handle it wrongly? Genuinely curious if I was not managing properly, but given all that occurred around it I thought I did a good job paying it off in a year with the other things that occurred.

For more context she is a teacher who has been really overwhelmed with her school year, and said she felt like she had to parent me on money since she didn't trust me. Whenever we went on dates I always paid. Any trip we went on I paid for the hotel or rental car and had no expectation of her contributing since I make roughly $30K more. Her parents also paid for her undergrad and masters degree as well as her car.

Reddit

Hi Reddit, coming to you for relationship advice. Admittedly this never seemed like something I would do but trying it because I can’t understand this.

So, my now ex girlfriend (28F) and I (28M) just recently broke up after a month long “break”.

You might be asking what caused this break? Well the cause of this break and breakup is money.

Background here. We are 28, went to the same university and were semi aware of each other then. My previous long term girlfriend, we’ll call her K, actually was freshman year roommates with this girl, who I’ll call C. Now C and I matched on a dating app in 2023 and went on a date that I thought went well. Good conversation, jokes, similar interests, and banter. Fast forward like 2 days I’m askin about another date and she says she didn’t feel anything romantically and wants to just be friends. Alright cool I think it’s probably because of the previous long term girl.

Because of my good friend and C share a birthday I see her a few months later when we go out for their birthdays. Nothing happens then. Then 5/6 months later out of the blue she starts sending me Instagram reels and texting me about things. And I’m wondering what’s going on because we haven’t kept in contact this whole time. It’s out of the blue and not like flowing consistently across time. Eventually she invites me to a concert with her friend and I’m like wth I’ll go. Anyways that night she admits to one of my friends she has feelings and my friend tells me. I had told the friend that I was very confused on what was going on with C. So in the middle of the bar we meet and talk and I set up another date to see about things and test it.

Now I’ll say looking back I wish we had spent more time discerning things here an figuring each other out.

Probably 3 weeks after that night we begin dating. Nothing super intense just hanging out a lot and doing things we like together, spending time with friends and learning more about one another. So roughly 10/12 months in it’s decently serious. We’ve said I love you, gone on trips together, talked about future plans, all the longer term couple things at this age.

She brings up money. Looking back now I figure she probably wanted this conversation to be more about monetary values in terms of principles and stances. I took the convo as what kind of debt do you have. So let me give more background here.

My parents were self employed and my mother worked for my dad at their business. Our business operated on our farm. I grew up helping a lot to do the work we did. My grandmother got dementia around 2008 and we spent a lot of our money an her money taking care of her over the next 7 years. So all in to say money was never something I was surrounded a lot by. High-school I tore my ACL playing sports and never had it fixed then because my father didn’t think the school would pay for it.

I go to college and my parents can’t afford to pay so I take out student loans. And finish with only $22,000. I move to a bigger city an start my first corporate job. Late Winter of 2022 my father passes away unexpectedly. Due to my parents house being 2.5 hours away from me now, my mom not having a real job, my families property needing care, I start driving home every weekend. So a few months later I sell my current truck that is 10 years old at this point and getting to where it’ll start needing more maintenance to keep it operating smoothly, and take my savings and purchase a brand new truck. Financing roughly $33,000. I keep traveling home alot for about another year. Well K breaks up with me in January of 2023. I move back home in April of 2023. My job is no longer fortune 30 company with bonuses and is now take home of $3400 a month. My fixed expenses at this point are roughly $2100-2300 from student loans, truck, rent, and utilities and insurance and such. So plenty to live on. I however am coping with K breaking up with me. Drinking at the bars alot, ordering doordash a lot. I also took up an expensive hobby. 6 months into this job a literal dream job for me comes up and I apply. Lo and behold I get it. Big outdoor company, remote job, $20k bump in salary. Perfect fit me, my personality, and lifestyle.

Anyways this is the period C comes back into my life. So I am 8 months into this job when we start dating, July 2024. 3 months later my role is eliminated at the Outdoor company due to restructuring. I had naively believed my area wouldn’t be affected due to the core groups I was supporting. So I spend the next 6 months job hunting. 3 of those the outdoor company continued to pay us. 3 of them they did not. Anyways I finally land a new role, which I am still at, that also provides yearly bonuses, it’s another Fortune 500.

For background on C, her father actually had a role at this company prior to us becoming a couple. He did well there and rose to a director level. She’s said he was pulling in mid 6 figures for the later half of his career or better. The company also offers a pension still so he is getting a retirement pension. So her parents paid for her undergraduate and masters degree and her car. Her degrees are psychology and a masters in primary education. She is a teacher. Meanwhile my degree was in Finance, and I’m a financial analyst.

That was a lot of background. Now we are roughly in April of 2025. So money conversation may or may not have happened now I can’t recall when it happened. But in researching. This was my credit card peak balance of $9,500, paired with whatever mix I had on student loans and truck. I hadn’t used this credit card very much over the last year at this point anyways. So I had roughly $40,000 between those 3 at this point. I didn’t have any savings account balance left at this point and my $401k balance was probably around $25,000 when I finally moved it over to the new employer plan.

My apartment is starting to ask if I’ll be renewing my lease. Due to my debt and wanting to finally get knee surgery since I have a job with insurance again and needing to fix some machines on our family farm. I decide I will not renew and move back to my mother’s house to afford these things and so she can help me when I eventually get knee surgery.

I also planned to get a new credit card because my other one provided no real benefits and a 0% introductory rate for 15 months on the new card. would help me not put any charges on my existing card with a high balance and allow me to pay for all these expensive fixes without going deeper into debt and spread it out more affordable for a few months.

So from July 2025 - March 2026, I move out of my apartment back home. Spend roughly $12,000 on machinery repairs, healthcare expenses. Combined with other normal expenses I put on thst credit card over that time. Per the app I spent $23,000 over the previous year. To have a balance of roughly $400. Fully pay off the 1st credit card with interest. And pay down my student loans snd truck. As it stands today I have $21,000 between the student loans and truck. My 401k is now at $38,000 and I have been able to finally start saving again.

So C has been upset since this money conversation first came up because she thinks we don’t “agree on monetary values”.

I remember that conversation sharing my balances and never seeing hers. I do think she wanted more of principles conversation versus balances. But it was never actually asked what I thought and she never said what she thought.

I will say I explained to her that I had said I wasn’t afraid of debt due to my father having to use it, and myself having had it for so long. I consider myself fairly risk averse and able to handle stress. Naturally and from the way I grew up. I value a savings account but hasn’t been able to have one due to life and servicing my debt. I’ll admit I had some bad spending habits pre C, and had fixed those and especially when I moved home I don’t have the bars or doordash to use. I also think when managing my debt there needed to be a balance of still doing some fun things to give myself little wins.

After doing all the math between servicing my debts down and all my other fixed expenses there was not a month over the last year where less than at least $2000 a month went to credit cards, student loans, truck, insurance, utilities. And often it was closer to $3000 a month. Since I have been at the current job I pull in $4450 a month.

So all of this to say, C, has constantly had that I don’t have good monetary values in her mind since the convo came up and it has caused her anxiety on top of the overwhelm and anxiety she has at her job. Money would come up every so often during the relationship and I have realized I wasn’t able to sit in the discomfort of the conversation due to thinking I’m doing well in managing all that I’m managing. But I never felt like she was coming at this conversation from a I want to help you kind of way. If always felt like a you’re doing this wrong. This is how you should be doing this way. This led to me saying I felt she was criticizing me during one of our arguments over it.

I understand her bringing it up multiple times and me being dismissive of it would invalidate her feelings and make her feel like I don’t care about what she thinks. In my mind and as she later said in one of our last communications, this is still my money st this point since we are just dating.

C said she felt like she was carrying the mental load because I was not being an adult about money and sacrificing enough to pay off my debt. I would suggest concerts or things to do as a couple, partially to give her something to look forward to from her job. So she had to be the adult and say no, and then she felt like a b***h for saying no to fun things because I am not thinking about the cost.

Meanwhile I moved back in with my mother at 28 years old to cut out my biggest expense and my debt has always come down since April 2025.

Can someone help me understand what she’s feeling I may have missed that would cause her reaction like this, or am I spiraling over nothing, and it’s me dodging a bullet here as most of my friends have said?

This seems long as I have typed it so I will stop explaining here and ask for everyone’s opinion on this. Happy to edit and add detail if anyone needs questions answered.

TLDR: GF of nearly 2 years broke up with me over “monetary values” because I took 1 year to pay off $9500 in credit card debt while also paying student loans and truck payment. Paid $20,000 in debt down over 1 year.