Still Embarassed

I’m still embarrassed about our debt.

And the more debt I’m in, the more embarrassed I am.  It’s another vicious cycle of debt. And the shame and embarrassment felt from debt you are in is just as crippling as the actual debt itself.

I truly think The Husband and I have a great marriage: we still date, we enjoy doing things together, like grocery shopping and cleaning the house, we enjoy just getting to talk with one another, but I still “hide” our total debt from him.

He knows we have a car payment… but that’s probably about it. He doesn’t know we have over $10000 in credit card debt (though he could easily find out). He doesn’t know we still owe each of our children over $1000. And I want it to stay that way.

I feel like our debt, is my problem. I feel like I got us into this mess, so I can get us out. (That’s not the truth of the matter. We incurred the debt we have together, mostly on home renovations, but some of it was on general overspending.) The problem with all of this is though, that I’m not getting us out. As I mentioned in my last debt progress report, our debt is nearly stagnant.  We are just spending right at, or worse, beyond our means.

Ideally, we would be in this boat together. But the reality is I am in this leaking canoe by myself and trying to plug all the holes with no help from anybody else. I know I should tell my husband where we are at financially and then he would help me to get out of debt. He would 100% be on board with helping me to cut back our spending and stop buying things we don’t need. But if I tell him, I have to admit that I screwed up and that I can’t handle it myself.

I think that, right there, is the reason I’m not more honest with The Husband about our debt. It’s not embarrassment so much as having to admit that I made a mistake, that I did something wrong. I hate that feeling. I want to think that I can do it all and by admitting to The Husband that we fell into debt again, it’s clear that I can’t do it all.

I hate the feelings of shame and inadequacy that debt brings with it. I’m embarrassed by our debt and I hide it from people because I don’t want anyone else to know. But on the flip side, talking about it, or in my case, blogging about it, takes a little of the pressure off. Although no one reads my little blog, just having the chance to get these feelings off of my chest help me to breathe a little easier. Making personal financial goals, and then checking in on them, makes the burden a little lighter.

Until our debt is paid off, I will continue to be embarrassed. I will continue to feel ashamed about the fact that we fell back into debt. And sadly, I will continue to hide our debt from The Husband. That is a horrible, but honest, admission. Knowing what an understanding and wonderful and kind man my husband is, I know he would only encourage me as I tried to get us out of debt, but I can’t bring myself to talk to him about our debt. We talk about everything else, including our finances in general; but I never talk about the fact that we have credit card debt.

I’m hoping this post will help to spur my debt payoff progress. I’m hoping for a lot of progress by the time I post my next debt update. But mostly, I’m hoping to meet the two financial goals I set for myself in my last debt progress report: bringing our credit card down under $9000 after stupid tax and bringing our entire debt total under $20000. Both of these are huge stretch goals, but with No Spend September on the horizon, I’m going to reach for them!