Through stories from real-life couples, Money in Love aims to start conversations about how money works in relationships.
The financial side of romance can be fraught with challenges. In fact, according to Money Advice Service, the average couple has 39 arguments about money a year! One in seven married people have a secret stash of cash, and almost a quarter said their other half would be surprised if they knew the real state of their money.
Meet Georgia & Luke
Finding out that your ex still uses your Netflix account is a relatively common gripe. But imagine if you discovered they’d been racking up thousands of pounds worth of debt in your name?
That’s what happened to Georgia, 26 from Surrey, after she ditched her ex-boyfriend four years ago.
With the help of her new partner Luke, she's finally paid off the £6,052 in outstanding debts and charges. We chat to the couple about how they dealt with the debt together.
Georgia, tell us about your last relationship.
Georgia: I met him through friends at a party. We were together for a year and a half and I lived with him for a year.
He used to lie all the time. He told me he had a job when he didn’t. He’d go out every day at 9am and come back home at 5. He’d have stories from work, but it turned out they were all made up.
He said he’d been at the same uni as me and graduated the year before, but he’d dropped out after the first year. He even told me he could drive when he couldn’t. It was one thing after another.
I only found out he was lying about work because my mum’s a hairdresser, and she knew one of his friend’s mums through work. She did her hair or something.
"He used to lie all the time... It was one thing after another."
How did you find out about the debt?
Georgia: When we split up, I moved back in with my parents to try and save my own bit of money. I still had to pay off my overdraft from uni, which was £2,100. That was the only debt I thought I had. And I’d just got a good job that I’m still in now.
But soon after moving home I got a letter from Three saying that I hadn’t paid a phone bill. Because I’m with Three, I panicked and thought it must be mine. But when I rang up, they said all my payments had gone through fine.
They told me it was for a different account in my name, and I realised it must have been my ex. I blocked the account, but two months later he somehow managed to get them to lift the block so he could upgrade it for another year. One of the managers at Three told me they’d seen this happen before.
After that I got letters from credit card companies saying that because I’d missed paying their minimum fees, they were passing me onto a debt collection agency. But none of the credit cards were mine.
I sent it all over to Action Fraud, but because my ex knew my previous addresses, date of birth and did everything online, they couldn’t prove it wasn’t me. They worked out that he opened all the accounts over the course of three days. He’d done it while we were living together. He was actually working, but had actually taken a whole week off to get the post before I got home.
I found out about the cards one by one over a period of six months. Each one was maxed out and nothing was wavered. The debts he’d racked up came to £6,052 in total.
"I got letters from credit card companies saying that because I’d missed paying their minimum fees, they were passing me onto a debt collection agency. But none of the credit cards were mine."
How did you feel?
Georgia: At first I was angry. Really angry. I spent so much time on the phone trying to explain that it wasn’t me, but it was a lost cause.
I didn’t tell my parents for ages because I was embarrassed. To think that I’d got myself into that position – I blamed myself for trusting the wrong kind of person.
Luke was the first person I told about my ex's debt. He said I should speak to my parents.
"I blamed myself for trusting the wrong kind of person."
How did you meet?
Georgia: We met at work and immediately hit it off.
How were you coping with the debt before you met Luke?
Georgia: I was spending nearly all of my salary on paying off his debt, while also trying to clear my student overdraft which was no longer interest-free. Most of the money was just covering the interest, so it was hardly making a difference on the total. In six months, I’d only managed to get the debt down to around £5,500.
I was doing everything I could. I took up babysitting, did overtime at work, and sold all my furniture in car boot sales – anything I could do for a bit of extra cash. I had a decent salary, but I was finding it hard to even meet the minimum payments, which meant I accumulated even more debt. Plus, new debt collection agencies were contacting me every week. I didn’t think it was going to end.
"I took up babysitting, did overtime at work, and sold all my furniture in car boot sales – anything I could do for a bit of extra cash. I had a decent salary, but I was finding it hard to even meet the minimum payments."
How did your money problems impact the beginning of your relationship?
Luke: I’d also had to move back home after a breakup. But it was a bit different: my ex and I had bought a house, which we sold. So when we met I was looking to move out and buy a place of my own.
Georgia: Luke had been saving for a long time and had enough for a deposit. He went on to buy a beautiful flat and still had around £10,000 left in savings to do it up in his style.
Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to buy with him was difficult. I wanted to be happy for him – and I was – but I couldn’t help feeling like I’d drawn the short straw. I had a ruined credit rating and was paying for someone else to have lived the high life.
Luke: Georgia didn’t tell me at the start and I thought she was quite closed about money. I remember thinking, “Why don’t you have any money, when you’ve been doing all this overtime? What’s going on?”
Then one day it just came out. And I said, “Well, we can work through that together. I have some money saved up. We can pay that off and you can pay me back, without having to pay all the interest.”
I think she was quite nervous about telling me. She said something like, “You’re not going to want to be with me when you know I’ve got all this debt, and I can’t do anything about it.”
Why did you eventually decide to tell Luke about the debt?
Georgia: We were having the same conversation over and over again. Luke didn’t understand why we couldn’t go out for dinner or book a holiday when he could see I was doing so much overtime.
Was helping her out an easy decision, Luke?
Luke: I didn’t even think about it, to be honest.
What arrangement did you come to?
Luke: Georgia’s very organised and I’m not. So I told her to just pay me back whenever she could afford it. She came back to me with a spreadsheet with the dates and amounts for each instalment.
Georgia: I used to pay between £200 and £300, depending on the month. When I moved into his flat, he didn’t ask me to pay hardly anything towards bills until I’d paid him back for the debt. And he also said it didn’t matter how long it’d take me.
Luke: I said that we could skip a month if we wanted to go away or Georgia had an expense like someone’s birthday. To me, that money was just sat there in savings. We could have done up the flat with it, but what’s the point if one person’s struggling?
"I finished at the start of this year, after four years of paying him back."
Have you finished paying Luke back?
Georgia: Yes! I finished at the start of this year, after four years of paying him back. It was a brilliant moment for me!
I can’t even explain how different it feels to have money that I can do things I want with, rather than spending it all on debts and feeling like I’m not getting anything out of my money.
Luke: The only thing that’s left to do is improve your credit score so we can buy a house together. It’s tough building that back up. It’s very frustrating.
Georgia: I was angry for quite a while, but anger’s not going to change things. I just have to try and do what I can to make things better.
"There are some good people in the world – unlike my ex!"
Are you doing anything to celebrate being debt free?
Luke: We’re going on holiday in October.
Georgia: We’re doing two weeks in Mexico! I also now pay half towards everything and we’re saving to buy a house together.
If it wasn’t for Luke I’d probably still be paying off all that debt. There are some good people in the world – unlike my ex!