{"id":2047646,"date":"2026-07-16T23:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T20:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2047646"},"modified":"2026-07-16T23:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T20:14:11","slug":"i-wouldnt-marry-him-until-he-paid-off-his-debt-now-im-in-charge-of-our-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2047646","title":{"rendered":"I wouldn’t marry him until he paid off his debt, now I’m in charge of our money"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/254d\/live\/67655330-7934-11f1-8d20-776ad947bebb.jpg”]<\/p>\n

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\"SarahSarah Reeve<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Sarah and Lee have been together for 25 years and have always had a joint bank account <\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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When Sarah Reeve got engaged she gave fiance Lee an ultimatum: he had to pay off his debt before she would marry him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“I was paying my mortgage and bills whereas he was giving his mum some rent,” Sarah says of their situations when they met in their early 20s. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“I told him I wouldn’t marry him if he had any debts,” says the 45-year-old.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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So they set a wedding date for two years ahead which gave Lee the time to pay off the \u00a32,000 bank loan – \u00a34,000 in today’s money – he had taken out to buy a car. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Once Lee’s debt was cleared, the couple paid everything into a joint account and Sarah took charge of bills, saving and budgeting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“He said ‘you can sort it all out and take charge with money because I’m rubbish with it,'” she says. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Sarah’s experience reflects a wider trend of more than four fifths of women being actively involved in managing daily finances like day-to-day spending and household budgeting, according to St James’s Place’s Women and Wealth Report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Sarah earns \u00a324,000 working part-time in insurance and Leeworked in maintenance at the same factory for 27 years, earning about \u00a326,000, before being made redundant four years ago. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He now works for himself in property maintenance and earns about \u00a330,000. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The couple, who have been together for 25 years and have two daughters, aged 19 and 21, have always thought of money as shared.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“It’s very much our money rather than mine or yours which is really nice especially as I took four years off work when we had children,” says Sarah.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"SarahSarah Reeve<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Sarah and Lee have two daughters aged 21 and 19<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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After getting out of debt, Sarah says she and Lee have never overstretched themselves and have made regular overpayments on their mortgage. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“We’ve also always been savers – well, I’ve been the saver for us,” she adds. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Every month Sarah writes down how much money is in their accounts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“That really helps as if we’ve had a bad month, at least you know and can find the reason.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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How to manage money as a couple<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Family Action, a charity that offers financial support to families, says that when money is tight the first step “is getting a clear picture of what’s going on as this helps you understand your current position so you can make the best decisions possible together going forward”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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‘Always down to me’<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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But being the financially responsible one has not always been easy and Sarah wishes Lee would take more ownership as “I feel like it’s all down to me”, she says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She says Lee is not money-orientated and is happy for her to make the decisions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“He says, ‘I met you and I had nothing, so I don’t care if I have nothing,'” she says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But Sarah says she felt the pressure of planning for their future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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They had “a little pot of money” but “I never knew what to do with it, I didn’t have the confidence and I wouldn’t even know where to start,” she says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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St James’s Place’s research of 6,000 people found only 44% of women feel confident making changes to investments on their own, compared with 63% of men. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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After her widowed mother saw a financial adviser, Sarah decided to seek advice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“I thought deep down that I didn’t have enough money to see a financial adviser. In my mind, I thought you needed half a million to do that.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The adviser talked through their spending, attitude to risk and future costs, including holidays, a new car and home improvements. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Sarah says this made her feel more secure and helped shift their thinking from day-to-day saving to longer-term planning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"SarahSarah Reeve<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Sarah says she feels more confident after meeting with a financial adviser <\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Sarah says their daughters have absorbed her attitude towards money. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Her eldest saved while working part-time at Waitrose and has bought her first home. Sarah has spoken to her about overpaying on the mortgage and protecting herself financially now that her boyfriend has moved in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“We’ve rubbed off on them,” Sarah says. “My daughters will probably end up being more in control of their money.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Looking back, Sarah says the biggest lesson is not to ignore debt or assume money habits will simply sort themselves out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“You have to think about a goal, what you want and how you’re going to get there”. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Your<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c5yz4wnz6jdo”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/254d\/live\/67655330-7934-11f1-8d20-776ad947bebb.jpg”] Sarah Reeve Sarah and Lee have been together for 25 years and have always had a joint bank account When Sarah Reeve got engaged she gave fiance Lee an ultimatum: he had to pay off his debt before she would marry him. “I was paying my mortgage and bills whereas he was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[35,226],"class_list":["post-2047646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-bbc-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2047646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2047646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2047646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2047646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2047646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2047646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}