Your comments haven’t fallen on deft ears…

I’ve had a few comments about the post I wrote about my boyfriend and his recent credit card spending… and your concerns have not fallen on deft ears… I knew I’d get some flack from it, and that’s good to hear. I'm glad for some flack.

Instead of trying to respond to everyone individually I’ll just say this: I see the red flags. Did it hurt to find out that he was charging behind my back... yes... Will that stay in the back of my mind... yes.

but for now, i'm not willing to throw in the towel. call it love, call it wishful thinking, but i'm sticking in this for awhile. We've all had set backs... heck i even had to borrow money from my crazy mother for college at one point...

But his journey isn't that different from most PF bloggers on the web.

He charged up credit cards in his first few years of college not really getting the point that it wasn’t really free money or that his interest rate was 20%.

When we started dating, he started to learn about another side to money. So he stopped charging and started using cash, working more to live the lifestyle that he normally did (minus the cards) and he even sent extra money to his credit card companies.

Then he got hit with larger contractor taxes then he planned on because he had worked more then he did the year before… He didn’t realize he was paying 23% to Medicare and social security before taxes as a contractor since he only made around 6,000 a year and lived at home with his parents. He planned on the work he’d get in Jan and Feb to cover his 1500 tax bill…and realized that he could have paid off most of his debt and all of his taxes if he hadn’t blown the money by going out… He essentially had that Epiphany moment.

But then work started to disappear... Gigs got less and less, and he couldn’t get the money for the taxes and pay the credit card minimums so he filed an extension and tried to get more work gigs… and in the process he started to charge again…

I was at his computer one day and saw one of his bills… he tearfully came clean and asked me to take the card…

Now we’re working together as I believe a couple who’s intending to marry one day should. I’m not paying a dime of his debt. He made it, he pays it. I’m not a bank or a loan center--- But I will be encouraging, supportive, and helpful.

He knows I won’t agree to get engaged until all the debt is gone, he knows we won’t live together until we're married, and he knows that I will earn my right to wear white on my wedding day… I’m only 23 and if it takes me till I’m 25 to get married, I’m okay with that… We all mature as individuals after college and time will tell if we’ll make it or if we won’t, but for now I just can't throw in the towel.

but i'm not dumb and i know when enough is enough. I've been in relationships before, and i've ended all of them with the exception of one (because he beat me to it). I can make the hard unpleseant decisions in life, and i'm not a doormat. I guess it's just the wait and see mentality, but i'm hoping well make it. I want us to make it.