In Dating, When Should You Reveal You Have a Large Debt?

Liz Metcalfe

My boyfriend thinks I worry too much about debt. He says that in this day and age, everyone has to carry debt to survive.

He is, in many ways, more responsible about money than I am: he never misses a bill payment, while I do, when life gets busy. I've always been able to catch up the next month. Yes, I know the impact this has on my credit score.

Yet taking out a loan for a car or a motorcycle gives me cold sweats and he considers it the cost of living and doing business. He's 15 years my junior and I'm starting to wonder if this is a generational thing. My parents never owed a cent to anyone except to the bank for their mortgage and, in an emergency, to the appliance department at Sears. I am my parents' daughter. I resisted taking out student loans throughout CEGEP and my first year of university, choosing instead to work full time at night while carrying a full class load. I often dozed off during morning classes. When I realized I couldn't continue to do that, I took out a student loan with huge misgivings. How would I ever pay back that much money? It ended up taking 10 years.

School Now Routinely Causes Huge Debt

And school has gotten even more expensive. University degrees, in particular, increasingly create debt loads that would make people at the peak of their earning power nervous. Almost every student starts out his or her working life with a massive student debt.

A piece in the New York Times two weeks ago talked about how debt can kill a budding romance. It cited the example of a 31-year-old who knew her debt was more than $100,000 but, since she could manage the monthly payments, she thought she was OK.

She was decidedly NOT OK.

Broke Off Engagement

Her fiancé broke off their engagement when he found out that she was actually $170,000 in debt. A big part of that had been incurred while she was in school getting her B.A. in photography. She wasn't trying to hide her debt from him; she was hiding it from herself because it was "too depressing."

Unlike the people who enable the "princesses" that Gail Vaz-Oxlade puts through a financial boot camp on her new money show Princess, which debuted last week, her fiancé was unwilling to spend a lifetime married to someone that naive about money.

In Courtship, When Should You Reveal You Have a Large Debt?

Yet many students now routinely end up with student debts that run more than six figures. So, the article in the New York Times posed this question: "When, exactly, are you supposed to reveal a debt of this size during the courtship?"

What do you think? Especially with the advent of online dating, the pool of people we meet for potential courtship is much larger than it once was. If you're dating, and you've graduated with a six-figure debt from a student loan, how soon do you reveal how much you're in debt?

When courting, when should you reveal that you have a huge debt?
After you've been dating a month	123 (26.6%)
After dating for three to six months	181 (39.2%)
Before you've met his or her family	82 (17.7%)
After you've met his or her family	32 (6.9%)
When you get engaged	44 (9.5%)

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

9-13-2010 @ 4:24PM

bob said...

Hiding debt from a potential, is like hiding the truth about an std. If a relationship is of any value, it should start with openness and honesty.If it is meant to be, it will be with honesty. No chance without disclosure.

9-18-2010 @ 2:39PM

Anna Lahtinen said...

Married a man with debts. He never told me. Have been suffering of his constant debt taking for 35 years. It feels, that there is the mistress debt in this marriage. Would be money goes to this mistress and not to the family. They warn us not to marry alcoholics or gamblers, why do they not warn girls never marry a constant debt taker, it is an addiction as any.
Do not consider anyone as your partner, who has habit to take debts and more debts. One debt like student loan is not so bad, but constant going to the bank to take debt to this reason or that is a sign of an addict, who should be avoided.

9-18-2010 @ 3:47PM

hatemoney said...

It is such a drag that our society has become soooo money oriented that people are placed in between a rock and a hard place - taking on large debt in the form of student loans with no guarantee of being able to shrug it off. It is such a drag that our society has become soooo money oriented that money now dictates, out of necessity, who we date and marry. I hate money.

10-29-2010 @ 2:26AM

Flirting said...

This blog is informative. I like the way you address such grave issues in a light tone, it takes away some of the stress that relation causes. Most users, I am sure will return here on a daily basis to follow your advice.