How Debt Affects Your Life

Debt can affect your future—it will complicate your attempts to get a house, a car or your kid through college. But there’s nothing that debt complicates more than relationships.

Debt is a major strain on marriages and relationships for many reasons, and not just the obvious ones. Three major factors that hold a marriage together are time spent together, trust in each other and facing problems as a unified front.  For a couple in severe debt all three of these factors fall apart.

When couples are in debt, they may decide to work longer hours to help pay down the debt. This means they won’t see each other as often and they’ll begin to become alienated from each other.

This would be bad enough, but once the couple starts to view debt as a “me” and “you” issue, rather than an “us” issue, each member will start noticing where the other can be more economical. Partners will begin to resent each other for little luxuries, buying their lunches rather than bringing them from home, for instance, or paying for cable television. Soon the fights won’t just be about money...