Debts can be hard enough to bear on your own, but they can also bring about the ultimate doom of partnerships.
Despite the heteronormative assumptions in this infographic, I imagine those in same-sex partnerships would experience similar negative effects from debt. They just don’t get to be squashed into generalizations along gender lines.
I’ve heard that the best way to manage money in a marriage is for each party to have a separate account for personal spending in addition to a shared account for joint spending, like house payments and child expenses. This sounds like a pretty good system, but debt can throw a spanner into even the most well-oiled machinery. Should the person in debt still be required to pay equally into the joint account, or should they focus on paying their debt off?
Hilariously, it seems that the cost of the wedding often guarantees a rocky start for newlyweds. Student loans are, unsurprisingly, a huge source of debt. I can count on one hand the people I know who didn’t borrow anything for school. Exactly how bad is the problem? We’ve got an infographic to guide you through the depths.