Okay, I am a little bit hard on you, but I am old, and have seen a lot. Tell, deal with the truth, sooner than later. Now what to do about the debt. AFTER the discussion. With or without the relationship still on. Provided you are still able.
One of the things I did in my life was close down businesses. One of the huge problems for people who were hearing that they were very soon to be out of a job is that a lot of them had lots of credit card debt. Stuff they'd been running for years, paying minimum balances on, and now they are losing their source of steady income. It creates panic.
We frequently had credit repayment services offer to come in and talk to people as part of our supportive services. No deal, as they were private businesses, out to make a profit. First of all, they are in cahoots with the credit card industry. They are not doing this as a free service to humanity. Part of that money you arrange to pay back is going to them. For providing a service that you could very well do yourself. That's why they have those tempting looking commercials on tv for how people found them to be saviors. Several issues, though.
Once you contact these people, kiss that good credit rating goodbye for a long time. What they do is contact the credit card companies and cut off the cards, and arrange for you to make repayments on the cards in a set amount payable to them, which they distribute to the card companies. You really could do this yourself, without paying them to do it.
The biggest thing you have to do is STOP USING THE CREDIT CARDS. All of them. Get a debit card, use only it. Do not run these cards, ANY of these cards up any further. Yes, I know it's hard to locomote in our current society without credit cards, but if you use a debt repayment plan, that will simply cut off those cards, and they'll take your money bit by bit, and you'll end up paying a gosh awful amount of interest anyhow, and it is possible to be running up more debt on other cards while you are doing this anyway. I have seen it happen.
What I would suggest you do instead? If you don't have the money to pay them off right now? Okay, since, as you say, you have good credit at present, look for some credit cards that have a good benefit offering of transferring debt to them for a fixed amount of time at no interest. Balance transfers, they are called. Say eighteen months, that's a classic one. Of course, if during that 18 months, you do not pay off the transferred debt, it then becomes a high interest balance on the current credit card. So you get the new card, and DO NOT use it for anything but to make payments on the current debt you've transferred to it. Then, when time is growing short, get another card and do another ba;ance transfer if you do not have it paid off yet. Eventually this will screw up your credit rating too, but really, better than the instant black mark you get if you ever fall in with the card repayment programs. What they are specifically designed to do is keep you from taking bankruptcy, get back some of the credit card's money. And they do not do it for free.
So first of all, I beg of you, TELL YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER! Come clean, go through the explosion, weather this, do not live any longer hiding something from them that could really be a big relationship killer. Then check out the balance transfer cards, or take the money and pay off the credit card debt with their knowledge and cooperation, or not. This will save your credit rating for the things you may want to do in the future, like buying a home or something. Good luck, be honest, hope things work out for you.
