Joint cards, buy now pay later, overdrafts, the partner who spends, and when to get help

The rule holds for every kind of credit that behaves like a gap. A few need their own paragraph.

Joint cards. A card two people spend on is a gap two people fill, and neither sees the whole. The two lines go on the fridge where both can see them, and the freeze is agreed, not imposed. The fixed amount comes from the joint account on the day the larger income lands.

Buy now pay later. Splitting a purchase into three or four payments with no interest is a gap with a friendlier face, and it does what the card does. It decouples the coat from the paying and hides the total across a dozen small future payments. If you use it, it goes on the sheet as debt, because it is, and it stops while the sheet has a balance. Missed instalments can be recorded and charged, and the friendliness ends there.

Overdrafts. An overdraft is a gap attached to the current account itself, and it costs a rate that's often higher than a card's. If you live in it, it goes on the sheet with its rate, and it may be the dearest thing on the sheet, in which case it's first. Living on the account means living above zero in it, and the overdraft limit is a green number too.

Store cards and catalogue credit. Usually the dearest thing anyone owns. On the sheet, first in the order if the rate says so, and put away.

The partner who spends. If you live with someone who treats the gap as money and you don't, the sheet is the conversation to have, because it starts from numbers rather than from blame, and it's hard to argue with the rate column. If they won't look at it, a debt adviser will see couples, and an earlier book in this series is about raising difficult things.

Rising limits. The letter offering a higher limit is a letter offering a bigger gap. Decline it, or ask for the limit to be lowered to a little above the current balance, which most lenders will do, and which turns the green number small enough to stop being money.

When to get help. I said it in the preface and I'll say it plainly again. If you're missing payments, if you've used one card to pay another, if the balance has risen for a year and you can't see the stop, if the debt is keeping you awake or you're hiding it from the person you live with, ring StepChange, Citizens Advice or National Debtline this week. They're free, they're confidential, and StepChange's own description of the people who call them is people who describe sleepless nights and fear of talking about it. They've heard every version of your sheet. Nothing in this book is a reason to wait, and the method works alongside their advice, not instead of it.

Mental health. Debt and low mood travel together, in both directions. If the mood has been low most of the day for a fortnight, that's a GP conversation as well as a debt one, and the two things get better together more often than separately.