MW 'His credit rating is wrecked': My son and his girlfriend mingled their finances. Big mistake.

By Quentin Fottrell

'She was a shopper and spent over $1,000 a month on weight-loss drugs'

"My son is smart - he really is - but he was in love." (Photo subject is a model.)

Dear Quentin,

A caution to anyone who doesn't already know this.

My son is smart - he really is - but he was in love. He and his live-in girlfriend mingled their finances. I'm not sure how much, but now that they've parted, his credit rating is wrecked. Just enough that he couldn't apply for a car loan or an apartment.

Yes, he has managed to get both because he has a good, long-term job, and he's slowly crawling out of the abyss.

I have no idea about her, and I don't care. She was a shopper and spent over $1,000 a month on weight-loss drugs. Oh, she looks great! He was guilty of following her across the country and back, and apparently letting her buy whatever she wanted.

Lesson learned - big time.

My husband and I never mingled money. I have mine, he has his, and we have one account for bills. Maybe one of the few good decisions I made in our marriage.

I probably told all my kids this at one time, but really it's none of my business. They're adults and very well employed. The others have not fallen into this trap.

Some story, right?

The Mother

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You can email The Moneyist with any financial and ethical questions at qfottrell@marketwatch.com. The Moneyist regrets he cannot reply to questions individually.

Your son, I'm sorry to say, bears the responsibility for his own credit rating, even if his girlfriend was a reckless spender.

Dear Mother,

Your son learnt a lesson the hard way.

The biggest lesson is about boundaries, personal and financial. It is, in fact, extremely difficult to ruin your credit rating because you lived with a person, unless your joint responsibilities - utilities, etc. - were not paid on time and/or your son allowed his girlfriend to use his credit cards to shop, or he himself got into the red paying for their joint lifestyle.

Your son, I'm sorry to say, bears the responsibility for his own credit rating and, even if his girlfriend was a reckless spender and made demands on your son, he is the one who needs to do some soul-searching. Because if it happened once, and the finger of blame is being pointed at his girlfriend - perhaps an easy reaction - it could happen again.

Unmarried couples are not legally bound to each other - marriage is a business contract as much as it is a legal and romantic one - so it would have taken a few naive or, frankly, head-scratching decisions by your son to mingle his finances with this lady. Did he leave credit cards lying around? Did he pay for her? Did they open a joint account for bills?

Nor do I believe we should blame your son's girlfriend for using weight-loss drugs, which can be life-saving by helping to prevent diseases like diabetes. These medications, particularly GLP-1 brands like Wegovy (DK:NOVO.B) and Zepbound $(LLY)$, can cost $1,000 a month or more without insurance coverage. The costs are obviously significantly less if someone has insurance.

Without more detail, we can only speculate how your son's credit rating was ruined. But I am willing to bet that he made some unwise decisions about his own finances in the process. It's easy to look back on a broken relationship and blame one party, but as with most relationships - marriages or cohabitants - the responsibility is usually 50/50.

Cohabiting unmarried couples

Like your son, more unmarried couples will face decisions about how and when to mingle their finances. Fewer than half (47%) of households last year were married couples - a big shift from 50 years earlier, when nearly two-thirds (66%) were married, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's historical America's Families and Living Arrangements.

"Couples find it helpful to have one joint account in which each person contributes a set amount each month that is used solely for paying shared expenses," says wealth-management firm Focus Partners. "Outline specifically all the shared expenses and those that you will be responsible for individually. How much you contribute to the joint account is up to you."

"It is much easier to figure out the details in times of happiness and bliss than at the end of a relationship when you might be acting from a place of anger or hurt," the firm adds. "It may be a good idea to draft a domestic partnership agreement with an attorney that spells out the legal and financial responsibilities of each partner and how you would split anything jointly owned."

I receive many letters from readers who wonder about the wisdom of commingling their finances. This woman, for instance, did not mingle her finances with her first husband, but is buying a home with her second husband and told me that she intends on rolling $150,000 - the proceeds from the sale of her home - into her new purchase. That would be a mistake.

Your son, I believe, has a lot of questions to ask himself. HIs ex-girlfriend is just a proxy for all of the judgments he will make in life. It will never be a straight line. Landlords will hike rents, employers will cut staff, customers won't pay their debts, and your choice of partner may not have the same ideological or financial outlook. It's up to all of us to stay true to ourselves.

Related: 'I'm part of a blended family that didn't blend well': My stepsister added her mailing address to our mother's bank account. Can she be trusted?

More columns from Quentin Fottrell:

'She is planning to move out of state': My sister sold our elderly mother's house from under her. What can I do?

'I'm not made of money': My heating engineer didn't fix my radiators on his first visit. Do I pay him a second time?

I'm trying to fix my relationship with my stepdaughter. Should my husband and I tell her how we have divided our assets?

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-Quentin Fottrell

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February 18, 2026 05:31 ET (10:31 GMT)

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