Dating and Finances

Hello lovely ladies looking for a bit of advice on how to handle finances while dating early on. I’ve been seeing a lovely guy (we both mid 30s) and things are going well, it’s new and we’re official etc etc.

He’s going on a trip with friends this summer and invited me. I told him I don’t think the timing will work me and we left it at that.

I’m trying to focus on paying off debt (cc 25k…was ~35k and student loans are at 3k now). My debt can be summed up into 4 categories medical, helping out family (never doing this again unless I actually have money to help with vs putting it on my cc), lack of budgeting due to a friend dying that caused me to be depressed and not stick to my budget, weddings - some I should have bowed out of going and sent a gift bc I couldn’t afford them. This debt accumulated over a yr or so period.

I wasn’t always financially savvy but I took classes from my local library to learn and it got me to a place where I had enough saved to buy a place of my own. I’m focused on getting higher paying job to help pay off debt faster and have a healthy savings acct. also sticking to a tight budget.

I recognize this is a red flag amount of debt and would understand if he chose to walk away. I 100% take accountability of my spending habits that put me in that hole and am committed to do what I need to do to dig myself out. I’ve started doing side hustles to get extra income to pay off debt.

I’d like advice on how to bring this up in a transparent way. He makes more than me based on what he does and what I do (easily 50% more) so we are going to have to figure out how to date with differing incomes. It hasn’t been an issue so far as we’ve been hanging out and doing low cost dates.

How would you suggest I bring this up (is it too soon to bring up?) and how have you handled differing incomes while dating?