My husband is self employed and we have three children aged between 6 and 10.
I have been struggling financially to balance the books for the last four years, from the time I stopped work to look after my youngest. I work 25 hours a week (school hours) for his business and all the housework, washing, school stuff etc outside this time.
I'm trying to find out a rough figure of what a family needs to earn to get by, with an average house, mortgage, one car etc. I believe a family of five cannot survive on £30,000 or less p/a, which is what we've been doing for the last 5 years. Last year we drew £15,000 from his business. There is more in the business account but he wants to keep it in there.
I now need to explain this to my husband and let him see that this is suffocating our marriage. He is intensely proud and driven, and I am getting to the point where I feel that I am taking all the financial strain in order for him to live his dream. I tried to work full time last year (when we completely ran out of money) but having no support (childcare or personal) from him made this impossible and I had to stop. He still expected me to work for his business as well as look after the children and work full-time.
The reason I am posting this is to get some "evidence" to go to with him - I have tried spreadsheets galore which show we spend £40,000 p/a or more, and his response is just that we need to reduce our outgoings, and that I need to get new business in for him. At present his business has no work in the pipeline. Every time I try to talk to him about our situation I am accused of being negative and/or unsupportive.
As you can probably tell there are other things going on in our relationship apart from money, but the situation is eroding our relationship. I am about to start a part time job for mornings only but am sure he won't help with the childcare for the first week before the children go back to school.
Any advice would be very welcome, thank you in advance. I think I am not able to hang on for much longer.
Goldgirl41
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Relationships
Male pride vs marriage...advice please
goldgirl41 · 09/07/2012 11:26
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