Husband’s business, baby - do I need to be more resilient?

Kindly OP you’re as much to blame for this situation as he is. I would say unless you have bailiffs at your door and mountains of debt then you’ll no doubt be fine long term as the business matures. I’m guessing one or both of you are from families who could support you given the lack of urgency and panic in your posts?

Yeah the timing, the 'before I'm too old' and the emotions around failure, feels like panic at the responsibility of being a parent and ways to escape it and follow his dreams. A good partner and parent would feel at this point like their dream was keeping their new family secure and being there with them, not leaving all the worry to the wife as the money runs out and in the best case scenario buggering off overseas. I'm sure this is not the vision of your DC's early days OP dreamed of yet she's supposed to be resilient and endlessly support his dreams. The redundancy is a red herring I feel, as he can point at it and say 'if only it wasn't for that...' but women returning from mat leave is a known risk factor and his lack of savings, back-up plans and real world nous are the real problem.

I would tell him to go and get a job alongside, benefits will tell you the exact same thing.

Appreciate there's no point in looking backwards but surely he sees that this cannot continue. If you cannot pay your bills you need to get paid work... now. Maybe that means a weekend job or driving for uber or whatever but you need money coming in. Obviously this was not a great plan to begin with but that's already happened so now you just need to work out how you both have money coming in today otherwise you'll be in a mess in a few weeks.

Is the funding guaranteed, is there a time scale to him getting it? Companies promise all sorts and then pull the plug or push back funding dates at the last minute. The fact he hasn't got funding to the original time scale is proof of this.

Is it definitely funding and grants and not a loan?

Is there going to be demand for the product he makes? Some things are great on paper and look like they are in demand but in reality there is no demand or viable for them.

My husband sets up businesses, builds and runs them and then sells them on when they get to a certain size. He also has a freelance income separate to the businesses he runs. It is so important that you are 100% sure there is a viable market for your product before leaving any secure paid job behind.

There should have been a savings pot before hand, with agreement to how much of those savings will be used for funding the business. There should be a time scale of if it's not took off/making £x by y then we do this instead. Using your job to pay the bills is effectively living hand to mouth and not viable.

This is very much a case of shit timing and poor planning on his front. It is not a case of you been resilient, it's that his "business" is currently a very expensive hobby that is not creating income. Sometimes been a cheerleader involves giving the reality check before it becomes financially devastating.

I think "delusional" is the word here. You should be bloody mad at him. If I were you I would be putting in claims for benefits because how are you going to feed and clothe your child?

You're living off your savings and they run out in a month. You're not over reacting. You're under reacting, and dismissing your own warning alarm in your efforts to cheerlead his decisions.

You're in another country, about to run out of cash, with a young baby. If you didn't find that stressful you'd be missing a few brain cells.

He needs to urgently get some money coming in, while you look for a job and work out child care, and if that's him doing a night shift stacking shelves, then so be it. I run my own business, and they're not built on big ideas and looking good.

They are built on common sense, good decisions and there hasn't been much of that going on in your situation, and hard work, unfortunately it's time for some of that, and doing what needs to be done. I've cleaned toilets, my dad had two jobs when we were small and he was building a business up, becase the bills need paying.

Time to check back into reality.

Nope!! He needs to get a paying job.

We had a kind of similar situation. Just as went back to work from maternity he lost his job. No redundancy as not worked there long enough. I had reduced to 4 days.

Luckily he was making money straight away. He is a trade so probably that makes a big difference. I have since dropped my management position to 2 overnight shifts with the same company as it’s a decent pay for just 14 hours. He did go through a few months only just making enough money on top having his van broken into and wrote off. He started looking for a job but luckily work is coming in again.

Child care is expensive, even with the “free” hours. So it doesn’t always make sense for both parents to work. Especially full time. He needs to get a job and try and work on his business on the side until it makes money to support you all.

I can’t believe someone with a young child quit their salaried job with no savings to start a business. No savings??? That’s crazy. Surely a healthy cash buffer should’ve been a precondition to quitting.

I’m sorry OP, this sounds so stressful. Fingers crossed you can get a decent job soon and that will ease the pressure financially. Some really helpful responses from PPs familiar with how start-ups work - hope all works out for your DH!

Hang on so even if he got double the funding he needed, he still plans to be pretty much absent at home because ‘he wants to start a business’ marriage is a partnership and he’s a dad now, you don’t owe him his dreams op. When no one in your marriage is looking after you, you need to. Does he do much at home now?

I feel for the both of you. He clearly has an entrepreneurial spirit, but he's ignoring reality. He's behaving as if he's still in his 20s, as if he's single with no baby, but he isn't.

It was selfish and reckless of him to do all of this whilst you were pregnant or on maternity. That time should have been spent preparing for your baby and relaxing as much as possible, with him as your financial anchor and support, but instead he's carried on as if that didn't even exist.

It's really shit and unfair, but the type of life he's leading now is usually led by men with plumy backgrounds with wealthy contacts, and even for them, it can be serious ups & downs for years & years after they start their business.

If he's determined to to do this and been seen as 'full time', then he needs to be the one staying at home looking after your baby. Obviously he'll be part time at least because he'll have the baby to attend to, but on paper it'll look like he's full time. That will enable you to go back into the workforce and keep your C.V going. When things get busier for him, the child might then be school age or maybe you can go part time if that suits.

Be careful. Don't sink all your money into his business. Given that your are tied together financially, and you're married, I feel like you need legal advice on this and that your husband doesn't end up doing something daft like offering your house as an asset.

I don’t think his plan was crazy, and it sounds like there is potential for it to take off. I think you were both poor at communicating with each other in advance on finances, and also in leaping into this without a sufficient cushion of savings.

Obviously the redundancy was unplanned, but funding so often takes far longer and growth/development is slower than ideal that this is needed.

Can he take on any short term consulting roles to fill the gap in the interim?

Why did you think he had savings, and did he think you had savings? Because otherwise, he’s decided to do this with a young family and to be entirely dependent on his wife’s income, which is beyond reckless. Beyond.

i am struggling to understand why you didn’t have a conversation about the numbers and how long his savings would last.

Having no way of paying your bills is not about needing resilience. You need to have a proper conversation and have a plan, and he needs to pull his socks up.

You seem to be so caught up in supporting his dream that you are tolerating far too much.

No direct experience but my dad started his own business when he had two young children. I don't know if it's fair to say you have to start a business alongside working, how would he have time to do both? (That's assuming he is working 12 hours a day 6 or 7 days, if not then he can do paid work as well).
However you are not unreasonable to feel like you do Have you told your husband how you feel? Is he supporting you emotionally and practically? Any chance of moving closer to family so you have some support?
I will be honest and say your husband is unlikely to make loads of money in a year. I won't say how long it took my dad to be financially comfortable but it was a lot longer than a year.

OP, you keep asking whether you need to be more resilient. Has your DH told you that you need to be more resilient? I don't see this as a question of resilience. Your DH has decided to launch his own venture without ensuring any real safety net is in place, and is now putting all the pressure of managing the household on you. He should have been saving for months before deciding to embark on this, it makes me question his business acumen to be completely honest.

You already have enough to deal with as a new mum, now you need to find a new job with a higher salary and therefore will probably be even more stressful than your last?! Unbelievable behaviour.

You need to set a deadline by which he has to secure funding by, and if he doesn't do it, he needs to go back to work and put his plans on the back burner until he can realistically afford to support his family alongside his new venture.

OP, it’s a really tough situation, but I do understand about the funding, and if you and he talked through it thoroughly so you were both on board with him handing in his notice, then I think this largely falls under ‘tough but unfortunate’ versus unfair.

However, he needs to be-

1. validating and caring about your feelings of overwhelm and stress
2. doing everything he can to push forward the business in a realistic way
3. committed to a timeline to go back into employment if it doesn’t work out. (He can always promise to give up his work to any investor)
4. carrying far more of the load around the house and with the baby
5. it also needs to be clear that you have Joint finances and you have a stake in the company. I would say legally, not just notionally. I’m not saying this will happen to you but I have a friend who carried a lot of the load in a very similar situation- husband building this potentially very profitable business, waiting for investment. But she had no actual shares. She has just signed a divorce settlement giving up all claim, in exchange for the house. The business could be worth multiple millions within a couple of years, but the legal expenses and complexities of fighting for that are too great. You should have shares. Not only is this important in the case of divorce, but it’s important psychologically. You are then sacrificing for your whole family and yourself, not your husband’s dream- and he is accountable to you for delivering to some extent.

if these things are in place, and the business has real prospects, then yes I think it’s the time to lean in and carry the load and deal with the discomfort for a while. As long as you all can keep your head above water and stay well through it. Building a business is really hard, but hopefully you will both look back in great pride at pulling out all the stops.

Yes, I think basically if he doesn’t get investment in the next few months he will stop and get a salaried role again.

This feels way too vague and the whole plan feels poorly thought out by him, from over-optimistic timeframes to lack of contingency funds. My business is good now but took longer than I hoped to make any money and there's no way I could've done it with a small child to provide for. To stake everything on an investor showing up and giving him enough to live off until he turns a profit is more hope than smart business planning. I'd set a hard deadline (not 'next few months') for this funding to materialise or it'll keep being 'next month, just wait' while you work full-time and fund everything and he spirals into depression (if many of the DHs who try similar things on here are anything to go by). This is a terrible time to have made his decision and worrying about being too old soon says more about his mindset/emotions than it being a genuine business reason.

I hope he gets lucky, but that's what he's aiming for really, most businesses take much longer than a year to pay their owners a decent living wage. It's not a matter of you being resilient. It's a matter of one or ideally both of you being real. If the money running out this month hasn't jolted him into earning (and how would an investor know if he was delivering Amazon parcels or working evenings in a bar anyway??), then I fear he's living in fantasy land and his investor promises cannot be relied on.

I still don’t understand why you didn’t build up savings before he gave his notice in. Seems an absolute no brainer. Even without the redundancy, it’s well known that women returning to work after mat leave are often in a precarious position- either because they themselves want to do part time work or because the business has managed without them and might rethink the role. Why didn’t he wait until he had saved?

I also get the need for him to work full time in the week, but why can’t he do weekend work, in a supermarket or something like that? At the moment it soinds as though you’re both just at home all the time- that’s just not on if you’re about to run out of money.

And even if this investment does come in he’ll only be paying half of the bills (does this include childcare BTW?). So absolutely you should be back in work by now and forget any ideas about part time or short days- those are luxuries for people who aren’t on the breadline. I would be back full time until your partner is earning and you’ve got a buffer at least and only then start thinking about any changes.

I honestly do wonder sometimes where people get these mad ideas and why no one seems to consider basic financial planning part of their life? My gran and grandad would sooner have not slept for a month and taken on 6 extra jobs than end up with no income coming into the house when they had kids.

The way you talk about Resilience and needing to support your partner is the tone you take when starting their business means things are going to be tight for a while but you can get the bills paid and funding the essentials of life but the nice to haves are on hold.
You only have money to the end of the month! He needed to find a job that worked around setting up his business when you got made redundant even if that meant working evenings/nights/ weekends whilst pursuing the business full time in the day.

We all have ideas about what life will look like on 6 months time but you have to adjust to the now and prioritise the roof over your head and food on the table. My mum was planning on taking a year off when I was born, interest rates went up but she went back to work when I was 12 weeks old. They couldn't afford childcare so my dad worked days and my mum worked evenings. No they didn't see much of each other but bills were paid and we were all fed. I was made redundant at 8 weeks pregnant, we had planned on doing shared leave or reduce his hours to give me more support as I get unwell with post natal depression and I got very unwell in pregnancy. As it happened we couldn't afford for my partner to take unpaid leave and he could only get paid leave if I was working. We have had to accept more help from family and friends we had only just met for support

You both quickly need to get money coming in to pay the bills. Go through all of your expenditure and work out how many hours of work you need to meet those demands and get searching for jobs. Even if you are doing the bulk of the work he should be trying to find 8-16h a week to contribute.

Have you spoken to him about what is going to happen next month when your redundancy money has gone? What is your plan?

You don't need to be resilient, you need a husband who had actually planned and thought all this through. Why didn't he have any savings before he left his job and started a business? Surely most people know businesses rarely make money at the start?! Even if you hadn't been made redundant then you would have to be earning well to support 3 people. Obviously whats done is done but the chain of events was fairly ridiculous

I can't imagine my husband behaving like this, ever, and me supporting him.
The only advice I'd have would be for you to just live by yourself, with your child.
But you run out of money?
Sorry.

What's he doing?

He can't produce without funding

He can't sell without production

He is living in cloud cuckoo land and leaving you to worry.

Of course YANBU. Circumstances have changed, he should have got a new job months ago, as soon as you got made redundant. He can't be working on a business that makes no income. I don't understand why you're focusing on 'being resilient'. You need income, plain and simple.

I think this is the point to really take stock of your situation and ask yourself some serious questions.
Are you expecting the business to allow you to be a SAHM eventually? Is that what you would want?
Is this realistically short term pain for long term gain?
Will your DH stick to dropping the idea if at the end of the 12 months it's not returning an agreed level of profit?
This is about both of you, your hopes and expectations, and where you want to be in the future. If there is a reasonable expectation that the business will take off, and you will be both be happy and fulfilled with that long term then stick with it. If it's not realistically feasible, call it a day and both get paid employment.
Only you can say at what point you need to make that call.

I can’t believe he left his job to start a business without a good emergency fund in place. I’d be so
mad about that, OP! My husband has his own business, he had savings set aside before he set up and even had a friend as an investor before he even considered getting going (he also has a business with a lot of upfront costs). I’d just be so mad he hadn’t done this - as you know now, life can throw anything at you!

It was a good 12-18 months before DH was making a decent wage from his business. Like I say, thankfully we had savings. Yes it’s been worth it as it’s very successful now but this is just such poor planning on your partners behalf.