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

Your husband needs to work alongside starting his business. Most people can't afford to ditch the FT job to focus on their start up and neither can he. He needs to work, at least part time, so there's an income. It could tale ages ti gey his business of the ground. It doesn't just happen. He should have take a job as soon as you got made redundant.

You’ve said a few times that he’s hoping to get investment funding to develop this product and then he can start selling it. Even if he gets some funding, he will presumably need that money for development, not to take as an income. If the product doesn’t need financial investment and he could take the money to live off, he won’t get investment. He’d have to show clearly what he intends to spend that money on.

I don’t wish to be negative but he’s on a hiding to nothing. If you want to start a business you need to have enough money saved to cover your own personal costs until the business is profitable, which can take years.

Resilience won’t pay your bills. He needs paid work now.

You can't change the past so it isn't worth beating yourselves up over the timing. It sounds like there is a workable plan for funding and that he won't get it if he's working, so unfortunately you need to find another job ASAP. You may also need a time limit by which, if he hasn't secured funding, he needs to give up and get a job.

I'm not sure about the resilience issue though - he should be supporting you as much as you support him, and when you are both working you should both be parenting/dividing the domestic load equally.

Will he owe this investment back if his business doesn’t make a profit?

Im concerned for you. He sounds deluded and he’s risking you and your babies lifestyle along with his.

You say the word “resilient” a lot. Is he telling you you’re not resilient? Where’s this coming from?

He is not a good man to do that while you were so close to giving birth. Suppose there had been a medical problem.
Please tell us it is a real business with a product and not some commission only sales bollocks or Trading Currencies.

Honestly this isn’t about resilience, it’s about making money. You being resilient won’t pay the bills. You both need to find paid work and he can continue to work on his business on the side. Why haven’t you looked for work before now? How did you both get to the point of there will be no money at the end of the month? To be honest this does not sound like two adults who are financially responsible. This funding he is talking about - that’s funding for the business, not to feed his family, correct? This funding solves none of your issues.

He left his job when your child was 3 months old with apparently no cash flow plan whatsoever??

The real spanner in the works here was the redundancy. If you had had a job to go back to, then I can see why him potentially starting a business and able to look after the baby at home while you went back to work may have had some merit.

But unfortunately that didn't pan out. You've agreed a period before he needs to get back to work, and are looking for work yourself. Presumably he can take care of the baby, therefore saving on childcare?

Both of your options are true at once...this must be phenomenally hard and frustrating and stressful, and you're allowed to feel that way. It's perfectly normal, and hopefully your DH isn't telling you otherwise. But at the same time, as a team, hopefully you can get through this and out the other side. Resilience isn't swallowing your worries and pretending they don't exist, but acknowledging them and keeping on going anyway.

It doesn't sound like your husband is a shirker, or hugely irresponsible, the redundancy was the kicker. Was it the best timing? No. But you both clearly felt it has potential so keep that in sight.

Then I’d be absolutely fuming with him and would have asked him get another paying job as soon as you found out you were being made redundant.
How did the two of you not clearly discuss the financials and ensure you had savings to cover all the eventualities before he quit work for a business he knew wouldn’t make money for this long?
It’s one thing not having savings and then falling on hard times but actively choosing to quit a job when you have a family and haven’t saved enough to cover it is ridiculous.

I think you are playing fast and loose with the meaning of resilience. It’s almost a way to trick yourself to ignore your own concerns when you feel worried you are doing something foolish

the real question is are you both being rational, and like PP I think no. As far as I’m aware, you should not be using investments to pay wages, that sounds like something that could lead to horrendous debt?

OP, this has the strong whff of covert narcissim.
Leaving his job while you are on mat leave to shoulder the adjustment of a new baby and all finances is so selfish.
Certainly not the actions of a good man.
God help you.

Can I just ask, when he gets the funding will he be able to take some of this as a salary or does it all go into the business?

He has a plan. His plan is for you to do the donkey work of keeping the household going while he fannies around with a full time hobby.

I would say you need to be less resilient. Drop the ropes, say you can't do it.
It's the worst possible time to be doing this ego-trip hobby.

I understand why you feel under pressure.

I don't know how the childcare is arranged but considering that you need to find work, manage childcare, drop offs and pick ups all the tantrums and then with his travel childcare after work. He also will be very focused on the job, avoiding diving into family life which i understand. It is exhausting for you and not the best time to start business but as it has already started just keep going.
I think I regularly would check with him and inform how you feel and what issues you have. Support him but keep things realistic

A quick dictionary search tells me that "resilient" means being able to recover quickly from difficulties.
It is the wrong word for this situation, because you can't be recovering from something that is not over yet. The recovery comes after, not during.

You are not even seeing the worst of this situation yet - you are still heading into the worst part, when the money runs out and you default on the mortgage and get evicted (assuming you have a mortgage and neither of you manage to find enough work quickly enough).

If this investment money comes through, but he uses it to pay the mortgage arrears and cover household bills, how is that going to help the business succeed?

A better word is endurance: do you have the endurance to keep going when the bills pile up unpaid, the home has to be sold (to pre-empt foreclosure by the bank), you go into rented accommodation and perhaps have to claim Universal Credit.
Or, you have to go back to work far sooner than you wanted, missing out on those precious months when baby is so young, either putting baby in nursery, or if that is too expensive leaving baby with DH while he "works" on his business.

You are under no obligation to "cheerlead" your DH while he leads the family into financial disaster.
I would give him a deadline of say 4 or 6 weeks, and if no money appears by then he has to fold the business and pray he gets a job quickly.

I'm a bit torn here.

I opened the thread expecting your baby to be tiny, and they're not; they're 15 months old.

From what you've said, the plan was that he would wait until you were back at work before he left to pursue this. It doesn't seem that there was ever a discussion about him having savings, beyond that you "thought" he would. So really the change has come from your side, in that you were made redundant, and the redundancy money hasn't lasted as long as you thought. It is stressful to be made redundant, especially right now, the job market is awful.

I'm with CatherinedeBourgh, he won't get funding if he's part-time or working alongside another job. Investors won't invest in something he isn't even investing his time into. If he's in several incubators and has letters of interest, he's not following a pipedream. There's always the risk that it'll come to nothing, but it sounds like he's got himself into the right rooms and is actively working on this, rather than sitting around on YouTube and dreaming of having a business... Realistically, there's going to be resentment on his side too if you make him walk away from that.

Which doesn't mean that you have to accept all the resentment either, but you need a serious chat about what the future looks like for both of you. It does seem that the goalposts moving has been mostly on your side, from what you've said - you intended to go back to your existing job, now you want something with less days and less stress, which means less money, but you'd already agreed that he'd be starting a business, so his income was never going to be particularly reliable for a bit...

You haven't really got the option of him parking this for a few years. He won't get back into these incubators and people's past follows them around.

It's tough decision time, unfortunately.

Why did you wait to job search?

We have a 15 month old. ......The money I got from redundancy would have lasted 8 months. As he hasn’t had income yet from the business, I had to pay all bills and the money is almost gone after 4 months.

That's 4 months you could have / should have been looking for work?

When one partner is on mat leave -it’s not the time for financial risks. Your job as the other partner is to provide financial stability.
I would find this stressful beyond belief.
there is nothing wrong with you or your resilience.

When your husband left his job to start his business, what exactly was his timeline for starting to make money? What exactly was his business plan? What were the steps along the way and how long did he expect each step to take? How far along the timeline is he? Where did he put the decision points where you can both say it hasn't worked out well enough and he needs to give up?

Did he discuss all this with you and plan out how you would support yourselves and your baby? In detail and the full plan, with dates and numbers? Did you look at different scenarios? It doesn't sound like it. It's really worrying that he didn't even lay out how much his savings were.

You probably do need to get a job but no you should not be carrying it all. Both his business and your family finances should be shared effort. And there should be clear re-planning when something changes, such as you losing your job. I agree with pp that now he needs a steady income himself. So now there needs to be a fixed date - if the "funding" hasn't arrived by that date then he will stop focussing on the business and look for a job, and then a further date so that if he hasn't found a job by then he will take any job at all. And he needs to be very clear about how much money he can expect to take from his business to support the family if his "funding" does come through. Which might be none at all so be warned.

It all sounds much too vague. As if he hasn't planned it properly or thought about contingencies and he's expecting you (or you are expecting yourself) to let him mess about in the name of "resilience".

I think the fact is that when you made the decision for him to become self employed, your circumstances were different.

Things have changed and between you, you need to be looking at all the options and working out what is best for your family now.

It's not on you to be more resilient, it's something you both need to be. If this means he needs to suck it up and go back to work, even part time retail alongside building the business for example, if giving it up isn't an option, then he needs to be more resilient and do that. If the best thing is to keep focusing on the business, because in 6 months you're forecasting great returns, then you need to be more resilient.

It's likely going to be somewhere in the middle and both of you are going to have to work hard to get back to a stable position. But it's on BOTH of you. He doesn't get to just swan around doing his dream while you pick up all the pieces around him.

My DH joined a partner in a business and they had loads of work very quickly. Yes, you have to wait for money to come in and make sure overheads are less than you charge! I’d put a time line on it in terms of making money. Don’t entirely see the connection with the baby. My dh was working long hours when our babies came along. However he was making a lot of money. Not nothing. So I’d be wanting dh to make money or what’s the point of the business? A hobby?