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

The other thing is have you got childcare in place if you did get a job? You’ll be equally stuck without childcare as without an income.

Will you be entitled to claim benefits in the country you live in, if you can’t find a job?

You can be self employed and claim UC particularly during the first year of business when the minimum income floor isn't applied - if he doesn't get a job in the short term given that they are running out of money - then what?

It’s not about resilience. It’s about reality. You don’t have any money- his business (like all start ups) is precarious. You’re not being unsupportive or making a judgement if you ask him to get a job.

Surely UC will expect the DH to get a job. Then they don't have to live on fresh air or benefits and can fund their own family.

Agree. Being self employed is not for the feint of heart. The start up period is not the end of the tough times.

If he has no income coming in and you only have enough money for the next few months assuming you are in the UK why haven't you made a claim for UC. It's not going to solve all your problems but you can't live on fresh air

Also as someone else suggested you need to get some advice about your redundancy - whether your company had the right to make you redundant while you were on maternity leave

This isn't about resilience. It's about being able to pay the bills and keep a roof over your head

If there is one sentence l hate its: the investment is coming! And l speak as someone who is married to a man who started a few businesses..some successful/ some not. Living on dreams is hugely nerve-wracking and can destroy a marriage. My dh had a good professional degree and always worked part-time when starting up and as a teacher my salary was pretty secure. But your dh is depending too much on you and being a new mother is responsibility enough without being the sole bread winner too. You will become resentful very soon as exhaustion hits.
I think you need to get tough. He needs a part-time job at the very least. You are expecting too much from yourself smiling at your wonderful entrepreneur while your bank account is empty!!
You could lose your home.
What is his family like? Is his Dad a business owner as l found my dhs parents too supportive of his dreams and would have likedthem to say: get it together man!

While you are draining your savings dry and he is waiting for funding, what exactly is your DH doing all day and night?

If he won't start developing his product until after he has funding, then why can't he find some evening work to top up the family finances until something comes through?

Successful people start businesses and work 80+ hour weeks to get them through the start up period which can go on for years.

He isn't working at a job.
He isn't working on his business according to you as he is just waiting for someone else to pay him to do it.

So what exactly has he been doing for the past few months, while you carry the strain of raising a young child and paying the bills?

How much faith do you have in a man who gave himself no runway to keep a roof over his own head or food in his mouth, never mind his own wife and childs at all?
He couldn't even plan to put away enough savings to help with one months bills?

About half of all startups are no longer trading after three years. Starting a business is risky.

You can't say too much about his business model but what concerns me is that your husband is burying his head in the sand with his domestic finances (using up your money faster than intended) and is likely to be doing the same with his business finances? He needs someone to help him cut through the fog of "if we can just get through this, then the business will take off and everything will be fine" and understand that since he isn't paying himself, the business is not really viable at the moment and given your household financies, really drastic action is needed (maybe closure). Could you seek out a business mentor to discuss his business with because it sounds like he needs someone with much more of a business head to talk some sense to him.

Starting up a business can be very stressful. It's not great that you guys didn't discuss how you survive until the money started coming in. But even when the money starts coming in it's important to build up a war chest so you can weather the lean times, don't forget about saving to pay the tax bill - cash flow is the thing that causes most businesses to fail. And then when the money issues are not giving you grief it's time that becomes the precious commodity. Evening, weekends and family holidays can evaporate. And employing people, can be a total nightmare - avoid if you can.
So yes you need to be more resilient because it's likely this is not the end of the stresses that will hit you both.

@NurtureGrow We’ve been talking this morning and he has given me some dates in February when various funding should come in.

I don't like the "should" in that sentence - so he still has no guarantee that any funding will actually be coming in? When will he know for sure how much is arriving, and when? Is he just going to wait until the end of the month and see what materialises?

You are asking the wrong question of yourself OP.
It’s not a question of should I be more resilient, rather a question of should we both be more financially realistic. The answer is yes.

You should have been doing the figures and realising there is no incline coming in with no savings to fall back on, and furthermore, that the investment he seeks and expects, has to very quickly pay off and generate even more income …with absolutely no sign that that is going to happen. What then ?

Agree op. What is his big plan if you can’t find a job? He needs to get over himself and look for a job. This isn’t even about being resilient here, it’s about the roof over your head.

So you are carrying your husband, emotionally and financially, and carrying your baby (or does he do all the caring and housework?) and now you wonder if that is not enough and you need to try and work more hours/new job asap?

why is all the pressure on you?

Why does he get to decide that right now what he wants is really important, and whatever it is you want will not even come into question your job is just to support HIM ?

Can he take out a business loan ? I feel like he probably should have done that at the start of his leave instead of you becoming the 100% contributer.

I have some experience with this. My DP set up a new business (albeit in the same industry as his former paid employment) and ran it alongside his paid employment for around 4 months, until it was really clear we could rely on it. Then he resigned and ran the business full time.
I continued my paid employment for another approx 6 months after that until it was clear the business could support all of us and then I joined the business too. It was all calculated and very much a joint decision at each step. Your DH’s business sounds very different ( re the need for funding etc) but I wouldn’t say you need to be more resilient regarding finances. In my experience the resilience/ patience needed is with regard to the ridiculous number of hours needed to do everything in the early days and the all consuming commitment required.
I think the key is that it needs to be a joint decision and level of risk that you’re both happy with and that each partner understands and agrees to the plan.

And what happens to the funding if it doesn’t work. Are you then in debt?

Will your husband consider giving it up and getting a salaried job? Entrepreneurship can be an addictive disease. And how much pain would you consider worth it for the chance of a big payoff?

(This post involves some seriously first-world problems and I know I'm in many ways very lucky...)

Depending on your husband's personality and the nature of the company, you may need to be pretty resilient long after the financial woes settle. My husband wanted to start a company just as we contemplated starting a family. I asked him to wait, but he suffered a mental breakdown when I was pregnant and believed that founding a company was the only way out. So his company was birthed with our first child. No major financial woes, because I had a decent salary and he had savings. And things were manageable for a while -periods of intense fundraising stress, but also some flexibility for him to help with childcare. Ironically, it stopped being manageable when businesses like his started getting billion dollar valuations. Billionaire investors started circling and he IPO'd the company to maintain control. The level of stress this entailed was entirely incompatible with mental health or family life, and I was a solo parent with a very unwell husband for several years.

In the end it worked out OK. He sold the company and regained his sanity. He exited with enough cash that we're much wealthier than I ever expected to be (although, thank goodness, the company was never worth a fraction of some of the silly valuations in the space). He's taken time off work and reconnected with our children. I think it was, in some sense, psychologically necessary for him, and hence perhaps unavoidable. But given that the alternative was a quiet existence on two comfortable professional salaries, there is no sense in which it was worth it to me financially. (If his product ever comes to market it could help a lot of people, and hence it might be worth it by that metric.)

So don't assume that your resilience only needs to take you to the point of first investment. Assuming he needs multiple rounds of funding and many years to bring a product to market or exit, you may have to dig deep for a long time...

In this economy?! Not that unexpected. You HAVE to plan for worst case scenario, business is no place for rose tinted glasses unfortunately.

Now you need to be resilient enough to ask your husband some challenging questions - such as, what does he plan to do to help your family's financial security if (when!) the money doesn't come through during February?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but It sounds like there ought to have been a lot more open discussion about savings, finances and the expectations that your husband had wrt you earning before he made the leap. And that’s before the redundancy came in to play. Basically a large part of what made his plan viable (ie your return to work/income ) was something he assumed rather than discussed with you.

are the investors okay with his plans to draw a salary from day 1? Some would not be. And what are your childcare plans once you are at work? When we had our DC, I took a years maternity, then my DH took a year off, and built a business during nap times and working in the evenings - is this something that might be viable? Businesses - especially when they’re starting out p are very greedy of time, so I think you need to be very clear with your DH that childcare responsibilities need to be shared so that you’ve not got all the pressure of earning and arranging all of that too

i don’t think it would be fair to say that you need to be more resilient, because responsibility of bankrolling this seems to rather have been foisted on you. What’s done is done, so the best thing you can really take from this now, is insist that he is much more communicative, considerate and transparent moving forward

Props to you but this sounds dreadful and I think might give most people a complete breakdown! The OP was hoping to cut her hours, not join the 5AM club!

Plus no need for it, they could just both get normal jobs at this point? The only reason the husband appears to be doing it now is because otherwise he thinks he’ll be “too old”- no commercial reason so far as we know.

Perseverance with a sprinkling of resilience on top ! Sounds delicious and definitely pays the bills.

So she's got to go out and work full time to prop up his failing business?