To limit DH to £50 per week?

[MrsKoala]

Name changer - Inspired a bit by another thread, i am now wondering if i am being controlling.

I am a sahm and DH either works from home (all Jan) or into central London (2 hr commute). If DH is at home he will go to the co-op (which is very expensive i think) for something to eat when we have a kitchen full of stuff. He will return with snacks/lunch which adds up to about £10. He also will pop to wetherspoons in the morning for breakfast, which is about a fiver and often go to costa for a break in the avo for coffee and a cake. If he is at the office he can spend about £30 on breakfast, lunch and snacks/drinks.

I appreciate he just wants to get out of the house/office and we can afford it some months - If it means he gets ALL the money left over after bills and we don't save or put anything away for holidays. But most months he draws on our savings account as he has gone overdrawn.

I have suggested we both draw out £50 per week for our 'extras'. He thinks this is wildly unrealistic and is bristling with me when i have suggested he cannot use the savings account as a slush fund for £100 here and there when he goes overdrawn.

I want us to start living within our means but DH feels that he earns a good salary and should be allowed to buy coffee when he wants it (sounds reasonable but when you add it up it is ). We now have an issue where i am restricting myself to accommodate his spending. My MA will stop next month so we need to be even tighter with ourselves.

I wish i didn't have to try to control his spending but i am really worried - despite him earning a decent wage. Our outgoings appear to be huge and we are hemorrhaging money :(

So AIBU to give him a budget?

[BooCanary]

MrsKoala - you would be mad to continue with the plan of moving to USA and having another child, until you have a handle on this/him. My DH is not great with money (although he does sort of acknowledge the fact) which is the reason I am 'in charge' of our money (he still retains a decent amount for personal spending as do I) and one of the main reasons I work p/t.

It is an incredibly risky position that you are in, with only £2.5K savings, who knows what debts, and no job. You need to take a hard line on this.

[MrsKoala]

yes defo! i am going home next week, assertively and armed with a spreadsheet.

[MissMarplesMaid]

You really need to start laying the big scary facts in front of him. He is going to see you all go under for the sake of his coffee and skiing habit. He is burning through your savings.

Also he may not plan on dying soon but at 17 stone with an apparently unquenchable appetite for crap snacks he might get a lot less choice in this than he imagines.

He sounds like he is running lots of accounts as a kind of smoke screen both for himself and you.

Are you sure it is only coffee and snacks he is wasting money on? His spending sounds compulsive, are you sure there isnt something more addictive like gambling in the mix as well? From your description of him 'having' to go out every day one thought which struck me was scratchcards.

Sometimes clever people can be very stupid.

[MrsKoala]

we have no debts boo. no credit cards. he does acknowledge he doesn't understand and is gradually transferring responsibility to me. he has been so relieved i have taken charge of all bills (we nearly ended up in court because he didn't pay council tax for 8 months - he didn't open the letters and hid them because he didn't understand what they were!). i think he will eventually accept it but it's just such bloody hard work.

thank you all for your concern and advice. it's really kind.

[suburbophobe]

The other thing is he wont make any food for himself and is fussy.

He needs to cut the apron strings or go home to mummy....

[BooCanary]

I hope you're right about the no debts OP. But it seems like you have been kept in the dark about an awful lot of things....

[MrsKoala]

oh no - no gambling. he doesn't 'get' anything like that.

he suggested we sell 8k of shares to put in the savings but i said no! as i know where it will go.

[Fluffycloudland77]

The problem with situations like this is that if anything goes wrong eg long term illness or a car crash etc the savings soon run out and you wished you'd saved more.

We have family who spent it as soon as they earned it who are now bankrupt. They earnt £8000 a month and have nothing to show for it.

What would motivate him to save? If the stick approach doesn't work then maybe the carrot will?

[facebookaddictno9]

I think you need two budgets one for a working day/week one for office days.

[facebookaddictno9]

if office days involve socialising with other colleagues.

[suburbophobe]

he didn't pay council tax for 8 months - he didn't open the letters and hid them because he didn't understand what they were!

Really?

Or is he just a cop-out?

[scottishmummy]

you certainly have a monumental task ahead,its achievable but hard work
get a system, all bills utilities on direct debit,all mail opened actioned by you
on personal level no new baby in this chaos,get back on feet and good luck
dh wt is high,can he see go for dietary support that will help cut down

[MrsKoala]

i think the incentive now is ds - he wants to be able to pay for uni for him (he's just born!) that is what i will play on.

he seems just so innocent where money is concerned. he thought flats in battersea would be 30k! he just doesn't get it at all.

[MrsKoala]

it's L1. good insurance policy too.

suburb - yes really, he'd never had to pay it before (he never paid many bills - he came out of the army when we met). he thought innocently that if you said you didn't open the bills you couldn't get in trouble as you 'didn't know about them'. i pointed out everyone would do that tho

he has been described as quite savantish. 3 masters and working on a phd but no sense at all.

[MrsKoala]

SM - yes i have already sorted bills. now it's wages and ensuring no overdraft. i don't want to infantilise him but i've given him too much room i think. i assumed too much capability.

[Trills]

Even if it is "innocence" rather than pure twattishness, are you sure you want to be in a foreign country relying on someone who would hide 8 months' worth of letters because he didn't understand what they were?

You'd better make sure that you are in charge of filling in forms for health insurance.

[MissMarplesMaid]

Are you sure about the share save thing? You said he is a contractor so what is he buying shares in? The contracting company? If so then how sure are you about the long term value of these?

Once you leave UK a lot of these sorts of things become a lot less worthwhile as the tax benefits are only for UK residents.

Even if the salary is good, moving abroad gobbles up money (I know, I have done it). You need to get a grip on this right now or your DH is not even going to keep a roof over your heads let alone pay for your DS to go to University.

[Fluffycloudland77]

Ok, so research the cost of:

Accommodation, starts at £100 a week even in small city's like Coventry

Course fees, £9000 a year? So we are up to about £13,000 a year so far.

Living expenses, £50 a week?

Unless he wants to saddle Pfb with debts from uni. Plus psb might want to go to uni too.

Or he could tell ds he has to have loads of debt from uni because daddy really likes a latte first thing to pep him up.

[MrsKoala]

he has a good 'proper' job and contracts in his spare time. the shares are thru his proper work and are all there - i have seen them in the 6 monthly account they send him.

well if we stay in the us the fees will be much higher than that and even if we don't - unless ds is going to be one of those freaky clever kids, he wont be going for 18 yrs, so i imagine the tories will have put it up much more by then!

[rainrainandmorerain]

Oh, Koala.

The only thing you can do to protect yourself at this point is to take over EVERYTHING financial. You need to know where everything is, savings, shares, wages, current accounts, bills - everything.

One big difficulty there is that you will end up with a lot of things (pretty much everything) in your name. So if there is a default or damage to anyone's credit rating, it will be a mark against you, not him.

But if you have a bill hider on your hands, you really can't rely on him to pass anything on to you.

It is VERY hard to change someone like this. Of course you don't want to infantilise them (and why should you take on their burden) - but any damage he does is not just to himself - you and your ds will suffer. It sounds like you have already tried to explain things and educate him financially - but he has already lost your family tens of thousands of pounds.

If he won't hand over EVERYTHING to you financially, and that means you named on accountds so you don't have to rely on him to access anything, or tell you the truth, you need to make it a deal breaker. Do what you have to do - but if you don't sort this now, then you are in one almighty heap of trouble.

Good luck.

[Astley]

Umm plenty of people leave uni with debts! The latte thing is a bit low. I don't want MY life to be totally devoid of any little pleasures so my children get everything gifted to them

[MrsKoala]

i'm so glad i did this thread. it has increased my resolve. after reading the 'controlling' comments on the other thread i worried i was being ott. my parents are old fashioned and see it as his money and nothing to do with me.

[MrsKoala]

and astley, i'm with you about uni. i don't want to pay for ds - even if we can afford it. i want to help but i want him to realise (if he wants to go at all) that he has to get a job and pay too (like i did). i can't help but think if dh's parents had done this he'd have more understanding of money.

[hermioneweasley]

mrs K - you really need to know the details of your health insurance in the US. Typically, even really good schemes will have excesses and 'co-pays' as well as long exemptions (few will cover maternity and birth for example). You will need substantial savings just in case one of you gets ill for example.

Also £30k in shares or some kind of company share scheme is NOT the same as cash. I speak as someone who lost over £20k in a totally safe, you'd be mad not to company share scheme with a FTSE top 10 company.