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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To tell DH how to spend HIS money

129 replies

AhoyMcCoy · 08/01/2014 21:04

All money is shared. Goes into one account, bills etc paid, and then we both get an amount (approx £20 per week) to spend on whatever we like for ourselves. It's totally unaccountable- I don't question his spends and he doesn't question mine (nail polish, magazines & kindle books if you must know!)

HOWEVER. He used £10 of his weekly spends on gambling bet from some guy he follows on twitter. This guy is one of those professional gamblers who tells you how to turn your £10 into £1000 within a week.

DH has got £500 so far. Tomorrow is the final bet, where you turn your £500 into £1000. I'm BEGGING with him to stop here- £500 is money we could do with desperately, we'd love a holiday etc- it would be so nice to have a chunk of money we could be frivolous with together. I can't believe anyone could gamble £500?! But he is insistent it's his £10, and I have no say in it, and he can do what he likes with it.

If he wins the £1000, he's said it's shared and we will book a holiday, but I still don't want to risk the £500!!

So- MN Jury, AIBU?!

OP posts:

LessMissAbs · 08/01/2014 22:10

YANBU. He's followed your rules, and now you want to change them because he has profited. If it was the other way round and you had made the £500, you would be complaining. Give him some peace to do what he wants with his own £10!

MyNameIsKenAdams · 08/01/2014 22:12

He has only spent his £10 though. Even if his bet doesnt come off, he hasnt cost you £500. He has simply passed up.on an opportunity to gain that amount.

Yanbu to want him to stop now, but that is what you would do. YABU to want him to behave as you would.

rpitchfo · 08/01/2014 22:16

let it ride!

whois · 08/01/2014 22:19

Oh I'd hate DP to gamble £500 that I could see paying for half a holiday, but then I'm risk advers and boring and don't find gambling fun.

But I wouldn't try and stop him if it was his money. It's not like he's spending your joint savings, if he looses it all tomorrow the only real loss is the original £10.

MsAspreyDiamonds · 08/01/2014 22:21

Write a list of debts amounting to £500 or show him outstanding bills and discuss payment plans. That money should be used to clear debts or save for Christmas & hopefully the penny should drop.

mayorquimby · 08/01/2014 23:01

How in the world would it be a scam?
Presumably he's following someone on twitter who's giving out tips not actually betting with someone directly on twitter who's let him win £500 who's hoping he'll eventually scam him.

FraidyCat · 08/01/2014 23:14

I don't know if this is a variation on a classic scam. The classic version of a tipster scam runs like this:-

Someone says pay for my service, I will tell you how to bet. Skeptical recipient doesn't pay, gets free first tip, doesn't bet, but notes that the tip turns out to be correct. The above happens a few more times, more correct tips are sent. Eventually the skeptic is convinced and signs up.
In actuality the tipster has no skill, and the tips are random. What happens is the tipsters sends different tips to different people, then only follows up with people he (though complete luck) happened, with hindsight, to have sent correct tips to.

FraidyCat · 08/01/2014 23:18

To answer the question, YANBU. The probability of him doubling his money is at best 50%, and economics tells us that each extra pound we have is worth less to us than the previous ones, therefore no rational person should risk losing £500 in order to gain £500.

morethanpotatoprints · 08/01/2014 23:19

Tell him he's a dick for gambling and its addictive.
if you have agreed to each have your own money, you can't really dictate how he spends his.
All money is joint here, great for me as a sahm .
We pay bills and if we want something buy it.
No splitting it each month or agreeing an amount per week.
If you want to keep it as you do save up yours for a couple of months, buy yourself something really nice, then show him what you have bought whilst he gambled his.

Writerwannabe83 · 09/01/2014 02:20

My husband is part of this professional gambling phenomenon - so far he has turned £50 into £8,500

Just let him get on with it

Bogeyface · 09/01/2014 02:27

YABU in that it was his £10 to start with.

YANBU to think that £500 in the hand is better than £1000 in the bush! But this is the evil of gambling, it draws you in.

Tbh, I hope he loses tomorrow, because if he wins then he could start down the slippery slope that a good friend of ours ended up on that saw him stealing £50k from his employer and spending 2 years in prison.

Bogeyface · 09/01/2014 02:29

Oooh just had a thought.

Yes the original £10 is his. He can gamble that. But anything he wins is in the pot so to speak. So the family is £490 up and he can re-gamble his £10. Would he go for that?

Writer and what if he lost every penny of that £8.5k to gambling, how would you feel then?

Bogeyface · 09/01/2014 02:38

H would take the £500, and then said "how does he know that the professional gambler isnt getting a kick back from the bookies by getting blokes like her DH to bet on big games? Sounds like Delboy and Uncle Albert in the market to me"

I get what he means.

DontmindifIdo · 09/01/2014 06:45

Bogey face, why does the winnings become family money? Serious question, in the same way that if the op bought posh chocolates with her money, would she automatically have to share or would her DH have a say over their use (eg "oh great, you bought posh chocolates, that saves me buying my mum a birthday gift, we'll give her those.").

Op, you are risk adverse, you see it as a 500 stake not 10, but then would you have got as far as the 500 stage yourself? How many bets has it taken to get to this stage? What was the last stake?

I also don't see how the scam theory works, if he was getting kick backs from the bookies, a) they are risking losing their gaming licences offering dodgy bets, b) they are risking a large number withdrawing at this point (costing them 490), and c) how does the tipster ensure the people taking part only gamble with a specific company to make it worth their while paying him? The tipster is probably genuine, is very good and will probably be plugging books, seminars, or will later charge for tips, that doesn't mean this is a scam, more self advertising.

ZillionChocolate · 09/01/2014 06:57

I agree, the winnings are not family money. If he's willing to spend his winnings on a holiday for you both then that's generous, but unnecessary. This is his money and YABU to tell him how to spend it. If I was him, I'd bet half of it, you've then got £250 or £750, rather than £0 or £1,000.

Writerwannabe83 · 09/01/2014 07:00

bogey - we don't just have the money sitting in an account as we spend good chunks of it as he earns it so at least we know we are benefitting from it. So far we have managed to pay off a huge chunk of our Wedding costs, had a new kitchen fitted and new fitted wardrobes in our main bedroom. We have recently used some of the money to buy all our nursery furniture and baby equipment and next month we will be using some more for a landscape Gardner to come and completely renovate/redesign our back garden.

It took my DH quite some time to build up to this amount of money (possibly about 18 months) as he doesn't gamble with silly amounts. He's had some losses at times to the point where we are groaning, but then he has big wins too. Such as the nature of the gamble I think.

Like I said, we spend the money as we need it, we don't just have it hoarding in an account for him to gamble away. We tend to spend quite a chunk of it at a time and so the balance of his account really drops but then we don't spend anything again for months and months and months whilst he builds it back up again.

He does it with the purpose of us doing things/improvements to the house and so that's how we spend it. It was never with the intention of just seeing how much money he can make and then save it and save it etc.

The way I see it is that of the actual money in the account only £50 of it was actually his - the rest is just numbers on a screen. Even if he did blow the lot (but he won't as like I said, he only makes very small bets and we spend the money as he makes it) I would have to just accept what happened and find peace in the fact that he hasn't actually blown thousands of pounds of money that we had earned.

Elllimam · 09/01/2014 07:40

I still want to know who the tipster is :)

Blueandwhitelover · 09/01/2014 07:53

if someone does find out who the tweeter is can they pm me?

gamerchick · 09/01/2014 07:54

I think we all want to know that

Dahlen · 09/01/2014 08:09

You have to let him do it. It's his spends. He's not choosing to spend family money on gambling.

However, could you persuade him by getting to reply the techniques to other £10s? If he did that 10x and got up to £500 again, he'd be laughing!

Trills · 09/01/2014 08:12

YANBU to ASK, or to try to PERSUADE

YWBU to TELL

Fleta · 09/01/2014 08:48

You won't really lose the £500 because you never had it.

Your OH has surely only spent £10? If so YABU in telling him how to spend it.

If he was pissing £500 of his own money away then it would be different

softlysoftly · 09/01/2014 08:54

YABU you know that and if you are wrong you know you have to swallow your pride and ask who the tipster is don't you?

Enquiring minds need to know!

MimiSunshine · 09/01/2014 11:10

Just let him get on with it. My BF put a £5 bet on a while ago, during the day he was up to £40 potential winnings with the option to cash out, I was telling him to do it, then it was £70, then £100+ and so on. I kept saying cash out, it was enough and we'd be happy with that.
He decided to hold his nerve and it paid off, he got about £300 when the bet finished, he was so happy and chuffed, and I was just glad he hadn't listened to me as I'd never have heard the end of it.

If he'd lost, well it was his £5 and his loss. If you're happy for him to judge which books you buy on your kindle and tell you he thinks that another purple nail polish is a waste when you already have 3 other similar shades, then go ahead and insist he cashes out.

FraidyCat · 09/01/2014 13:23

Someone I know told me how her husband was making money gambling. About a year later, as a result of not undertstanding why he hadn't repaid a debt, she had a close look at his accounts, and told him that he was not only not making money, over a period of three years he had lost the equivalent of an expensive house.

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