to tell my husband he is being "fucking silly"?

[Oakmaiden]

Because I did. And now he is stroppy because I was rude to him. But he was being fucking silly - and actually saying that was a lot milder than what I wanted to say.

Oh. You want context. Really? You can't just all agree with me?

We are overdrawn. Hooray. 3 days after payday. Which is unsurprising since I have been out of work for 3 months, and it is only just starting to pick up now. Dh never checks the accounts, but since I have worked out we have £90 to last until next Friday (not counting bills, which are all covered - this is food and spending money) I thought I had better let him know. In case he decides to buy himself something. So I let him know. I also said that it was not going to be a problem, because we have food in the house and as long as we aren't extravagant then we have money to get enough to last us.

I hate having to discuss money with him, though. Because he always overreacts. So he keeps texting me saying "he feels sick thinking about it" etc. And then the corker "Maybe I should just stop eating".

I bloody hate the way he has to overreact about these things and turn everything into a bloody drama. Maye I should just stop eating. I measn, ffs, that is supposed to be helpful?

I think saying "Don't be fucking silly" was quite mild, actually.

I now await your agreement. I am only posting so you can all vindicate my point of view. Obviously.

Nancy hoe well off are that 90 pound for a week is not ok.
Sometimes I'm think mumsnets another world.
After bills I have just under half that. I survive fine.
Even when I was working I would have less than that after bills.
90 pound is alot of money!

LOL at people getting angry at the OP "drip feeding" because they felt the need to tell her she's living her life wrong and so she had to explain why actually, she thinks her life's OK.

You only needed the extra info because you were so desperate to find something wrong with her life.

OP, if it helps I cleared my overdraft by opening a new bank account and getting our wages paid into it, then transfering a small amount to the overdrawn account every month. In reality, you have the same amount of money but you feel better because you are in control and everything you earn isnt sucked into the black hole of overdraft. Might help your husband's state of mind.

Gotta love Mumsnet.

I think I was fairly clear, in my OP, that it was a temporary situation. The fact some people wanted to read more into it than was there is entirely expected on AIBU, I suppose. I have particularly liked the way Booyaka read a few posts from me, made a few more assumptions, and then argued them as if they were proven fact.

We are not big earners, but we are by no means destitute. We choose to pay school fees (only one child left at prep school - others have now gone to the local excellent comp) because it is more important to us that our children have the right education than that we have money to spend on flash stuff. DH does agree with this in principle, but sometimes finds it hard to see the money disappear from the bank. As it happens both younger children had generous scholarships, so taking into account school lunches, breakfast club and afterschool club, we were only paying about £100 a month more than we would have been if they were out of school and I was working full time and needing childcare.

But anyway - as I said - this is not all that relevant. I was not unreasonable to tell him not to be fucking silly. That is relevant.

Oh - if you want a REAL dripfeed - I say fucking all the time. fucking this, fucking that. Not at school, obviously.

To cover food, petrol, bus fares etc.

I love how people on here make massive assumptions. Really bugs me.

The petrol tank could be full, you don't know they need bus fares, we haven't got the bus in years and the OP said they have enough food.

In theory, it's enough money for the time. In practise, I'd be a little antsy because you never know when a tyre might blow or the washing machine might break down or whatever. I hope I wouldn't deal with it by making a petulant, childish comment that's designed to create stress, but I understand feeling a bit anxious about it.

walks into thread wearing bin lid shield, welding mask, and copper lined waders

In his defense, my Husband has a job that means sometimes we're doing great, and sometimes we need to live on marshmallows and prayer. We've both been very poor in the past and the subject of money makes us both get the hiccups and need a nap.

Sometimes, if my Husband gets a bout of the "I SHOULD BE A PROVIDER!"-isms, and
we're struggling, he can get a bit sulky when I mention financial planning. Happily this is rare, and can generally be cured completely by giving him an axe, sending him off to give a tree what-for and praising his contribution towards lowering the central heating bill.

This thread has gone well and truly bonkers, what business is it of anyone's on here to want the ins and outs of the OPs financial history as for the assumptions on how unhappy and hard done by her family are, and how she should sort herself out and get a job - words fail me.

It's 90 for eight days, the what ifs re washing machine breakdown etc., can wait 8 days if need be. The family have food, shelter and warmth, and a bit of cash this is not a catastrophic disaster.

You did not make it clear the situation was temporary at all.

You said you had been out of work for months and you only had £90 left to last you 8 days. You said that your family lived "hand to mouth". You said that your family were unhappy that you couldn't have expensive holidays or gadgets. You later drip fed that you had some work but very little was coming in and gave the impression you had nothing definite for the future (hopefully teachers will start getting sick soon). None of that gives the slightest impression of it being a temporary state of affairs.

And given that the question was about whether your husband was being "fucking silly" about being anxious about money mentioning that you had a windfall of several thousand pounds coming up seems like a pretty fucking important detail.

Considering you've gone from hand to mouth, out of work with £90 left for a week hoping more work will come in to kids at private school, a huge windfall from shares expected, holidays and a new long term contract just about to start forgive me if I'm a bit .

Then just remind him that he chose to cut his salary by half.

that his "money doesnt matter" wife talked him into.....

And i agree with Booyaka. "We only have £90 left in the over draft, I am not working atm but hope to soon, we live hand to mouth, have no savings" is a pretty dire situation.

"We only have £90 left in the overdraft until ££££ comes in in the next couple of weeks and DH gets paid. The private school fees are covered and I have a long term contract starting at the end of the month" is a temporary blip.

It makes a huge difference to how the situation looks. If the OP had said that this situation was definitely temporary due to money coming in very soon and her starting a new contract then yes, he is being a silly arse. But she didnt, she wrote (deliberately I suspect) to make it look as bad as possible so she could say "Oh typical MN!"

My response to that is "Oh, typical goady fucker"

And I find it interesting that you gave the impression of a boho "stuff doesnt matter" person in your OP, whilst keeping quiet about the school fees!

Mind your copper waders don't overheat from the temp in here!

Oakmaiden - you're not going to win this one, clearly - too many people want to know too much about your life to be able to judge whether your DH's melodramatic "Oh I'll just stop eating then" was a fucking silly thing to say or not. I think it was. But I don't care about the rest of your finances, it was just OTT, melodramatic and martyrish.

From the OP's first post - 90 to last until next Friday, all bills are covered - I have been out of work for 3 months it's starting to pick up now - that says to me it is a temporary situation and indicates quite clearly that more money was due in the coffers next Friday so I really don't understand what you are reading Boyaka or indeed why you are getting so worked up, the OP's situation doesn't have any impact on you personally and she seems quite content and capable of managing it.

emotion I posted above on the same assumption that many others did that if they were almost at their limit three days after pay day, then next month wouldnt be much better so perhaps it was worth planning ahead. Tips for making more money, for paying off an overdraft, for making what they have stretch a bit more, all were mentioned by various posters.

Would they have done that if it was clear that 4 figures would be coming in soon? Of course not. Which is why I think the OP worded her post to deliberately wind people up.

I said in my OP on this thread that I thought that yes, her DH was being an arse to say that. That there are better ways to communicate money worries that being OTT and melodramatic. I then made some suggestions how the OP could help alleviate those worries, but clearly they were not relevant and I wouldnt have posted them had I known that the OP isnt in fact on the bones of her arse as her OP had us believe.

Fair enough Bogeyface, I just took from the op that everything was under control albeit a bit tight until next week when more money would be available.

Well that was a waste of time.

Huge, massive drip feed rendering your OP, quite frankly, a load of bollocks.

Booyaka - Starting with the positive, you have reminded me that since I haven't been sitting at the computer replying to posters as they comment, I have failed to thank the many kind posters who offered helpful suggestions about improving financial situations. So I thank them now.

As for you personally, I do understand how hard you must find it to realise that you made all sorts of assumptions and tried to tear me to shreds over them. I know you are now desperately looking for ways that your misunderstanding is not your fault but something I deliberately caused. Don't worry - I don't expect you to apologise.

Do bear in mind, though, that even if we were on the verge of destitution that the response "I won't eat then" would remain a really stupid way of responding. A poster upthread said it was a comment designed to cause anxiety - I think they may be right. It was certainly unrealistic, martyish and pointless. Fucking silly. And that is what I was posting about. Everything else you have poked you nose into is actually irrelevant to the original question. I didn't mention any of it to start with, because it IS actually irrelevant.

Haha you married him so what does that make you...

In your original post, your money situation sounded pretty miserable and of course people have replied accordingly. We then find out that you've got thousands of pounds coming soon, plus shares and your kids are at private school. This contradicts the original post somewhat. It's ten minutes of my life I won't get back. Waste of time.

OakMaiden, posters can’t give a full personal history. So posters make some reasonable assumptions from what’s in the OP. Like the assumption that in a post about money worries if there is a pretty major piece of information like ££££s about to come in the poster will disclose that. And they won’t ham up their situation as ‘living hand to mouth’ and keeping fingers crossed for more work then say ‘actually, we have a lovely lifestyle and I have a new job coming up’.

As far as ‘tearing to shreds’ goes, given that you’ve now told us that you didn’t actually need any advice or help it seems the only purpose of your original thread was to tear your OH to shreds and justify you being pretty damn nasty to him, so I don’t have a massive amount of sympathy for you. I don’t know why you changed the way your presented yourself so much from your first to your last posts other than you seem to have an overwhelming desire to be in the right.

But it may surprise you to know that there are some people on here (including me) who have been in the situation where we’ve had to ‘give up eating’ for a week because we’re short. Or at least survive on the kids leftovers and a slice of toast a day. Some of us have been in the situation where we’ve had £90 left to last a week and the car’s broken down and we’ve had no idea how our husband is going to get to his job in the middle of nowhere so no idea if we’re going to be able to pay the rent that month or have a roof over our head in the future. So a lot of people will have read your post and the way you presented your situation and had massive amount of sympathy for someone stuck with a partner who wasn’t particularly concerned about a situation they’d caused which was creating a huge amount of worry.

Posting one thing then coming in with a massive contradictory drip feed doesn’t mean you’re right. It means you’ve wasted a lot of people’s time.

I didn't mention any of it to start with, because it IS actually irrelevant.

I cant get over the fact that you think your massive drip feed was irrelevant.

As Booyaka says, there are many posts on MN about people who genuinely are struggling, who are not in a temporary lull between paydays, but are living in a constant state of worry and stress about never quite making ends meet. You post implied a similar situation because you didnt mention the fairly major bit of info about your contract, your shares etc.... so a lot of people felt sorry for your DH at you poo pooing his worries in what seemed like a really bad financial situation. Of course the replies would have been different from those of us who defended him had we known what you later shared.

And I for one would not have bothered wasting my time suggesting ways you could increase your income or prepare for the lean periods. I am sure the other poster who told about how she cleared her overdraft wouldnt have bothered either.

As it is, YANBU for thinking he is being a bit of a bellend for his OTT reaction on the basis of your dripfeed. But you were on the basis of your OP. However, I do still think that your finances sound quite disordered so perhaps you could sit down with him and discuss a way to deal with them so that you dont get all the work (and the blame) of dealing with them, and he doesnt get so stressed.

Ha, what an epic dripfeed. Changes the entire problem, really. £90 to last you eight days when you're flat broke IS a problem. £90 to last you eight days until you get 4 figures come into your bank is NOT a problem. It just means you get no luxuries for a week - hardly an issue.

The just stop eating thing isn't too bad actually. If every had 1 or 2 fast days a week and perhaps just two small meals a day the benefits to the nation would be absolutely massive. Very funny that the thing that costs nothing is the thing as ever that is best for us. I only drink tap water and that's incredibly cheap.

OP, now you remind me of my friend who says she struggles on £5000 spending money a month (not including mortgage or school fees) and constantly wants sympathy about how hard up she is (with big house and 2 kids in private school ...)

I let her talk, but struggle to be sympathetic TBH.

Some people just have no clue how other people (average people) live I guess!

It is so hard not to bite.

But, you see, the only reason you could possibly have thought we were real proper going to starve if we weren't careful type broke is if you assumed this line "I also said that it was not going to be a problem, because we have food in the house and as long as we aren't extravagant then we have money to get enough to last us." was a lie. I know some people have to get by on sums like that - and less - on a regular basis. Which is one of the reasons I felt he was overreacting.

I don't see how I could make that clearer. We don't have much cash, but it is not a problem. we just have to not be extravagant. If you go from the assumption that I MUST be wrong, and dh must be right, and therefore I am lying, then yes, your assumption makes sense. Otherwise, god knows really.

Bogey if people have misunderstood and offered advice then I am certainly not complaining at them. And you are right - our finances are out of control sometimes. They have been since the move to Wales. Which, despite your comment, was not my idea. My husband applied for the job, got the job and then told me that was happening. But my job is to be supportive. So I am.

I think what really has got me was the huge assumption made by Booyaka that I was some sort of lazy arse sitting around not bothering to work because I was happy for the family to struggle with nothing. And I have no idea what she based those assertions on (possibly the fact I think my family are unreasonable to complain about the lack of foreign holidays and ipads?).

I dunno. I actually tried really hard to phrase my op in such a way as to make it clear that the situation was not grave - and that I was being fairly flippant. I find it interesting that most people got it to start with, but then once someone decided I was lying about how difficult our finances were then everyone went along with that. And then when I tried to explain that you had got hold of the wrong end of the stick, of course the accusations of drip feeding start. Because, of course, you have to supply every tiny bit of information that someone on MN might want before you make your original post. Even if you think it is not relevant.

I could do a lot more dripfeeding. It would probably change your view of the situation again. but to be honest, it is none of your business.