To not bail out husband from his mess

[Ohforcryingoutloud1]

DH is a self employed tradesman and trying really hard but work keeps on being unreliable and income erratic. I can't quite work out whether he's really unlucky or something is going wrong with the way he works. I have pleaded with DH to do something else which will give him a stable, reliable income, even if it's just for a year and then he can return to his normal work. He won't.

We have 2 children under 2.

Before our children arrived I had £20k in savings and no debt. I've always worked full time and have a £30k a year income. Two periods of maternity leave and DH being unable to provide a regular income during both has left me with no savings and £15k in debt.

I've just discovered he has racked up £20k in debt.

Once again this month I'm having to cover the rent and most of the bills because he can't contribute and I want him to pay his loan and credit card rather than default and screw us up altogether.

I'm thinking of asking him to move out, stay with his parents, sort out his finances, come back when he's virtually cleared off his debt. Having him live with me is financially crippling me. I'm paying for everything.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation?

Isn't that benefit fraud?

First you need to request credit reports from experian, equifax and credit call, this will establish your debt levels. It's £2 for a statutory report and that's all you need.
Then sit down together and find out where £55k plus has gone. The plus is your actual earnings and SMP and any income he has had over the last 2 years. He will have records for his tax return, does he have an accountant?
Then your outgoings, what is the situation with child care costs, are you paying more than he earns? Calculate what income you do need to live on. Once you have done this you may see that both of you have been ignoring the lack of income and underestimating the outgoings.
Get debt advice before the situation deteriorates further.
Whether you stay with him or not you both have to take responsibility to do this. Him moving out so that you can claim benefits to bump your income is just burying your head in the sand you need to address it first.
You are not responsible for paying his debt and there are options for repaying or bankruptcy.
Once you've done this you can think more clearly about whether you want to stay with him. Do not take control of his money, do not get him out of his own mess, he has to take responsibility.

He needs to man up. If he is prepared to listen, and look into debt management with you, as well as seeking employment, then he deserves a chance. If he turns a blind eye, and prefers to cry about it, you need to send him packing, where hopefully, he'll come to his senses.
Maybe you can work as a team, but do what is best for you and the children.
Sorry that you are in this situation. 💐

Effectively you are paying for him to have an expensive hobby.
As you both work (theoretically) presumably you are shelling out a massive amount in childcare costs, yet only getting one income from the arrangements.
A family might be able to manage on 30k but in that scenario one parent would be at home, negating the need for (and cost of) external childcare. If the business is also costing then you are worse off still, so I accept that you would be better off without him.
He is totally out of order by refusing to address it and work with you to find a solution.
No its not fair to dump a partner because times are lean. But here he is deliberately perpetuating the situation and won't even discuss it.

hes been lying to u first off-hiding debt until he got caught out

yet he still wont take a different job-says it all doesnt it

he could file for bankruptcy but then he definitely wouldnt be able to run his on business-it wold prob be written off though

'he could file for bankruptcy but then he definitely wouldnt be able to run his on business-it wold prob be written off though'

It would also be very hard to rent privately again.

I would be asking him to leave as love alone does not provide a roof over the children's heads.

I would also do a credit check on myself and make sure there is no nasty surprises lurking around the corner.
My now ex husband left me with an unexpected 15k of joint debt via loans and credit cards that I absolutely had no knowledge off until they were hammering down the door, which tipped my own situation over the edge of the cliff.

Maybe it will do him good to go out into the big wide world and see what his self employed "earnings" buys him in lifestyle without a wife to prop him up.

But as other people have said, this is not just him. Between the 2 of you you've spent £55k. And that's money you just haven't got. So something has gone badly wrong here because you've both been living outside your means. It's not just him being £20k in debt. If you cut your maternity leave short then you had money coming in, so where has the £15k that you've spent gone?

I'd guess the money went on childcare for two under 2s and also on expenses around private renting if they've had to shift a lot.

OP I'm talking from a self employed POV there.

You (both together) need to do a review of his finances for the business. I would say with a accountant would be even better.
Paying goods first is normal. That's why when you are starting you need some cash-flow in the first place.
People not paying is NOT. Yes some people are difficult etc... but being on their backs, threatening them with the small courts etc... is also part of his job. If he has so many issues with not getting paid, then I think he has an issue there.
Also he really needs to see of his prices are actually right, i.e. Is he just covering for the cost of materials or he is paying himself when he is doing quittes to people? Again the accountant will be able to help him getting an idea of whether the business has any chance to be profitable or not.

Re living on your own etc... I can actually see your point.
But the issue here is really whether your DH is ready to face up to his issues (running the business in a way that is making sense or getting a job/running the business in a different way. ORIf he is refusing to see how things really are and if he wants to carry on doing what he pleases and being a cocklodger).
I suspect he is in the first category.

The question is: are yu bhappy to give it a bit more time to give him the chance to turn round, with the help of a professional (I don't believe he will be able to do it on his own).
Or do you want him to sort it out on his own (probably much harder for him) and give it a go again once he is in a more stable financial position?

What Baby said: either he gets a job and works with you on debt reduction, or he's gone.

I'd find it very hard to trust someone who had been so dishonest about anything.

This, along with the little white lies to try and keep himself out of trouble, is what killed my marriage. Yes, you expect feast or famine with self employment, but when it's famine all the time and you're struggling to keep your head above water, then you find that your husband has lied to you about things, it's just too much. I completely lost respect for him. I was his safety blanket. Living with me meant that he didn't have to push as hard for work or for payment. As with another poster, now we're no longer together, he's got a business partner and he's now earning a reasonable amount. He's got his shit together because he doesn't have that buffer. He fully admits this and we're now able to be friends. You have to stop enabling him, because that's what you're doing and what I did.

I don't think it's a vast amount to burn through over two years. £20k of savings doesn't even cover the rent at £1k pcm. OP says that she's spent £35k in total, £20k of savings and £15k debt - that's £24k rent and then just over £5k each year for everything else. That's probably quite frugal. Her DH has then sunk a further vast sum of money into a failing business.

He needs to stop throwing good money after bad. In your shoes OP I would be saying he needs to be SAHP until the children are old enough for school, and then you can both think about whether he returns to self employment and in what parameters (e.g. it doesn't start with outgoings). If he agreed to that then I would probably agree to consolidate all of the debt and take it on as a partnership although I wouldn't be too pleased. If he insists he wants to keep "working" then I would ask him to leave until he has it sorted.

Dear God that's a lot of money to disappear. You need to get to the bottom of it and find out where it is.

I don't think I could forgive the deceit and I'd find the self pity irritating beyond words. He needs to get a paying job. Unless he agrees to fundamental change I'd kick to the curb fast. He's likely to just run up more debt. Also even if he does get a job is he just going to overspend again?

Until you understand where the money is gone you won't know if he's Gods worst business man or just a dick.

You sounds just like my poor SIL, she's now divorced.

Her husband was an amazing man in so many ways but an eternal Peter Pan and really screwed up there finances.

Good luck

If he has a 20k business debt that means that his business has made a 20k loss. He's essentially paid 20k to be self employed.

His business is not sustainable and he has no choice but to get a job. TBH it's pretty difficult for a sole trader to get in 20k of debt in such a short time. He's have to be seriously underquoting or have a lot of people not paying him. Which seems unlikely. My husband is a sole trader in the building trade and although people are hideously slow to pay, they mostly do eventually. I think we've only had to write off about 4K in three years on a turnover of about 120k per year.

Just telling the OP to kick him out isn't the answer, imho.
There are a number of questions she needs to address.
The first is simply, does she love him and is the marriage worth saving? If the answer to this is no, then fine, call it a day. If not, then she need to find more answers.

Where has all the money actually gone? Go through all bank statements, put all spending on broadsheets so you can see exactly what has been spent.
This should show up if the family as a whole has been overspending, how much is going out to cover debt and if there has been any "funny business" like gambling.

Why isn't his business making any money? Is he just crap at it, or is he rubbish at credit control, invoicing or quoting? What does he do to get work in?
My DH is also a tradesman, self-employed for years, other family members are to. He needs to write detailed quotes for every job, no back of the fag packet guess work. Write it all down, how long each operation will take, get the best prices for materials, so he can give accurate quotations and not be caught out by customers saying "but we thought that was included" and leaving him out of pocket.
He needs to be totally upfront about payment terms, invoice regularly and chase non payment. This has always been my job, the polite phone call, the knock on the door invoice in hand.....
We have done more long term projects, many 2-3 months or more, and go for fortnightly payments, on a work done and materials on site basis. Goods are paid for as soon as delivered, large ticket items (kitchens, bathroom suites) customers pay for direct. This limits our risk if they won't pay. Invoices are detailed, showing exactly what is being paid for. This does mean a lot of behind the scenes work , a lot of which I have done, comments practice for most of the tradesmen I know.

This won't be easy, I know. But it has to be done.

Final thought - if he is self employed, are his tax affairs in order? The deadline for self assessment on line is the 31st January. If he is in construction, is he registered for CIS? Or VAT? Fall foul of the rules for these and hmrc take no prisoners.

'If not, then she need to find more answers.'

Why is this all for her to sort out? He's not making any effort here and just racking up debt.

The op has not been clear about what kind of debt he is in. She can't be that oblivious to what's going on.

'She can't be that oblivious to what's going on.'

Sure she can if he's been hiding it from her.

I did this with my ex but it was the beginning of the end. He joined a dating site whilst he was away and that was that really

It is incredibly hard living with someone whose income is volatile but who is utterly wedded to the idea of their own business. My DH is self employed, last couple of years the main business have basically just covered their running costs. ABout £20k has been sunk in to setup costs. I work FT and am the main earner (by a long way) and the instability of his income is probably the main reason we haven't had a second child.

If it's anything like DH, the business also has a knack of taking over your family life in a way that even a busy salaried job doesn't tend to. Morning, noon and night, weekdays and weekends, there's always stuff to be done.

I can easily see how OP could have spent her savings +£15k over the two maternity leaves if their finances are such that they need DH to bring in some money to cover the bills and he's not been, plus she's been on maternity (possibly only getting SMP). If their rent is £1k, by the time you take off tax, NI, low pension contributions OP will be bringing in £1900ish, possibly minus student loans too. It's not hard to see how she'd struggle to make £900 cover all of the remaining bills, food and debt repayments (on her £15k)

'She can't be that oblivious to what's going on.'
Trust me she can!

I had my signature forged over and over, loans taken out in our joint names, house remortgaged twice. The areas my ex excelled in were deception, fraud, manipulation, lying, lies by omission, bullying and theft. He was also self employed but in a job where he had a lot of trust placed in him which he abused. His colleagues had no idea what he was up to and neither did I. The truth only started coming out when the locks were changed at his office, the police arrested him and I found he had debts of 250,000 which he had taken out in our joint names. It's amazing what can be hidden if someone is hell bent on hiding it.

My DF was like this - stayed in a self-employed job where he was basically sitting around doing nothing all day whilst DM worked her arse off to support us all. She left with me eventually, and he never contributed to my upbringing because 'she had the money and I didn't'. Made it really hard to respect him even now and I'd hope your DH could see that you can't pick and choose when you have responsibilities.

I haven't RTFT but I have read talk of "his debt".
When you are married his debt is your debt too. Debtors can come after you equally, to recover money your DH has borrowed.
You will get free advice on how to get through this and debt restructuring at Citzens' Advice
There are also charities which work, for free, towards getting people out of debt and speaking to debtors on their behalf cap.org.uk www.communitymoneyadvice.com/findacentre
(An accountant will charge £250 per hour - a really bad idea IMO).
Relationships need love, honesty, trust, respect, kindness. By hiding a large debt your DH appears to be lacking these.