DH has become totally unsupportive of my career / business

[SparklyGreenKoala]

I have been a SAHM for a while and with my youngest a few years into primary school, I decided to start my a business with a friend.
It’s a business where the bulk of the work will need to be done during the weekends, so I am out most of Saturday and Sunday but this also means I am completely present the other 5 days.

At first, my husband was very supportive but he has become increasingly dismissive and patronising, because the business hasn’t yet turned a profit. It’s only been going for 3.5 years and it will take time to become established and profitable; He thinks it’s a waste of time and that I should do something else, but I love what I do. I get so much satisfaction from my work, I couldn’t imagine doing something else.

However, his main gripe is he doesn’t have the weekends free to himself and he is carrying more of the burden than me. I have tried to ignore this but he just becomes very shouty, accusing me of having a jolly whilst he has to deal a job he hates.

I accept, it’s not going to be easy, and I have arranged a cleaner to come on Friday afternoons, so there is no house work for him to do on Saturday mornings. However, the complaining hasn’t stopped and he has started to involve the wider family.

Am inbeing reasonable in asking him to support me.

Is everyone missing that she is taking a wage AND building an asset?

So she runs her entire life around her husband's work life and makes space for her work at the weekend. So many women have found themselves divorced and economically inactive that I'd be scared of giving up earning capacity.

Let your husband pay for weekend childcare if he wants.

This.

And, when is his turn to have 30 hours alone time a week in the house!

I think there's a question mark around whether she is actually building an asset.

She organised her life around being a sahm. For many families, that makes sense to tag team the work and childcare. To save on expensive childcare costs. But once the kids are in school, then having those family weekends back and both partners sharing and splitting the downtime comes into play.

If you walked away now from the business, what would you have OP? If the answer is nothing then that answers whether she has built an asset or not.

Why is yours moving so slowly then? You'll be retiring before you get to six figures of dividends yearly, especially splitting between 3 (and taking on employees). Get some investors onboard if it's viable.

I suspect that you are a wedding planner?

I was thinking some kind of gardening business. My gardener only works March to September and spends the winter months holidaying whilst his ex girlfriend looks after the dogs.

I've been self-employed for over 20 years now so I get what it's like trying to begin, grow and maintain a business (albeit very small in my case). But my sympathies are with the husband in this case.

YABU. He was supportive at first but it’s been 3.5 years with no profit. He’s basically supporting you to do a hobby.

Your DHs wage is high so this money isn’t needed anyway. You are giving up family time at the weekends and your DH is spending 5 days at work then 2 days alone with DC so not getting any sort of break. You are getting a break Mon-Fri when your DC is in school.

Could you limit it so you do a few hours on one of the days? If it’s seasonal could you work more in the school holidays rather than all weekend?

If there's no profit how is OP able to be paid £12k per year?

I don't think it's vitriol, just objectivity. The more profit in future part... Every single person claims that really.

12k a year as side pocket money is sweet! As a main income which a family is making sacrifices for, it's – brutally speaking – poverty territory. To me absolute earnings matter more than relative hourly earnings, and it seems there's either a ceiling or slow momentum on her absolute earnings.

I'll give you an example. Magic Circle lawyers are actually paid a really low hourly wage if you consider how much they work. A violinist I hired for an event charged more. Why don't more people work as full time musicians, and why is law still considered a lucrative career? Answer is demand. There'll always be demand for the latter but not the former. Even if you're charging £200/hr as a freelance violinist, you won't get 7-8 hrs of work 5 days a week every week. You'll get maybe 4-5 hours of work per month.

Demand for OP's work is highly seasonal – half the year and on weekends only. That means there's little possibility for her to scale and project her profit to weekdays. She can always hire on weekends (so scale geographically rather than across frequency), but most self-employed freelancers (including me) on this thread were self-sufficient (and even outsourcing – on a practical simple level, not in a Wannabe The Apprentice way) much quicker than 3 years, so if she wants to start hiring/outsourcing, I genuinely think she needs to tweak something about her business model (replicability, reducing overheads, targeting a different client avatar, etc)...

That's a fair point about the holidays, although if her dh is doing weekends it's split 5/2. But that to me doesn't make up for all the free time she gets that he doesn't. He's at work during the week and for over half the year does the weekend days by himself. Where the OP is at home during the week days, except during school hols, and then works about 60 days a year. It's disproportionate, I'm sure her dh would love to have that level of free time.

If its a damn good business why isn't she working more? If it has truly got the potential for more profit in the future why isn't she already scaling it up? If it is genuinely limited to only weekends for half the year then there will always be a massive constraint on what she can earn. And if it isn't that limited then the obvious solution to get her husband to take her seriously would be to work more.

She's spent over 3 years "building this asset" which bring in £12,000 a year. It's hardly going to keep the wolf from the door if her husband decides he has had enough of working all week earning the money that does keep the household afloat while taking on the weekend childcare alone.

You have what I call an ego business. Great for your ego but terrible as a contribution to family finances. If genders were reversed everyone would be telling her to leave.

Can you find another, paying, job for the months of Oct - March on week days that suit childcare?
You could keep one or two of those days all year and use the money earnt there to pay for an employee (or childcare if DH wants to join you in business) for one of the weekend days when your business is up and busy.

I think it is not fair that you have no weekend day with DH and kids from Apr - Sept.

Encourage your husband to find a part time job that he enjoys and to gradually increase the time so that he also enjoys his work.

If she’s scared of divorce then this is a very bad idea. She has a business that earns less than a basic PT job, and is setting it up so her husband’s lawyers can say he should have the children every weekend and she can have them during the week

Because profit is what you earn after all business costs including salaries are paid out.

She doesn't say what the household labour division is during the week and holidays. I'd be fairly sure she does all the after school care, holiday care, everything involved with the house. So weekends are what she has left.
I've been in a similiar position. DH only does home admin. Everything else falls to me. His job isn't flexible so he is never available to cover holidays or sickness. My kids are older, but one is disabled, so still needs support. I have a parent with dementia, so I'm needed there too. If I work 9-5, I'd be doing all this in addition. I manage to earn in an ad hoc fashion, but I could see myself in the same place as the OP.

Everyone is telling her it's unfair on her husband.

@SparklyGreenKoala it sounds to me like you’re involved in a MLM scheme. Am I right?

It's a hobby. You are remarkably selfish.

I thought that when she said that it's the kind of business that can "employ other people" and make millions but struggled to think of something seasonal and weekend only that would also fit that descriptor.

Might explain why she's made no profit in 3.5 years though, if she hasn't managed to recruit anyone else.

That's very true because he's demonstrably the main carer at weekends already, but perhaps that's what she wants. She's then free to spend all her weekend time on her hobby and do very little during the week when she has the kids when they're at school anyway.

and that’s her earnings for the entire year. She isn’t working 52 days on top of other employment. Shes got a cleaner instead.

She doesn't say what the household labour division is during the week and holidays. I'd be fairly sure she does all the after school care, holiday care, everything involved with the house. So weekends are what she has left.

She doesn't have small children. Her youngest is at least top of primary school if not secondary. Exactly how much after school and holiday care is necessary? And she clearly doesn't do everything to do with the house as she has a cleaner twice a week and until very recently was expecting DH to do some of this cleaning at weekends.

OP I don't think people arguing on here is helping. How can you make this fairer for your husband because the split isn't fair at the moment.

If there are 3 of you running this business could you take on an employee and then each of you has a weekend off every 3 weeks? Would that help with the balance, it has to really as every 3 weeks he gets either some time to himself or family time or a mixture of the two.

Or how about you do the cleaning and repurpose that money to pay for some support at weekends? An enthusiastic student who could have the children to do something fun for 5 or 6 hours on a Saturday or Sunday so he can do something he wants e.g. go to the golf club/support his local football team or frankly just go to bed and chill. My old neighbour had 4 kids under 5 and she employed a local young woman who was training as a paediatric nurse who did stuff like take the children swimming, off for a picnic in the park or whatever.

I think working out how to balance this up will mean you can hopefully keep the business you love and your marriage.

Sorry don't know why that post was quoted but I can't delete it.

Self-employed business owner here too, I wouldn't have carried on after 3.5 years if there was no profit! That's not a business, that's a hobby.