DH has moved out

[Passa]

We purchase our house earlier this year. We’ve spent more than we would have liked but we can afford the monthly payments.
However, we underestimated the refurbishment cost, we budgeted £60k but it’s going to be closer to £100k+ : new kitchen, new wardrobes, new beds, new flooring and paint. The house is very dated and needs updating but DH has become increasingly bitter at the cost and placed the blame s on me. He’s had to sell his ISA and employee shares to fund this, and has regularly resorted to calling me names. He stayed in thr spare room for weeks but finally moved out back to his parents.
i don’t know what happens after this - will the house be sold off? We are sitting on a very significant loss if we sell it now.

He doesn't sound very committed .

Do you use emotional manipulation if things don't go your way? Honestly?

Is there any way you can cancel work and get some money back now? Even if it isn't all of the money?

Sounds like it has all run away from him and he is now having the realisation that he is left with no savings and this house is your dream and not his

Another who thinks yes you need to sort the house, he needs to take responsibility (fed up of men saying women were spending like they didn’t!!!), but what about your relationship? That’s the most important thing- relationship first, house and costs second

This is bizarre, and I notice that OP is dodging certain questions 🤔

The fact that he wanted to avoid emotional manipulation as he calls it, and being all over the place as you call it, sounds like there’s been really poor communication and boundaries. You show no concern for your partner, just the house. I would hazard a guess that you’re somewhat a perfectionist and wanted all the best things straight away and DH gave in to you to please you but he has now left as he has had enough. I feel for your husband!

I think you need to be honest with yourself. If you'd taken on this project yourself, you would have had to rein in your spending because you simply wouldn't have had the money. But you didn't. You weren't sensible. You just saw his savings as yours to blow when you got carried away. I'd have left too, I simply couldn't trust you anymore.

Renovations are hard, budgets run over, but spendy people should be spending with their own money. I know you're married and money should be shared, but it doesn't sound like any of it was a joint decision - HE said you were emotionally manipulative and I think you should listen to that. On some level you strong armed him to finance your dreams of an insta-home and that really isn't fair.

You seem more worried about the house than your marriage. Buying beds are not part of doing a house up. You do the building work painting etc first and budget. Why do you need a new bed etc unless your old one has fallen apart. This doesn't make sense. We done up one house and about to do up our second. We don't have the money at the moment so living with it planning and will budget what we can afford. At the moment a working lawnmower is what we saving for. you need to talk to your husband and stop spending. Can you send anything back etc. if it's all spent the money the house is finished and won't sell at a loss. Yes you have to sell it. Your priority is surely sorting out your marriage.

I can only judge the situation from what you have posted here, but it sounds like your decision making and lack of financial forethought have been the main issue.

It's easy to say, with hindsight, that you should have done this or that, but you have to deal with the situation you find yourself in. Which appears to be that DH has reached a point where he can't cope with the spiraling costs you have incurred or trust that you won't incur even more, and has removed himself.

Whether that's a reasonable reaction is another matter, but this is where you are.

What outcome do you want? You sound more concerned about financial loss than the breakdown of your marriage?

Your first move should be to hold your hands up to this, and tell DH you realise you made bad decisions. If he thinks you can't see where you went wrong, then he is not unreasonable in not wanting to sign himself up for a life of paying for stuff you want.

Presumably you knew the budget in advance and yet were not concerned at increasing costs? Many of the items outlined could have waited or you could have gone for cheaper alternatives and upgraded as you could afford. Apologies if I've interpreted your replies incorrectly but you seem to have bulldozed ahead getting your dream home regardless of the cost and ignoring or at least dismissing his concerns.

You need to get a second job, acknowledge your role in what has happened, get support with your spending and budgeting and try and work with him to make things better.

You bought this house around 5 months ago and have already spent £100k in renovations??? 😲

I think this is really getting to the heart of it. If you get him into marriage counseling, your sense of entitlement over his resources is going to have to be addressed.

Also, the “he earns sooo much more” as an excuse for you to sit back, relax and enjoy the flight.
As things stand this morning, what commitments can you make to him to get everything back in track.

Same here, it doesn’t add up. We’ve just spent £100k, massive loft conversion to our bungalow to include 2 en-suites, 2 dressing grooms. Complete reconfiguration downstairs, every ceiling & wall re plastered,fantastic new kitchen, all new heating, electrics, doors and windows & a new drive!

If this is real then I'm feeling some sympathy with him,
You sound strangely emotionless about the whole thing.
And on the one hand are acknowledging he saw you as being emotionally manipulative about the works, yet don't seem to feel any regret or remorse about that. Apologies if you do and it's just not coming through on your posts.

Overspending and over indulgence makes me feel physically sick. I don't know why but that's just how I am, so I would feel similarly to him. And especially if I felt it was my money and I didn't have control over it,

You've also not mentioned if you work and what you're planning to do to try and rectify the situation,

Do you need everything doing at once?! We bought an extremely dated house in 2020 and are still doing it up room by room. That's life, you do things gradually when you have the money, our kitchen was teeny and absolutely dated but it had an oven, cupboards etc so we lived with it for 3 years. We're still living with our second hand FB marketplace IKEA wardrobe now. It's a very millennials thing to buy a house and immediately feel the need to rip out everything and get it perfect right away (and I say that as a 33 year old millennial!)

Hand on heart, hands you manipulated him like this before?

You know that he's the one earning most of the money and let things go out of control, without stopping to see where the money was coming from.

He's obviously feeling very resentful now. At the time he moved to the spare bedroom, did you talk to him? Or were you thinking he'll get over it?

How involved was he in talking to the people going the building works and being aware of the costs?

You mentioned things getting out of control and 40k over budget is indeed significant.

He sounds financially savvy so the best thing you could do is chat to him about getting the house in a state to sell and make as small a loss as possible. Then he can put some of it back into investments.

Whether you can salvage your relationship is another matter but I would be focussing on how you can get the house finished and sold for as little as possible as a priority.

Sounds great, but did you have…a designer?

This sounds frankly horrific.

He should have outright said no to the spend. But he didn't. You should have exercised some self control. But you didn't. It must have been so clearly evident that he did not want to do this by how much he wavered, and it must be really truly shit to see your investments and security blanket gone in the name of new wardrobes and designer fees. What in the name of christ were you getting designers in for?!

You've prioritised having an Instagram house over your marriage. It isn't difficult to understand why he's left.

How is the house not worth more now? Can you afford to pay the mortgage on your own and pay him half the value of the house?

I had a neighbour who in the end had to be told by their advisor to just stop spending because the amount she was spending on the house was never going to be recouped and she was spending like it was going out of fashion. By saying that you got carried away It sounds like your spending was out of control with no realistic idea of how much this was going to cost or where the money was going to come from. With kindness it's difficult for a property you only just bought to need £100k spent just to make it liveable and not realise you didn't have that sort of budget. I'm guessing you either got a massive amount off the asking price if it needed that much spent on it or this was not necessary work. Clearly you're both going to lose a lot of money here but it sounds like he will be losing a lot more including his future financial security from his savings.

So you’ve spent the money (via a designer??) to get all the work done - so now the work is being done, yes?

The.surely it’s a case of holding your nerve, letting the work be done as you have paid for it and then you will have a much improved home at the end of it.

I do think you’ve forced him to a degree. And he’s pissed off that his shares have been sunk into this when they would have grown in value if he hadn’t cashed them in. I suspect that it’s the straw that broke his back and he’s decided the relationship wasn’t working for other reasons. The house situation has opened his eyes.

Otherwise, in a healthy relationship, you’d sit down together, laugh about eating beans on toast surrounded by dust and workmen for six months, and look forward to your lives in a beautiful home you created together.

I can see how it would cost that - if you are doing stuff like roof, damp proof, kitchen and bathroom - add in the decorating and any plastering etc we have currently spent around 80k and another 20 or so to go without a new kitchen. The cost is phenomenal if you can't do stuff yourself.

He is being a baby blaming you though he walked into it as well.

He is feeling vulnerable about it all - I would get together somewhere other than the house and try and talk things through - what are you going to do to repair things - rein in other spending and put back the savings.

We started a new business at the same time and its been hell. We have put a pause on anything further for now till we get more stable and the business starts pulling its weight

We moved into a place, did the roof which needed doing. The kitchen was 45 years old but it worked and we really loathe the notion of ripping things out for the sake of it - so incredibly wasteful environmentally, such a naff thing to do - and redid the kitchen 4 years later when the wiring was condemned. We’ve got loads of savings, but then again our bed is over 15 years old. We don’t need a new bed to go with a new house.

I think building costs vary a lot with location and type of property. We were recently quoted over £220k to do a loft extension of 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms etc. it is a listed building though. We’ll leave it for now as from experience building costs go up by at least 50% during the project.

I have a sneaking suspicion the builders saw her coming and added a hefty Sucker Tax.

I was just about the say something similar 🙈

All of this. I would have walked out, too.

Those shares, were they his retirement fund? Awful.

Then make your commitment for this saving. Tell him you'll forgo new clothes or expensive products and do your fair share of saving