Husband’s business, baby - do I need to be more resilient?

[NurtureGrow]

Hello,

Im hoping for advice, especially from those whose partners have businesses, or have one themselves.

We have a 15 month old. My husband handed in his notice on his full-time job last summer, it was a 3 month notice period. He left in the autumn to start his business. Around the same time, I was made redundant and never went back after maternity leave. It was too late at that point for him to stay in his job.

The money I got from redundancy would have lasted 8 months. As he hasn’t had income yet from the business, I had to pay all bills and the money is almost gone after 4 months. We will basically run out of money at the end of this month. I’m sure we can sort it out.. hopefully.. he is hoping to get a small amount of investment and I am urgently looking for work. I had hoped to return to work max 4 days a week, but due to our financial situation, may need to do 5.. (I know not everyone can do less days.) I need to find a job at the same salary as before, or higher. I was hoping to do something less stressful.

I agreed he could try the business for 1 year, what I am wondering is, do I need to be more resilient? I feel this time should be for enjoying our baby/family and seeing family. But instead we have this pressure on us. I do try to support him; I proofread, discuss, do what I can. But sometimes I feel down/grumpy. He feels we will be better off financially if this works, as don’t have savings now.

I feel I’m meant to hold space for our baby, for him, and take responsibility of getting a higher salary again myself. I don’t have family to talk to or offer consistent support.. I’d just really like to build our life together, not have pressure for something that may happen in the future.

The question and problem:

YABU - yes, you need to be more resilient, people do this all the time. Focus on supporting him. This is the nature of supporting your partner with a business.

YANBU - it’s understandable you are finding this hard. It’s too much to do at once. It should be put on hold for an until your baby is bigger, so you can better enjoy the present

He has a plan. His plan is for you to do the donkey work of keeping the household going while he fannies around with a full time hobby.

I would say you need to be less resilient. Drop the ropes, say you can't do it.
It's the worst possible time to be doing this ego-trip hobby.

@LittlePetitePsychopath thank you, and yes.. he has been working quickly. The letters of intention are from serious companies, he’s been in the right rooms.

Savings. It was really down to me to earn. The goal posts moved because of my redundancy. I always knew my redundancy money would last 4 months paying all expenses. He expected funding very quickly after starting. He has other options for funding. I think you understand.. also @CatherinedeBourgh investing. I think we need to stick it out longer, but it isn’t easy. Worst is I feel rubbish with his family. We’re in a different country, I’d make much more effort if this wasn’t going on. They don’t know about our financial situation.

Can I just ask, when he gets the funding will he be able to take some of this as a salary or does it all go into the business?

He will allocate an amount as salary each month. About enough to cover half of our costs.

OP, this has the strong whff of covert narcissim.
Leaving his job while you are on mat leave to shoulder the adjustment of a new baby and all finances is so selfish.
Certainly not the actions of a good man.
God help you.

I think you are playing fast and loose with the meaning of resilience. It’s almost a way to trick yourself to ignore your own concerns when you feel worried you are doing something foolish

the real question is are you both being rational, and like PP I think no. As far as I’m aware, you should not be using investments to pay wages, that sounds like something that could lead to horrendous debt?

Then I’d be absolutely fuming with him and would have asked him get another paying job as soon as you found out you were being made redundant.
How did the two of you not clearly discuss the financials and ensure you had savings to cover all the eventualities before he quit work for a business he knew wouldn’t make money for this long?
It’s one thing not having savings and then falling on hard times but actively choosing to quit a job when you have a family and haven’t saved enough to cover it is ridiculous.

The real spanner in the works here was the redundancy. If you had had a job to go back to, then I can see why him potentially starting a business and able to look after the baby at home while you went back to work may have had some merit.

But unfortunately that didn't pan out. You've agreed a period before he needs to get back to work, and are looking for work yourself. Presumably he can take care of the baby, therefore saving on childcare?

Both of your options are true at once...this must be phenomenally hard and frustrating and stressful, and you're allowed to feel that way. It's perfectly normal, and hopefully your DH isn't telling you otherwise. But at the same time, as a team, hopefully you can get through this and out the other side. Resilience isn't swallowing your worries and pretending they don't exist, but acknowledging them and keeping on going anyway.

It doesn't sound like your husband is a shirker, or hugely irresponsible, the redundancy was the kicker. Was it the best timing? No. But you both clearly felt it has potential so keep that in sight.

He left his job when your child was 3 months old with apparently no cash flow plan whatsoever??

Honestly this isn’t about resilience, it’s about making money. You being resilient won’t pay the bills. You both need to find paid work and he can continue to work on his business on the side. Why haven’t you looked for work before now? How did you both get to the point of there will be no money at the end of the month? To be honest this does not sound like two adults who are financially responsible. This funding he is talking about - that’s funding for the business, not to feed his family, correct? This funding solves none of your issues.

He is not a good man to do that while you were so close to giving birth. Suppose there had been a medical problem.
Please tell us it is a real business with a product and not some commission only sales bollocks or Trading Currencies.

Sorry, so many responses. I never said he left his job when our baby was 3 months old. He left at the end of my maternity leave, they were 12 months old.

Will he owe this investment back if his business doesn’t make a profit?

Im concerned for you. He sounds deluded and he’s risking you and your babies lifestyle along with his.

You say the word “resilient” a lot. Is he telling you you’re not resilient? Where’s this coming from?

You can't change the past so it isn't worth beating yourselves up over the timing. It sounds like there is a workable plan for funding and that he won't get it if he's working, so unfortunately you need to find another job ASAP. You may also need a time limit by which, if he hasn't secured funding, he needs to give up and get a job.

I'm not sure about the resilience issue though - he should be supporting you as much as you support him, and when you are both working you should both be parenting/dividing the domestic load equally.

You’ve said a few times that he’s hoping to get investment funding to develop this product and then he can start selling it. Even if he gets some funding, he will presumably need that money for development, not to take as an income. If the product doesn’t need financial investment and he could take the money to live off, he won’t get investment. He’d have to show clearly what he intends to spend that money on.

I don’t wish to be negative but he’s on a hiding to nothing. If you want to start a business you need to have enough money saved to cover your own personal costs until the business is profitable, which can take years.

Resilience won’t pay your bills. He needs paid work now.

Your husband needs to work alongside starting his business. Most people can't afford to ditch the FT job to focus on their start up and neither can he. He needs to work, at least part time, so there's an income. It could tale ages ti gey his business of the ground. It doesn't just happen. He should have take a job as soon as you got made redundant.

I can’t believe he left his job to start a business without a good emergency fund in place. I’d be so
mad about that, OP! My husband has his own business, he had savings set aside before he set up and even had a friend as an investor before he even considered getting going (he also has a business with a lot of upfront costs). I’d just be so mad he hadn’t done this - as you know now, life can throw anything at you!

It was a good 12-18 months before DH was making a decent wage from his business. Like I say, thankfully we had savings. Yes it’s been worth it as it’s very successful now but this is just such poor planning on your partners behalf.

I think this is the point to really take stock of your situation and ask yourself some serious questions.
Are you expecting the business to allow you to be a SAHM eventually? Is that what you would want?
Is this realistically short term pain for long term gain?
Will your DH stick to dropping the idea if at the end of the 12 months it's not returning an agreed level of profit?
This is about both of you, your hopes and expectations, and where you want to be in the future. If there is a reasonable expectation that the business will take off, and you will be both be happy and fulfilled with that long term then stick with it. If it's not realistically feasible, call it a day and both get paid employment.
Only you can say at what point you need to make that call.

Of course YANBU. Circumstances have changed, he should have got a new job months ago, as soon as you got made redundant. He can't be working on a business that makes no income. I don't understand why you're focusing on 'being resilient'. You need income, plain and simple.

What's he doing?

He can't produce without funding

He can't sell without production

He is living in cloud cuckoo land and leaving you to worry.

I can't imagine my husband behaving like this, ever, and me supporting him.
The only advice I'd have would be for you to just live by yourself, with your child.
But you run out of money?
Sorry.

You don't need to be resilient, you need a husband who had actually planned and thought all this through. Why didn't he have any savings before he left his job and started a business? Surely most people know businesses rarely make money at the start?! Even if you hadn't been made redundant then you would have to be earning well to support 3 people. Obviously whats done is done but the chain of events was fairly ridiculous

The way you talk about Resilience and needing to support your partner is the tone you take when starting their business means things are going to be tight for a while but you can get the bills paid and funding the essentials of life but the nice to haves are on hold.
You only have money to the end of the month! He needed to find a job that worked around setting up his business when you got made redundant even if that meant working evenings/nights/ weekends whilst pursuing the business full time in the day.

We all have ideas about what life will look like on 6 months time but you have to adjust to the now and prioritise the roof over your head and food on the table. My mum was planning on taking a year off when I was born, interest rates went up but she went back to work when I was 12 weeks old. They couldn't afford childcare so my dad worked days and my mum worked evenings. No they didn't see much of each other but bills were paid and we were all fed. I was made redundant at 8 weeks pregnant, we had planned on doing shared leave or reduce his hours to give me more support as I get unwell with post natal depression and I got very unwell in pregnancy. As it happened we couldn't afford for my partner to take unpaid leave and he could only get paid leave if I was working. We have had to accept more help from family and friends we had only just met for support

You both quickly need to get money coming in to pay the bills. Go through all of your expenditure and work out how many hours of work you need to meet those demands and get searching for jobs. Even if you are doing the bulk of the work he should be trying to find 8-16h a week to contribute.

Have you spoken to him about what is going to happen next month when your redundancy money has gone? What is your plan?

I still don’t understand why you didn’t build up savings before he gave his notice in. Seems an absolute no brainer. Even without the redundancy, it’s well known that women returning to work after mat leave are often in a precarious position- either because they themselves want to do part time work or because the business has managed without them and might rethink the role. Why didn’t he wait until he had saved?

I also get the need for him to work full time in the week, but why can’t he do weekend work, in a supermarket or something like that? At the moment it soinds as though you’re both just at home all the time- that’s just not on if you’re about to run out of money.

And even if this investment does come in he’ll only be paying half of the bills (does this include childcare BTW?). So absolutely you should be back in work by now and forget any ideas about part time or short days- those are luxuries for people who aren’t on the breadline. I would be back full time until your partner is earning and you’ve got a buffer at least and only then start thinking about any changes.

I honestly do wonder sometimes where people get these mad ideas and why no one seems to consider basic financial planning part of their life? My gran and grandad would sooner have not slept for a month and taken on 6 extra jobs than end up with no income coming into the house when they had kids.

Yes, I think basically if he doesn’t get investment in the next few months he will stop and get a salaried role again.

This feels way too vague and the whole plan feels poorly thought out by him, from over-optimistic timeframes to lack of contingency funds. My business is good now but took longer than I hoped to make any money and there's no way I could've done it with a small child to provide for. To stake everything on an investor showing up and giving him enough to live off until he turns a profit is more hope than smart business planning. I'd set a hard deadline (not 'next few months') for this funding to materialise or it'll keep being 'next month, just wait' while you work full-time and fund everything and he spirals into depression (if many of the DHs who try similar things on here are anything to go by). This is a terrible time to have made his decision and worrying about being too old soon says more about his mindset/emotions than it being a genuine business reason.

I hope he gets lucky, but that's what he's aiming for really, most businesses take much longer than a year to pay their owners a decent living wage. It's not a matter of you being resilient. It's a matter of one or ideally both of you being real. If the money running out this month hasn't jolted him into earning (and how would an investor know if he was delivering Amazon parcels or working evenings in a bar anyway??), then I fear he's living in fantasy land and his investor promises cannot be relied on.