i know i have been unreasonable, but so has he, come and help me sort out this mess

[NewspiritsFromOldghosts]

I have opened partners credit card statement this morning, that is the bit where i think i am being unreasonable.
here explains why i've opened it though.

Basically his statement shows he has not made a payment on his card for three months. He told me the balance was fairly low, less than £500. It's actually more than double that.
And he is still insisting that we get a foreign holiday booked this week for half term.
He has saved £500 from a tax rebate he got last month. The holiday would cost about £900 plus spending money. He has said he is taking a further £500 from his wages this month to pay for his spending money and expects me to do the same.

I am so angry that he has lied about the card and is being irresponsible enough not to agree to delay the holiday.
He is just about to lose his job, (his fault) we are in a recession and christmas is on the horizon.

I am so sick and tired of his teenager attitude to money.
We both earn a really good wage yet he lives month to month because he wastes all his spare cash.
His card payment is only £37 if he wanted to just pay the minimum. (it's a low interest card at the moment).
He spent more than £60 this weekend on himself on drinks and food etc.

This has been a recurrent theme for the whole time we have lived together. (4 yrs now)
I pay the bills and worry about them, he spends his cash and goes absolutely mental if i point things like this out to him.

For example, last month i came home to find he had put the heating on full blast and was sitting in his shorts.
I have always paid the energy bills, i turned the thermostat down to 19 which is more than warm enough. We are not in the depths of winter yet ffs, he wnet mental, turned it back up again and started spouting off lots of crap about how mean i am and if i don't want to keep our kids warm he will pay and i can fuck off.

He is constantly irrational and selfish, i don't want to have sex with him anymore as i am so pissed off with him all the time. He in turn is pissed off because i won't have sex with him....

I think it is curtains really, but i need to find a way to try one last time to sort this out for the kids really.
If i leave, he will lose the house and probably his dd as well. At the moment we have her most of the time as her mum doesn't cope very well, but this is mostly because i am here. I am the one who chases up her school issues etc, buys clothes, checks homework ad infinitum.

Any practical advice will be gratefully received.

I agree the mortgage payments would be a worry, however he has a mortal fear of repossesion so i suspect he would sell before that happened.

His wages would be enough to pay the mortgage and bills if we split, he would have to seriously cut back his social life which would be a good thing.

for you for your new house and partner. That's lovely to hear.

Kiddiz, I am too speaking from experience . We had a lovely holiday this year at their devon site. We took our dog, we stayed in their most basic accomodation, which was LOVELY. We were on a SUN holiday and if i am honest i suspected we were in for a rum time of it. Yes, so, the entertainment was tacksville, but sometimes kids like tack - we stayed for the kiddy disco and then left by 7.30. Our caravan was clean and spacious. We didn't eat on site as the food was expensive and shite, but it was a short drive/walk to the nearest town where we ate most of the time. I do think it depends on where you go, but i will definately be going back next year. I have done the holiday cottage in Cornwall - NOT cheap, we paid £750 off-peak for a week in a lovely two bedroom cottage, it was amazing, fantastic little village - absolutely Feck ALL for children to do. Haven had a free swimming pool and play area for the children, we only stayed on site for a day - we had our own private beach don't ya know. A holiday is what you make of it, i think. We are flat broke, there is NO WAY we could have gone on holiday otherwise, we paid a total of £120 for 6 days, three bedroom caravan which i am sure we could have crammed with eight people if we chose to. We had a lovely time.

I would not have dreamt of doing this type of holiday, but this has really opened my eyes - i'll be rebooking next year even if my DPs business suddenly starts to do well and we are making our first million (i wish).

I wonder with Haven it is very much a case of what park you choose. But i guess my expectations aren't that high.

IF your DH was on call, why on earth was he drinking

no no, he wasn't on call.

He is a contract manager. He runs the contract and it's staff, so has various supervisors and their teams of engineers, handimen etc under his control.

Out of hours, any call outs go through to a helpdesk number who then field the calls to the on duty engineers.
If there was a major incident like a fire or flood, then there would be an escalation procedure which goes from the engineer to the supervisor then to contract manager.
So, he is actually never supposed to be on the on call rosta.

His boss changed the procedure when she started so that all calls went through to her, she now calls him constantly out of hours demanding he go and unblock toilets etc.
What she should be doing is leaving the sytem as it is. The call out engineers are paid to be on call one weekend in 4 each. That way there is always someone compos mentis to deal with anything needed. There are also a rota for the supervisors.
She didn't tell anyone she was changing the procedure and all the clients are up in arms about it because everytime he gets a phonecall it is seen as a major incident escalation and they get charged huge amounts for each call.
She is basically saying that from now on he should be on call 24/7, thats unreasonable to ask of anyone.

Right, OK, OK I get it, the woman sounds like a barrel of laughs. Dozy cow.

But i would just like to draw the jury's and YOUR attention to how you have sprung to your DPs defence here when you thought i was slating him. He sounds like he is completely immature shit bag, he needs to grow up, but YOU BLATANTLY STILL LOVE HIM!!! Do you think he simply has his head in the sand re the money? You see, im a bit of an ostritch myself. I had quite a penchant for horse riding when i was a student, we railed up loads of horsey related debt when i thought id get this fantastic job and pay it all back, well, i got pregnant instead .

You say he plays with the kids, does other things that are a saving grace - are you SURE, it is time to give up on him yet? Sorry, had to say it

No, sorry, i wasn't springing to his defence, just wanted to explain properly.

I get what you mean .
I do love him and in an ideal world things would work out and life would be great.

I feel for him even when he is a twunt as i kind of get why he is like he is. His father was an alchoholic, when they were kids (4 of them) they used to live on next to nothing whilst his dad would spend all of his wages. Lots of stories about how he was mugged on the way home and that's why he didn't have any wages that week for food etc. They had one holiday to cornwall, him and his brother had to hide in the boot of the car when they got there because his dad could only afford to pay for two of the kids out of the four of them. He eventually left and they have not seen him for over 20 yrs.We sometimes get a call from social services or the police but thats it.
I think that is where a lot of his money issues come from.
But at the same time none i deserve to be treated far better. Believe it or not he is alot better than he used to be.
My first post on here was a corker!

I have no idea where the stray none came from!

Yes, you do deserve to be treated better. It sounds like he has had a rough deal in life, but that isn't your fault, and there is only so much dispensation you can give for "history". I think it is time you sat down and had a very serious talk - tell him, this gets sorted or you walk, you don't want to, but you will, for the childrens sake. I suspect you have said to him that you don't want him to make history repeat itself but that he is in danger of doing this.

I don't know about you taking over the money totally, that might be too much of a lack of control for him, but maybe if you insist on everything being joint decisions, following discussions either once a week or once a month depending on how you budget.

A compromise on both parts is needed re the holiday. Give haven a ring - go on, you know you want to!! We stayed at Devon Cliffs and i loved it, and believe me, i am an unbearable snob.

Oh and FWIW - a grand on your visa cards . Imagine my when i discovered once we owed 32!!!!! It was not all his fault, and no, he hadn't told me, i don't think he realised himself tbh, we had multiple cards. The problem was he had to have so much time off to look after me (serious post natal depression) and he was self employed, we were living off visas, using them to pay mortgage - the litter of kittens i had when i found all this out have kittens of their own now! Money worries are awful, beleive me, we are in a shit state and our relationship is battered. TBH, im not sure if we can get through it, so much has been said, but i do know, that if it does get the better of us, it will be the BIGGEST mistake in both of our lives

Oh em, . I'm sorry you are having a crap time of it.

Laughed at the unbearable snob though, that is so me!

TBH it's not just the credit card amount, it's the lying and refusal to just pay it. His credit rating will be wank and that will affect getting a better mortgage deal etc in the future.
I also just don't get how he can spend near a grand a month on nothing.If i wasn't paying all the bills i'd be able to do that as well .

Have you considered relate or anything similar? How have you been working through it so far?

I really wish you all the best and appreciate all your input on this thread. x x

I would be mighty pissed off if my situation were yours, i dont understand the whole my money is mine, yours is yours thing - whats his is mine, whats mine is mine (just kidding) the money is the money - we just don;'t have very much of it. I would be inclined to know exactly what it is that cost him so much, maybe if he had to sit and look at what he had brought, he might stop short and think, christ now i have to pay for this, i didnt really want it hat much.

FWIW, his credit rating will be FINE! Ours is shit now because we have court orders coming out of our ears, but we can't give them what we don't have. He will have to pay in the end, it wont be long before it is handed over to debt collectors and then there is a six year run of wanky credit rating. Make sure the credit cards are not in your name!

How are we working through it - well, in all honestly, we are not. I am on Anti-depressants, im having counselling, and i am having weekly full on panic attacks, ive considered suicide. He just loses his rag so quickly, id never seen him lose his temper before two years ago - now its a common event - we have been together for 16 years . Im not sure we WILL get through it. He has the opportunity to come to counselling with me, he refused. Hes scared, i imagine your DH is too. Im not trying to paint a doom and gloom picture, just telling it how it is. The reason for that - please let your DH read this, I can trace our debt back to a set of wardrobes we brought when we bought this house. It all started with them We always used to say, if we can't afford it we wont have it - but we thought we could afford to pay it back, it just mounted up - i had PND, i got sick, lost my Father, it all mounted up - i leaned on him, we lived on visas, that tipped our finances on the head.

One of two things are going to happen, either, i will get a job (IM LOOKING but iuts not easy) or we are going to have to sell our house, Repossesion is my utmost nightmare, im not sure i could survive it.

I really think you should show this post to your DH - let him see how bad it can get. You don't want this, believe me, you DONT.

I think you have something to work with with your DH, But i don't know about the other stuff - at the end of the day it is only money - its only a house, that will never take the place of the person. But if it is a case of him not respecting you - thats a whole other scenario really isnt it.

Sorry...didn't mean to offend re haven. I'm not a snob but I definately think we must have got a bad site/week. The only thing that made it bearable was the weather.... the thought of being stuck in that cramped, dirty caravan (with so many broken or missing things it would take too long to list them)for a possibly wet and cold October half term doesn't bear thinking about..It wasn't Devon Cliffs though.

em

Panic attacks are shit but as long as you can get good counselling they can be overcome. I used to have them yrs ago. My counsellor was brilliant. He started by going through the physical reasons for a panic attack so that at least i knew what was happening and that went a long long way to helping them stop. We then worked through the psychological aspects.

Have you spoken to someone like CCCS or CAB? You may be able to work out 6 months of token payments to all creditors to let you get back on your feet?

It's awful when they lose their temper so quickly isn't it. You feel like you are walking on eggshells all the time. I know that i irritate my other half quite a lot as i tend to overcompensate now just to keep him from blowing up.

You sound like you are taking positive steps to get through this though. So many people just bury their heads in the sand so i think you are doing fantastically well.

Have you been on the debt free wannabee forum on moneysavingexpert.com?
There are lots of people on there who are going through the same thing. I found it really helpful a couple of years ago when things were really bad. They went through my statement of accounts for me and gave some really great ideas for moneysaving and dealing with creditors etc.

feel free to email me if you ever want a chat off board. h a n _ n a h 3 @ h o t m a i l . c o . u k without the spaces.

Newspirits, sounds to me like you still have a bit of love there for your DH, perhaps there's something worth salvaging and your differences are not completely irreconcilable at the moment. FWIW my dh is completely crap with money too, and I pay all the bills. I have buried my head in the sand about how much he owes.

Sounds like he is being a twunt about a lot of things. Do you think you could trick him into councelling? Perhaps by saying you need to go about your not wanting sex? Would he go if he thought there was a shag in it for him?

NewSpirits, I am torn over your thread. The first bit of me thinks that you should stop acting like his mother and let him mess up, let him spend whatever he wants on whatever he wants as long as he has enough to put into a mutual joint account to cover all costs and that is all costs including holidays, heating, bills, mortgage etc. Why not let him do that? is it really important if he wants to sit in his shorts as long as the bill gets paid???

If he really is in financial dire straits and you have a joint mortgage, please make sure that you protect your part of the house. I am sure others can give you better advice than me on how to do it.

The second bit of me thinks there must be something fundamentally wrong here, something that is much deeper and your other thread shows that. If you are calling your DH a twat, then that tells you all you need to know really. It doesn't sound like there is any love in this relationship from your side or his.

I don't know that I have any advice for you - only you know what you will end up doing. My personal experience was that after three years together, and one child, I found out that my DP had cheated twice. Both were discovered at the same time because the first one went a bit fruit loop when she found out about the second one and went on the rampage. Apparently you do still have some principles when you start sleeping with a man who has a partner and a child!
In the period that he was seeing the second one, I agreed to remortgage our house to the tune of 30,000 to pay off his secret debts. I'll give info on how they were kept secret to anyone who wants to know. I was horrified - obv didn't know about the other woman - but he fobbed me off, promised it was a one off and that he was sorry etc, etc.
So when the affairs came out, I had to sell the house because I couldn't afford the remortgage...
I still loved him though. I hated what he'd done, on all the different levels. I hated the person he'd become, and I craved the person I knew before. However I listened to everyone telling me to leave - knowing why they said it - and left.
I met someone else in a similar position, and built a lovely new relationship - but it wasn't the same and I ended it 6mths later.
I spent the next 4 years single, and so did my ex. He begged and pleaded, I said jump and he said how high, but much as I wanted to I didn't take him back..
I met someone else and after 6 wks found out he had a preg GF - so I immediately ended it. My ex found me at my lowest lowest and we had the mother of all fights. We called each other the worst things you could imagine, screamed, shouted, threw stuff - all completely out of character, just came out at a time when you feel like you're losing everything. At the end of it he picked up my spare house key, and said "I'm taking this, and I'm moving back in. I don't think you're going to stop me - right?" and I didn't.
It hasn't been easy, there were obviously massive trust issues. He had also managed to reaccrue (S? Or is it even a word?!) all 30,000 of the debts. But 4 years on and I'm happier than I've ever been. I trust him totally - but only because he's earned it, and I mean really earned it. We struggle - my wages run the house, and his pay his debts. He's in an IVA, which keeps the wolf from the door, and in 1 yr he will be totally debt free. The first thing we're going to do is get married. We've also had another baby - two things that I never believed I'd have - least of all with him.
Sorry if I've gone on, and I don't want to steal anyone's spotlight, what I'm trying to get accross is that you have to do what is right for you - and close out how it looks to others. Only you truly know what you want to happen.. and whether realistically whether it will happen. And to all those in debt, you're not alone. Get professional help - and there is light at the end of the tunnel. Even if it means selling up and going bankrupt - you learn from it, you move forward and you don't repeat your mistakes.. I have a friend who proper looks down her nose at me in my rented house, with my car booty treasures - but while I'm studying and saving, she's remortgaging to drive a 4x4! Ultimately isn't that better than feeling suicidal? Most importantly, we've somehow managed to raise a bright well adjusted child (because we've always been sensible around her).

Thanks for your post newspirits, i appreciate it, i dont want to hijack your thread though - still think your DH needs a kick up the arse! I'll take a look at the websites though

Kiddiz - don't worry, i am a total snob about things like Haven, never would have paid full price but we went on a Sun holiday, our expectations weren't too high and it was great. We had lovely weather too so not sure how i would have gone on if it were raining, there would be only so much Rory the tiger and his fecking fun crew i would be able to stomach. I have heard that some of the sites can be pretty Dire. I chose Devon Cliffs because it was their flagship site and had just had a huge refit etc. We got lucky

blueskies, i take my hat off to you - I really hope things work out for you and that your partner realises how lucky he is!! I'm sure he does - you often don't realise what you have until you don't have it. Cliched but true.

Money really is the route of all evil isn't it?