To restrict my husband from low paid job?

[toja555]

My 16-month old DS is currently staying with my husband at home because husband is unemployed. I earn 30k a year and this is our all family budget. My husband is an accountant, but has been unemployed for 8 months and is desperate to take any work even paid 12k a year (min rate 5.95). I checked government website based on this assumption (42k a year) and average cost of childcare £200/week and it came out that the child/working tax credits we will get is roughly £40 a month? With this presumption I want him to stay at home instead of choosing a low paid job because it is just does not pay off!

My question is, am I right in my presumptions? Because my DH is very upset with me restricting him from work.

AspasiaManos, thank you for understanding.

Yes I would be happy doing it and I know my husband would be happy with me doing it.
He already is in such a sitaution in a lot of ways but he understands the circumstances which have led us to this situation and he doesn't grudge any of it.
Oh and he is step father to my dc's as well which to some may seem more of a burden.
He does it because he loves and respects me as I love and respect him and we want each other to be happy.
Not much of a marriage if one of you is stopping the other doing what they feel they have to do for their own mental health or whatever the reasons are.

You are so determained (OP) that you are right it doesn't matter what anyone says to you. You are going on about what a burden and what a hardship it is to you what about your husband? What about a man who wants to work feels he is better off taking a low paid job and getting off his ass and doing something when he feels that will make him happy.
YABU many have said it but nthing will change your mind on this you think you are the higher earner just now so that gives you the power to call the shots.
Well good luck to you it's not the way my marriage works and neither would I want it to it's both degrading and patronising believe me i've been there.

Self-esteem largely derives from making a positive, useful contribution to your own life and that of those close to you.

but have you sat down and worked out that absolute figures on it. I presume he bought a regular ticket to work today - which presumably would be more expensive than buying a travelcard type thing.

It sounds like you've put yourself in a really bad positition financially with buying this house now at whatever price you bought it for if a slight loss (if that's indeed what it works out) is going to be the difference between keeping your home and bankruptcy!

OK OK I will give him money to go to work, should I announce myself bankrupt now or after I fall into arrears? I am sure it will make DH extremely happy.

oh and if he's an accountant (or training to be one) get him to sit down and work out all the family finances in detail, including what he would earn/spend and where any money could be saved so you can all be happy

I think you're possibly being a little over dramatic with the bankruptcy/house thing - honestly I do ( and that's without looking at your finances in detail admittedly - but there's no way if we were renting at the moment we could even consider getting a mortgage - let alone actually get one ) ).

Or is the issue really that you don't want your DS in childcare???

If you have just bought a flat in london on your wage alone you must be earning a packet so I dont understand how losing out on a tenner or so a week over all will bankrupt you

Just seen you are on 30k. You must have had a humungous deposit so I cant see how you can be that broke now unless you put thousands and thousands and thousands down therefore must surely be well off to begin with.

alwayslookingforanswers
I came to this topic trying to find out how much CTC I can be entitled ? this could cover that negative difference.
Before we find out about exact working times it is difficult to judge travelling cost for more than one day.

Well the house I mentioned before was worth because it does not make difference to our monthly rent/mortgage outgoings and the interest rate was really good to take, so why not.
I have some spare money which we planned for a little refurbishment and we need to remain with some savings in case of the worst. Other then that, our monthly income is strictly calculated so that we can manage but basically nothing remains. We can manage until DH gets a job, otherwise we will spend our remaining savings and end up in a very bad position where is nowhere to take money from.

Nah, I dont get how you can get what must be a fair sized mortgage on just 30k unless you had thousands and thousands of savings.

I think the OP has said that all her money goes on household bills which is why she was subtracting the childcare costs from her dh's wage.

In what way would it improve her dh's self-esteem if he drove his family to bankruptcy and put his family on the street?

I have no way of knowing how bad toja's financial situation is but it could be as bad as she has portrayed it. So why is everyone jumping on her?

I think all this talk of bankruptcy is a tad overdramatic if you have savings and therefore (presumably) no existing debt. Obviously you don't want to eat into those savings if you can help it, which is fine but talking about potential bankruptcy and the like if your income takes a little dip for a while is a bit over the top.

Anyway, as lots of people have said, it should be perfectly possible for your DH to work without it being necessary to suffer a drop in your income as long as you work together on finding something more appropriate if this particular job is not and working out how best to arrange things.

toja555, could you and your DH agree that

1. He can take this job for a few months to see how things work out and then review the situation once you have worked out your tax credits and childcare costs.
2. He finds out if there are different shifts that he can work to minimise your childcare costs
3. In the meantime he agrees to carry on looking for better paid work nearer to where you live

I doubt you will be bankrupt in a few months and then hopefully everything will be a bit clearer.

hercules1
I sold my personal property abroad and made a good deposit which then allowed me to get a good mortgage which is around the same as the flat rent ? but this is off-topic.

Alwayslookingforanswers
I actually want my DS in childcare because he is a very active boy and I think he is a little bored with daddy.
I might be a little bit overdramatic as I had a lot of stress recently due to house purchase but I really, really honestly would not put my other half under more financial pressure. I probably feel not appreciated for all the effort I made for us to have a home and for DH to be able to study. I go home after work every day, cook a meal and take care of DS while DH studies. I take care of DS almost all saturdays while DS goes to study into library. I have no time to relax, my head is always full of thoughts how to save on this, how to save on that. Now I am planning to do some refurbishment in new home myself, just because we cannot afford hiring people. Every extra expenses in the family hits my head hard, and there is always some unexpected expenses. DH?s far from depressed ? he is more concerned how to raise money for his trip to his home country (he has not been there for 5 years due to illegality). He wants to raise 2k to go there next year (because I cannot afford give to him) and it seems that he is ready to go for any sort of job (he is ready to do five jobs if he could), thinking that he will save for his trip. I don?t see myself benefiting from his job anyway? I just don?t want to end up paying extra money. Yes, I am overdramatic. I am tired. I thought I have been good and supportive wife but it turns out I am the worst animal in this planet.

um i'm in a very similar situation - my DH was a trainee accountant, now unemployed since february. Though I'm not paid that much, CTC makes up quite a bit of difference.

If he took a badly paid job, my mum would have to look after the kids, (though for free) but there would be many additional costs and inconveniences (travel etc) and I also think I would advise him not to take anything beneath £20k unless there was definite career progression.

YANBU, really, and i think once in such a job he'd quickly regret it, if he spent a long time in a job not linked to accountancy.

there are lots of ways of adding value to a family apart from paid work, but i think that can be harder for men to accept (especailly if they are very traditional-minded)

And again it's back to the
"I'll give him money to go to work"
and in all honesty you wonder why he wants to take a low paid job?
He probably wants to feel he can buy a newspaper or new pants without having to justify every penny. He is probably buying himself a little financial independance by taking this job you sound very resentful of being the high wage earner this is not all about you this is also about the man you married and presumably love and this obviously matters very much to him.

When I first started reading I did honestly give you OP the benefit of the doubt thinking it was a hysterical panic reaction to trying to work out the finances but the more this has gone on I really feel sorry for your husband in this situation.
You have absolutely no concern about how any of this makes him feel have you even tried asking him why he feels he needs to do this?

I still dont get how someone earning 30K could buy a house in London, unless as hercules said you had a few hundred thousand in savings. As you say you still have some savings left bamkruptcy is an exageration unless you have completely overstretched yourself to get this house , which is as much your fault as your husbands

Sorry you have answered that .

I totally get the stress, being in a financilly tight sitution is very hard, dp and I have spent a year having to watch every penny and watching our savings dwindle. I do get the feeling from your posts that you and your husband are not working through this together and you do need to pull together. Tbh if my partner spoke about his money and how he paid for things all the time I would be out of the door.

Going back to your op , your say your dh is an accountant but actually his relevant experience, even when abroad, sounds fairly limited. I suspect it is this holding the agencies back as much as fresh graduate competition. If he is to work as one longer term after qualifying he really needs to work in some relevant capacity, not necessarily an Accounts dept though, businesses have finance departments, decision support etc which require similar skills. Even via a temp data input job he coudl maked contacts to something more permanent. Certainly when dh did his CIMA (and I know things have changed a bit since) you did need signed off periods of work to qualify on top of passing the exams.

However if he really just wants to work shorter term while studying independently then you may have to accept that it only breaks even financially but it will look better on his cv than having a gap. It does seem madness to travel so far out of London to a lowly paid job, I suspect he could find something more local, maybe within the same company, if he and you are prepared for him to earn such a wage. Entitledto.co.uk is an alternative way of checking your benefit entitlements but you may not know until you apply and any remaining savings could well be taken into account.

god op, if either of my boys end up with a wife like you I'll shoother cry

LIZS, thanks for your constructive advice and the link, I will check it. Did your DH had experience before he got CIMA?
He does have limited experience. After trying only for accounts jobs, then he tried for any sort of administration work with no success as well. The mail sorter job was the first he got offered, and he felt that if he does not take it, he might get no other offers for ages. The reason to take it was that he expects evening shifts (no childcare costs) and maybe to apply for better internal position in the future. Unfortunately the job itself is very far and at the moment we are very vulnerable (we have not settled in our new home and don?t know how much money we will remain with after we settle).

Ssd, can you tell me what exactly bad have I done?

IOnlyReadtheDailyMailinCa...
You are right, we have not worked this thing together because DH said he is taking this job and he thinks we will get plenty of CTC to cover childcare costs. At this point I could not argue because I don?t know, the only thing I did was checking HMRC and seeing that it is not much, so I came to the question whether it is worth taking up the job. My DH is now out to his new job, and I am tired to be blamed here.

dh was on a graduate scheme at an insurance company which enabled him to move through various departments on secondments to gain the appropriate experience. He also got paid study leave and refresher courses. This was getting on for 20 years ago now though and times have changed and places on such schemes mroe limited. However just checked and he says even now that without the evidenced relevant experience you can only be a Passed Finalist rather than a qualified CIMA accountant so passing the exams in themselves won't necessarily be enough to give him the competitive edge for a job. Your dh really does need to keep looking for an opening in a financial field if this is to be a career.