Male pride and money vs marriage....

[goldgirl41]

Hi Mumsnet, I hope you can help me.

My husband is self employed and we have three children aged between 6 and 10.

I have been struggling financially to balance the books for the last four years, from the time I stopped work to look after my youngest.

I'm trying to find out a rough figure of what a family needs to earn to get by, with an average house, mortgage, one car etc. I believe a family of five cannot survive on £30,000 or less p/a, which is what we've been doing for the last 5 years. Last year we drew £15,000 from his business. There is more in the business account but he wants to keep it in there.

I now need to explain this to my husband and let him see that this is suffocating our marriage. He is intensely proud and driven, and I am getting to the point where I feel that I am taking all the financial strain in order for him to live his dream. I tried to work full time last year (hen we completely ran out of money) but having no childcare or personal support from him made this impossible and I had to stop. He still expected me to work for his business as well as look after the children and work full-time.

The reason I am posting this is to get some "evidence" to go to with him - I have tried spreadsheets galore which show we spend £40,000 p/a or more, and his response is just that we need to reduce our outgoings, and that I need to get new business in for him. At present his business has no work in the pipeline. Every time I try to talk to him about our situation I am accused of being negative and/or unsupportive.

As you can probably tell there are other things going on in our relationship apart from money, and the situation is eroding our relationship. I am about to start a part time job for mornings only but am sure he won't help with the childcare for the first week before the children go back to school.

Any advice would be very welcome, thank you in advance.

I don't think you can honestly say a definitive amount of how much a family needs to earn to live on as it's such an enormous difference depending on your circumstances, standards of living, area you live etc. As an example, our household income is around £20,000 pa (self, husband and 1 child) and we feel happy we could afford another baby when we feel ready. A friend of mine has household income of around £40,000 and doesn't feel they can afford another child. Our main difference is around 'treats' and how often we can go out and make unplanned purchases, although their mortgage is around £200 a month more than ours.

In all honesty, your situation isn't really about how much money you both have coming in. I'd be making him deal with the household finances, as he doesn't seem to understand when you explain it to him. Tell him that you can't seem to balance the money any more so he needs to do it, tell him how much money you need each week for food shopping, then everything else is his responsibility. He will soon realise that something has got to change!

My DH is also SE and it is difficult to budget with peaks and troughs of income. Last year his decorating business had a net profit of less than 10000. This is why I have to work 25 hours pw we only have one DS and we pay maintenance to DSS. I is difficult but are you claiming all the tax credits you are entitled to if you are on a low income you may be entilted t free school meals and prescriptions etc. Make sure you are claiming everything incl HB and CT benefits?
What is the business?

Hi and thanks for your responses. He's a graphic designer...

We have claimed CTC but due to my full time salary last year of £25k this has been cut back. Im just about to send in the CTC renewal with an estimated £25k for next year = my £10k part time job and his £15k one.

we get DLA for my son also, but I will find out about meals etc, thanks for that.

Tax credits are normally paid on last years income but if you suffer a big drop you can have a reassessment based on this year. Try calling them