Fuming as DH has frittered away our holiday fund!

[fifitot]

Things are pretty tight financially but we got a £500 windfall which DH put in his savings to pay outstanding balance on our holiday. Payment now due and find he has spent it all. A large chunk went on an urgent car repair which I knew about but the rest he has spent on some train fares to see family in London and other bits and pieces, some of which were necessary, some not. God knows how he thought he could pay it back in time. He admits he put his head in the sand which is his usual MO as it happens. Even if he'd warned me about it...................

I am so fucking angry but am not 'allowed' to shout and scream because he feels got at and guilty and gets even angrier than me and rather than just 'take it', he retaliates by shouting back. You can imagine the atmosphere at home - all this on the back of a row over sod all at the weekend.

When we got the windfall I asked if we should put it in my account (we don't have a joint one as you might imagine) but he was annoyed I had asked as the money came to him. Well it seems I was justified to be concerned.

What is the best way to approach this now? I have told him to find the money as it will have to be paid and think he is going to ask his parents. The bigger issue is the fact he can't be trusted with money, he deceived me and acted like an idiot.

I have told him I am angry, he knows it as I can hardly speak to him but he is genius as turning it round so I feel bad.

What is the mature response now? Do I just carry on and leave him with the problem. I want to scream at him but know it's pointless.

How do I get him to take responsibility in the future? I would love some advice. He is currently sulking despite him being in the wrong. If he would only turn round and say 'look am sorry, made a mistake and this is how I will stop it happening in the future' I might feel better but no chance of such a mature response.

I don't know what you should do. myself I'd probably say no more about it and see what happens. Since you've pointed out that he had enough cash to fund the repairs and trips from his wages I think some of the other posters are being a little unreasonable. Just be prepared to miss that holiday. My husbands also crap with money but he allows me to control the finances. I keep spending cash in the house for incidentals and keep him away from the plastic. It came down to that or our marriage. I couldnt live with the debt and worry and he didn't want to live without me.

What makes you think that Revolution? I would have resigned myself to missing the holiday. I am actually a very sensible person and quite able to manage without holidays etc. My bugbear is with the way he did this.

shuckleberry - I do control all the finances as that is the way we agreed to manage finances. When this extra money came along I suggested it went in our 'neutral' account for safe keeping. He said that as the cheque was made out to him he would deal with it. Well he dealt with it alright!

Decided to leave the problem with him.

BTW Revolution meant to say.......that's a big assumption about me, just wondered how you got to that conclusion.

Amazing.

Hey this should not be about an OP bashing.
I totally get it Fifitot, l would be furious. The money was gifted for a holiday, Your DH frittered it away. Ok so he paid for a car repair but he should haveas normaltaken it out on card to be paid up, as you would have had to do had it been your car.. Visiting a sick relative again l am sure that it would not have cost £500. He has sabotaged your DC's holiday.
This was a special treat for you all and he has used the money as if it was him own.
He sounds crap with money and l would not be so trusting of him with such a large sum again,
I hope you get away OP

Sorry, it's just the impression I get from your op & subsequent comments. You've used some pretty colourful language to describe how much you are "fuming"; perhaps your dh was scared to own up before now because he suspected this sort of reaction? If he needed to use a large part (presumably the bulk) of the money to pay for necessary expenses (car, visiting sick relatives) and hasn't been able to replace it, it suggests the money simply isn't there for the holiday? Despite this, you want him to replace the money that isn't there with more money borrowed from his parents? In short, you want a holiday you cannot afford, which suggests you simply want this holiday, no matter what. Which in turn suggests (to me at least) that if he'd said from the outset that the holiday was unaffordable, you probably wouldn't have accepted it with the alacrity you claim. This is merely my impression, I could of course be completely wrong.

Cancel the holiday?

Agree with others that he hasnt "frittered" the money away and yes leaving it to the last minute to fess up is bad but I am inclined to agree with Revolutions analysis given the tone of your posts.

I dont think you are being bashed at all but simply being given points of view that should make you wonder if perhaps there is a different angle to this than the one your OP suggests. Presumably thats the whole point isnt it ?

Have you actually read my posts properly?

So all of you who are criticising me would be fine about their OH's using money set aside to pay for a large bill (for a holiday yes but still the balance to be paid on a bill) for other things without telling them?

He should expect me to be fuming - it is irresponsible of him.

We CAN afford the holiday, or we could, because we were given the money wholly for the holiday as a gift! We were never paying for it - read the posts. It wasn't about it being unaffordable, in essence it was being paid for as a treat by someone else. The money was not for car repairs, visits to London and yes some frittering which I haven't gone into but nearly £100 was spent on an away game football match, so not all worthy stuff.

It was never a 'holiday at all costs'. I never planned on going away this year until we were given the money. I repeat 'given'. I suppose I could have said to relatives we wouldn't use the money for a holiday but put it aside for emergencies but that isn't why they gave it - it was a treat for us and the DCs.

In addition, DH should have had enough disposable income from his salary after bills etc to have paid some if not all of it back - he didn't.

I think some of you just like being argumentative. I bet if I had posted as my DH and said 'my wife is angry because I spent the holiday money' you would have sided with me!

We could cancel the holiday but will lose £300.

Doha thanks for showing some understanding. I am amazed at the vitriol. Makes me sound really selfish. I feel gutted that the kids won't have a holiday now - or it seems they won't. He should have thought of them.

Where would the money have come to pay the car repairs, if he hadn't used the holiday fund money?

Used credit card, paid back in installments. That is what I do. £50 pm or so - he has that available but just doesn't budget properly. Or he could save a small amount from his salary for contingencies like I do.

Even if he had just used the money for the car we would still have over half left for the holiday. The London visit - I would have given him the damn money myself if I had known he was dipping into the holiday money.

I knew about the money for the car, the rest of it he didn't tell me. I would have come up with another solution if he had shared the fact that he couldn't fund the relative visit. The football match - well it wasn't necessary.

Dh I have been married for years and just did what our parents did and that was everything joint. We tried when we first got together to have separate money as he earned oodles more than me, but then he would have more disposable income and I would have none and oh I don't know it just seemed a right pickle. Really can't be doing with well that's mine and that's yours. When dh's boss got married him and his new wife had loads of different accounts, his, hers, joint, holiday, children. Jeepers it went on and on. Dh said his was mad and now they have everything joint!

Each to their own, not having a go. Hope you manage to sort something out.

Can't do joint accounts as can't trust him not to overspend. He is hopeless at managing money despite me trying to work with him on it. I pay all bills from my account. He pays a set amount to me each month, the rest of his salary is for him to use. It is the only way it works.

OK

Maybe he should give you extra each month on a permanent basis if he is a poor money manager?
That way he would have less to squander and it might help the family finances.
I'm lucky in that DH & I have a similar parsimonious attitude to money!

Pug headed and pushy? What is your evidence for that? Really I want to know?

I wasn't asking for agreement btw. I was asking for help. I posted earlier that I didn't go on AIBU because I was looking for ideas of how to deal with a situation that was causing me grief. I am amazed at some of the responses.

Essentially my husband has spent joint money that was put aside for something to benefit the whole family on his own stuff, without telling me. And some people think this is acceptable? If he'd been honest about it then we could have sorted something out - but he put his head in the sand. And I am the one being criticised for being annoyed at his approach.

he waits until just before teh payment is due on a holiday that is already booked and £300 deposited before confessing that the money isn't there. It can be damned hard to summon up money instantly if your budgets are tights whereas if you plan things over a number of months it much more manageable.

I would be furious too - he is behaving like he is the child and you are the grown-up. not sure why so many people think this is your fault

Anyway I think earlier advice (and it seems your decision) is the best - just hand it over to him and say "your mess, you clean it up" and walk away. Otherwise he is always going to behave like the teenage son with you being his mother.

Not sure how you resolve it going forward.

I am sorry, but it looks to me that you would not really been able to afford a holiday.

You needed the sudden windfall to pay the balance? How were you planning to pay for your holiday if there were no windfall? Car repair takes priority. Maybe not trainfare to see family. But if you are so poor that a trainticket throw you off balance, you need to both sit down and work out where you are going wrong.
Are you both working?

Quint - the "windfall" was given by grandparents in oreder for them to have a holiday. If the money hadn;t been given (for the express purpose of aking the childrne on holiday) then I gather it would never have been booked.

You have 2 issues here.

The first and most immediate is what you're going to do about the holiday. Leaving it to your husband seems (to me) that he'll just ask the Bank of Mum and Dad for a loan - which he can do, they may agree. However having given you the money in the first place they may not have more to lend, or they may not feel happy to lend it (as it wasn't used for the intended purpose the first time). You may have to accept that if you leave it to him you may end up losing the holiday and your deposit anyway. As the car repair would have been put on credit, could the holiday balance? And then could you agree with him that an extra 100 pounds (plus, for interest) would come from his salary to your account every month until it is cleared? I would never normally advocate getting into more debt (especially on credit cards) but if you can afford the increased payments and stick to an agreed plan it is workable.

The second issue is longer term how you are going to manage budgeting so that this sort of thing doesn't happen again. I would suggest changing your personal savings account into a joint (requiring 2 signatures and no eftpos cards) that you can put additional money per month (from both salaries), plus windfalls, rebates, whatever additional unexpected income you may receive. That way you will always have what you expect to have on hand and can cope jointly with additional bills as you are doing now - or, you can have a joint discussion about how money is spent on things like repairs and renewals. I get the impression if he'd talked about this and discussed it with you from the outset, you wouldn't be as annoyed now.

I don't think you're being unreasonable to be angry. I think you would be being unreasonable if you don't take this as an opportunity to have a joint discussion on family finances and sorting it out.

I'm wondering why his being dyslexic would be an excuse for being bad with money?

Do his parents have a history of bailing him out with money? If so then he never will be taking money management very seriously as it doesn't have very serious consequences if he gets in a mess, someone else picks it up.