Advice needed on dealing with this panicky feeling (DH/job/money related)

[alabasterangel]

I don't know where else to post this, its not about job loss itself but about how I'm coping with it (or not).

We were in the middle of moving house, escaping somewhere with neighbour problems, moving onto much better things. I've had a job crisis of my own which has been going on for months, on the brink repeatedly of loosing my 21 year much loved specialised job but have deflected redundancy repeatedly and am now on an extension till end of August, but is only work p/t and my salary only just covers our mortgage and maybe some of the food. If I so loose my job at the end of August I'll get a pro-rated part time redundancy payout (not much) and loose my company car.

We knew we'd cope, because DH earns so much more. Even moving house, we were so desperate to move that we worked out we could afford it. He's flitted about from job to job and dabbled and travelled and been rather daft over the years, plus both of us had huge losses when previous marriages ended (I left an abusive marriage and settled low to get it over with) and he voluntarily left and signed over the martial home (long story) so we were pretty much starting again at an older age than average for mortgages etc. We had two DC very late in life (who are now 5 and 2) and 4 years ago he got a brilliant job, car, great salary, enough to warrant my part time status and enough again to warrant covering us if I do have to further extension to my work in September.

Then completely unexpected he's been made redundant. Bolt out of the blue yesterday. He'll not get much pay as he's only been there 4 years. He'll loose his car of course, all his benefits, and we are fairly sure I'm going to be out of work as well.

I feel so utterly in panic. Because he's self confessed disorganised with finances I've always done it all, but I earn 25% of what he earns we are never going to be able to make the money stretch. He keeps saying I've got to be positive, but my panic is taking over.

I've not eaten, I feel sick, I'm all over the place. I know he's right and I've got to support him, but I just feel like the 'fight or flight' thing is taking over. My heart is racing. I had to do a work meeting today and during it felt I was going to crack at any point. I feel like I'm not coping with it but at the same time I understand its a disproportionate reaction, to a degree anyway. I just want it sorted, but know that won't happen. I actually did that thing last night where I woke up and thought 'I've just had a really shit dream that DH has lost his job' then realised it wasn't a dream.

Suppose I just need some emotional words of advice, I don't know how to learn how to cope (and I've been through some shit times, and have coped, but I've had enough of shit times)

[alabasterangel]

I think it's the lack of apology which irks me most. I got in the car when he'd got the ticket and if he'd said 'I've been a complete muppet and managed to get a ticket - argh!' then that would be one thing, but it's the 'it wasn't my fault' attitude. He's contesting it he's that adamant (which is pointless, trust me!).

He's being helpful tonight, I admit. He's doing chores that I ask him to do (he says he's rubbish at 'seeing' what needs to be done and just prefers me to tell him) so he has done the school bags, baths, stories, reading, clothes for tomorrow, etc etc but hey, I am still WORKING (or I will be when I'm done writing this!) so thats only fair.

I feel like I am juggling all the balls, including the really important ones such as finance. I know I shouldn't panic about money after he's only been unemployed for a week, but I feel that too - I need him to be earning something and finally doing something long term and sensible with his redundancy instead. He's actually really good at the job he does but it involves nothing to do with money or figures, thankfully. He is a liability, and I'm starting to think that if he won't shape up, then he has to have pocket money instead....

[wyrdyBird]

This is going to sound hard; but if he really cannot comprehend that his spending £14 on trivial things completely nullifies your hour's work, it is not very surprising he is struggling to find work. This is basic, adult stuff.

To walk into a 2 year commitment claiming he cleared it with you first is also worryingly child like. Is there any cooling off period, within which you can cancel the contract? (Does he often claim you have said something you haven't said?)

The parking fine is the kind of trap anyone can fall into, if distracted, but the other stuff is a conscious decision to keep spending money - regardless of the situation, or the importance of the purchase. I can understand your frustration. It isn't petty or irrational at all.

[PenguindreamsofDraco]

Sounds like he's massively in denial. Trouble is, it's lose-lose for you. If he gets a job , well you were fussing for nothing as he predicted. If he doesn't, the guilt will make him unbearable. It's like the economist said about the recession - if he's right and there's a recession, everyone hates him. If he's wrong he gets sacked. I'm sorry, I have no advice. But I would be going utterly batshit, don't let him make out it's you...

[alabasterangel]

Thank you. The issue with 'getting it all out in the open' is that he won't take responsibility for any of it. The parking ticket is clearly 'not his fault' - the council are at fault not him . The water bottle is essential for a charity run he is doing in 2 weeks time. The phone was a free handset, and he says that he's going to be back in work really soon so whats the issue? He needs a reliable phone for contacting and being contacted, accessing his email while out and about, etc etc. As for the coffees while out, I did say 'we're not meant to be spending' and he said 'look, I got paid as normal at the end of last month, and I've got money in my account, so I don't see what the problem is'.....

I've told him he needs to move ALL his redundancy payment into our shared savings account (which only I have the pins etc for) and I will transfer it out monthly as required. He has agreed, but is yet to actually do this...I won't let it drop.

I'm starting to feel like I have three DC, not two

[PenguindreamsofDraco]

You are neither petty, irrational nor selfish. He is being an utter twunt. God knows how you resolve it - he's feeling under siege anyway and will pull up the drawbridge no doubt. But God, I would be going ballistic even if it didn't solve anything.
The getting the kids to keep quiet about something would particularly rile me, more even than the parking fine. The fine, yep annoying but these things do happen. But getting the kids a treat and telling them to keep it from you is more insidious.
I don't have any answers, but I do have sympathy.

[alabasterangel]

Back again. I need to let off some steam.

No news of a job. He worked his last day last week, so has been at home with me for a whole week now and is frankly making me feel murderous. I'm not sure if I'm being petty, irrational, or just plain selfish.

As said earlier he cocked up firstly on an insurance policy which would have left us pretty much okay for a year, albeit tight, so I was already upset about that although I haven't vocalised it to him as I don't see the point really; what would it achieve? It's done now and can't be undone.

But on top of that I have repeatedly said that he must now pull back his spending to as little as is possible to try and eek out his paltry redundancy settlement. I have had to do the same. I have a spreadsheet, a set amount of money each week and when it's gone it's gone. I'm shopping in lidl and home bargains, and have cut back everything. Every single penny is being accounted for. I've told him he has to do the same, but he seems incapable.....

I'm busting my backside doing overtime when I can from home, squeezing in an hour here and there, including the last two weekends where i have done 4 hours a day on both weekend days, sacrificing time with the DC to do so. In order to 'help' me he has taken the DC out, to a place where a zero spend would have been easily achievable (park type place which we have a season ticket for). DD tells me shes not allowed to tell me that DH bought her and DS a fruit shoot and a cake while he had a coffee when they were out. That lot would have been well over 10. He bought himself a new sports water bottle yesterday which was apparantley a 'bargain' at 7. I'd set him up with a PAYG sim and my old handset, but he is infuriated by the 'credit' system and had burnt through two lots of 10 already, so yesterday, claiming he cleared it with me first, he went and got himself a 20 a month contract phone with a 2 year deal.... so even if he walks into a new job tomorrow which comes with a phone (and the type of work he does would) then we now have 20 a month to pay until 2016.

He doesn't comprehend that I might as well not sit here and earn 14 an hour, when he's burning through that 14 taking the DC out for an hour - I might as well not do it!!! He just can't see it at all, and I know if I point it out to him it'll just end in tears; we really don't argue ever but I can see a massive argument brewing here and he can be very stubborn.

Today was the icing on the cake. It's my day off work and I'd asked him to pop me into our local town so I could get a small gift for a party DD is going to on Saturday. I knew I could get some colouring stuff for just a  or two in home bargains so I asked him to drop me there and collect me in 30 minutes. The purpose of dropping me was to avoid the extortionate 2 parking for an hour! So he agreed, and took DS to the library in the meantime to wait for me. He picks me up looking pissed off, and it turns out while he was in the library he got a 40 parking fine for parking in a disabled parking bay which he claims was very unclear and he hadn't noticed (he is not the type to do this deliberately). He was so pissed off he took me to show me the spot on the way home, chuntering on about contesting it. It is CLEARLY a disabled parking space with no painted markings but a sign on a post about 3ft from the car. He just hadn't looked to see it. So I've saved 2 on parking and lost another 38, which will be all the overtime I do this evening gone as well.

Then there is the change of my routine. He's just THERE all the bloody time, parked at the kitchen table, constantly. I know he is networking and job searching and applying and I appreciate it's not instant, but it's all the bloody time - I feel like we're going to murder each other soon. We have a dining room - I have politely suggested in order that I can keep DS and me doing the things we usually do on my days off that maybe he could set up camp in the front room, he could keep all his papers out and not have to clear them away for every meal, he could have his radio on, I could be making noise with DS and not disturb him, etc, but he won't MOVE.

I feel angry, resentful, irritated and prickly. I feel churlish for saying this but I am really really pissed off we've had to cancel our holiday, even more pissed off we've had to pull out of our house move. I'm pissed off that I work my backside off in a career which I have worked at for years, and I am having to count every penny while he buys fucking water bottles.

I don't know what to do about how I feel (and please don't all say 'tell him' - he knows I am pissed off and he probably fully knows why, I don't think having our first huge argument over this would help at all). I am starting to worry that I'll feel stuff which is irreversible if the situation stays like this for long.

[fiorentina]

I'm sorry to hear that. Focus on LinkedIn, networking and hopefully something comes along ASAP.

[Quitelikely]

Hi not sure if you're aware but the council will pay the interest on your mortgage during times of hardship. Have you contacted your mortgage provider to ask what they can do?

Also I'm so sorry he didn't get the post. Stay strong

[alabasterangel]

He didn't get it

[alabasterangel]

Thank you. Your kind words do help. He's done nothing all day except update and tweak his cv and store stuff like contacts and so on from his work laptop. He was doing this till midnight last night and then about 6 hours today too. I've sorted him out a mobile. Practicalities like that I can do, it's how I feel that's shit. I want to sleep! My brain is far too overloaded while I'm awake....

[fiorentina]

I know I felt like that, although adding hormones post baby into the mix I don't know what was what to be honest. Keep eating and being kind to yourself. Cheap activities that are still fun, picnics and walks still help you feel better. A trip to the beach is always good for me as it always makes me feel better for a short while if you aren't too far from the coast.

Being angry is understandable, I was. But long term I realised that wasn't constructive.

Make sure you both network as much as possible just in case your husband doesn't get one of these jobs. Speak to recruiters, previous contacts and you never know what will come up. People were hugely helpful to me.

Try and keep smiling.

[alabasterangel]

Thank you. I'm trying, but I just feel so heavy and horrible inside , I can't even describe it properly. Heavy is the best word. I've lost 7lb in. 6 days. Food feels like it's sticking to my mouth. I'm working today because I have to really. I want to be angry about the insurance but what's the point? I've cancelled everything relating to the house move, cancelled our little holiday ( have yet to tell the kids this) cancelled two day trips planned in the school hols. I've worked so bloody hard for over 20 years, it's soul destroying.

[fiorentina]

I know you feel absolutely desperate and I felt very sorry for you reading this. If it's any consolation in the last 9 months we moved house taking on a much higher mortgage, less than a week later my DH was made redundant, 2 weeks after I had a baby and 2 months later I was made redundant as the main breadwinner whilst on maternity leave. It was really really stressful. However despite my husband not having a new job I did imediately start networking etc, with a small baby in tow this wasn't ideal but managed to get a new job and although I'm back full time with a commute which is far from ideal, we are now fine. We did have some savings but I just wanted to say things can go from looking awfully bleak to ok again in a short period. I have found it very stressful but try and focus on positives as much as you can and enjoy the free things in life as much as possible.

Support each other as much as you can. Use resources such as LinkedIn to look for work, it really can help. Best of luck.

[alabasterangel]

I just keep churning these facts.....

Household bills (cost to run the house, and feed us on a very minimal budget including all bills which are regularly reviewed and cut back to most economical) - £1,800. Add in saving anything at all for Xmas, contingencies, birthday cards or gifts for anyone outside immediate us, emergencies, is more.

I earn about £800.

That's £1,000 short. Whatever way you look at it, even on the most basic living, we are £1,000 short. We live in a small terraced house, but our mortgage is less than moderate because DH had to start again at 45 as did I. Even adding in £300 JSA we are still £700 short, and that is counting every single sodding penny.

I can earn about £200 more with OT, which I have been maxing out. I'm on a secondment, it ends in August. Then that's that too!

Loosing his job does equal loss of happiness to me, because it does equal having to be unhappy! We've spent all this week with me working the most I can and otherwise doing chores and he's spending every minute job hunting and CV updating and phoning contacts. It's been a miserable week, and I can't see it being any different until he gets employment.

I had nothing. I left a horrible nasty marriage and had nothing. I was glad I left, every single day, seriously! But nothing was shit too, and I worked (and do work) bloody hard to be able to not have to stay wake at night worrying about paying the council tax et al. Now I'm doing exactly that.

I am a worrier, yes, and in my marriage I worried about worst case and it did indeed come true. So maybe not without conviction?! I don't know. I just want to feel a little peace,internally, and it feels like that's a long way off?

[grumpasaur]

Aww Op this whole situation sounds rubbish.

It sounds to me like you are catastrophising- and my gentle suggestion would be that because you were vulnerable in an abusive relationship before, you still don't really believe that the safety you have built up around yourself is strong enough to prevent you from going back 'there'. It sounds like you will be able to make the figures work, just, and that you do understand on a cognitive level that if both of you are given redundancy, you may be skint for six months but you will be able to be back on your feet again reasonably quickly.

So my suggestion is to spend a bit of time exploring your anxiety? What does the fear of losing the house mean for you? Is there a part of you which feels that you have only narrowly escaped, and worry that a job loss equals a loss of the happiness, safety, and emotional security?

I only ask because this is where my anxiety comes in. I have finally found a lovely, wonderful man; we are married and now have (rent) out perfect flat and we both (finally) have jobs we love... Any threat to me job (and there are many as I work at a charity!!) throws me into an anxious mess... Because somehow, I worry that if I lose my job, I will lose everything else around me. Which I won't.

[alabasterangel]

Back again.

He's had the interview. He said it went okay but I am a bit wobbled by the fact that they were indeed interviewing others too, so he's not the only one in the running. More painfully, we have several days if not weeks to find out. They said given his circumstances if it was negative they would try to tell him late next week so he knew where he stood. If it was positive they would have to wait until all other candidates were done, and thats end of next week earliest if not into the week after...... bloody torture.

Plus, and this is a gem, we thought he had a small insurance policy against earnings. I love and trust DH but as mentioned before he is simpy SHITE with household admin and money, hence me doing it. Every single thing comes from my account and he standing order puts money in. The only exception is his insurances. They are HIS and he wanted them, so he pays them. 2 years ago we went to my finance advisor to get him sorted (my instigation, my idea, my insistence as I have a small income protection for exactly this reason). I was dealing with a wailling DS at the time, but was called over to see what they had decided. Life assurance, and an income protection worth 500 a month, for a year, with a 60 day lead in time. I noted the premium, we came home, I checked online comparably then told him to go ahead. He swears he did. He didn't. He's not lying, he's just fecking random with money. He thought the payment he makes for life assurance was both, but it's not; I think it just got sidelined. So basically we have zero insurance. There is no point in me ranting and raving about it, it's done. But I am livid, and all in all I am back to not dealing with this all very well.

I've lost 7lb since Monday. I feel constantly sick. I'm doing overtime anytime I can (luckily I can do this from home for the next month) so I've done 2 hours every night this week. We've not spoken about anything other than this since Monday, and I worry about the DC. I was under a massive amount of stress when my marriage broke down in 2008, and that was after years of stress beforehand from the twat concerned. Then since then DH has been made redundant again, money worries, loads of stress with a very nasty neighbour, a year of stress with my job being under risk (still very much is) and now this. I just want normaility. I want to wonder what to have for supper and think about how bored I can get.... I am so fed up of wave after wave of rubbish being thrown inwards at us. I know it could be worse, I know, but I am still fed up. I don't want to wake up in the night, my thoughts kick in and my stomach turn over.

I feel so horrible that we are under this stress and hope and wish and wish and wish that we get a positive outcome from this interview today but I am feeling so jaded.

[alabasterangel]

I will update either way with the outcome of tomorrow, promise.

[matildasquared]

I can't add to what's been said.

This:
I actually did that thing last night where I woke up and thought 'I've just had a really shit dream that DH has lost his job' then realised it wasn't a dream.
broke my heart. But now look at you!

You two are being so positive and pro-active. And such great advice here. Well done!

I wish you well. I hope you'll come back and give updates!

[Eelseelseels]

Fingers and toes crossed for you both.

[alabasterangel]

Thank you again Jamie, so much appreciated. I must be doing something wrong on that site because it tells me the only thing we would get is a council tax discount!!! That cannot be right?! I need to do it again, with a clearer head. I might PM you some figures Jamie, if you can help me make more sense of things.

eels, yes we did discuss that. If he took a lower paid job then it would be a real short term measure to try and get a better job in the same company as the company overall is a good place to work and he wanted to stay there till retirement if at all possible.

One good bit of news, he's got an informal interview for an internal job on Friday. It hasn't been advertised, he was given a tip-off, so he knocked on the door and asked, and had a quick chat with the guy concerned and he said he needs to come back on Friday for a proper discussion. In the meantime a mutual colleague of both has rung the recruiting person and sung my H's praises and has said it was a very positive discussion. It would be a fantastic job, so I can only hope and hope and hope. He's got some prep to do in the meantime..... I daren't get too optimistic.

[Jamie1981]

I should perhaps clarify that when i said "first one, not second one" i was referring solely to husbands, not abusive husbands. My current one is a big softie!

[Eelseelseels]

Sounds like brilliant advice you've had here OP from other posters. One word of advice in case your husband has a pension with his company - if he is on a final salary scheme, think hard before him taking a lower paid job in the same company, as if he has paid a fair bit into the scheme ans is on a good salary at the moment, it could be a long term bad move to change to a lower paid job with the same company. I've known this happen before.

[Jamie1981]

Sounds like you've already shut some of those internal voices up, so well done :-).

When i was on the downward slope, i found it very useful to use that turn2us site to give an answer on what the money would like if different scenarios happened. It was that that convinced me to leave my abusive husband (first one, not current one) because i realised i could afford to.

The reality is that there is a safety net and if you have kids that safety net is actually quite soft to land on!

To answer your question about JSA, yes, you very probably will qualify.

There are two types of JSA - contribution based and income based. Although there are qualifying periods (i.e., you must have paid into the system by having a job and paying taxes), from what you've said you would qualify for contribution based. This means an automatic £74 (thereabouts) a week for six months. After that six months, it gets more complicated as your JSA will be considered "income based". They look at your capital (savings) and household income before looking at expenditure and in most cases, if one person is working the other person won't get it.

HOWEVER - you'd still qualify for tax credits, etc. In fact, i did the numbers based on what you've said about your family and if you both lost your jobs and didn't have insurance, then you would get about £1500 a month in direct benefits. The caveat is that this number is the number if you made a claim on the first day of the tax year, and would fluctuate depending on what you've already earned.

But the really good news is that in that worst case scenario you'd also be able to make a claim for SMI (support for mortgage interest). This would pay the interest on your mortgage, up to 3.63% APR (i am told most lenders will accept this even if your APR is normally higher), for up to two years while you get back on your feet. It's important t make this claim as soon as possible though, because it takes 13 weeks to process. To qualify, you'd need to be receiving Income Based JSA or Income Support.

Jamie.

[alabasterangel]

jamie - you are my hero with your posts. You all are, but Jamie you have helped so much. Thank you.