How to support your partner when they become self-employed

[Sparklecrystal]

Hi All,

Sorry for a long one..

Hoping for some help or advice, and I guess a little place to vent 😖

My Fiancé was made redundant back in August last year and used his redundancy money to train as an electrician. I'm so proud of him and he has managed to start a new business with his friend who is also an electrician and they are doing well-ish.

(To mention: We started trying for a baby in July last year but haven't had that blessing yet. Tbh it's probably a good idea it hasn't happened yet with everything going on..)

The problem is at the moment my fiance and his buisness partner can't pull more than £1,000 each from the business as a monthly salary as its still fairly new and haven't built up a huge client base yet but do have jobs on all throughout the week. Some jobs are just £60 others can be £300+ depending on the work that needs doing..

I work full time in banking and I am paid comfortably for what I do, just under £1,800 a month. We split rent 50/50 which is £1,100 a month and I pay half the bills, I pay his car loan, my loan and my credit card. I also am paying for all of the food shops/ shopping for us. I'm perfectly happy to do this right now as I know its a struggle for him and I'm sure he would do the same for me. He pays for his car insurance, credit cards.

Here's where I'm a bit upset, this morning he turned to me and said he feels like getting in the car and just running away. He said he'd be better off single financially at this point. I know what he means as our rent is high for just a 2 bedroom flat and he said I need to help him out and try and sell some things we don't need anymore to make a bit of extra money.

Please tell me it gets better 😖 Whenever he needs a bit of money I give him it, whether its £100 or £15 quid, and ive now come to the end of all the savings I had in my help to buy ISA (it wasnt much - only about £800, but thats all gone now..) Should I pay more of his part of the rent to take a bit more of the burden off?

We've always split things 50/50 even when he was working in banking with me and I earned less than him (which now when I think about it was a bit unfair) but I'm more than happy to pay a bit extra. It won't leave me with alot at the end of the month and might be a bit of a struggle, but I'll do anything to not have him worrying like that. It makes me so upset to know he feels like running away would be the best option 😔

Any advice would be appreciated - Pleae tell me it gets better 💖

Maybe you should downsize to more affordable one-bedroom flat, or cheaper area, and put TTC on hold for a couple of years until his business is established and you're in a better position.

I don't think the answer is to throw more of your money his way, but to do things to cut your mutual outgoings.

If he ran away, he would still need to eat and pay his own dam car loan. This man is the financial winner in your relationship and he still bitching!

Listen when an ungrateful entitled twat is telling you exactly who he is. Stop covering his arse because you now know that if you were ever to get pregnant, he would resent having to support the mother of his child.

Urgh!!!!

And it's clearly not true that he'd be better off financially if he were single, when you're paying for his car, food etc etc.

Even before I opened the thread, I knew that my answer would be Don't get pregnant.

This with bells and whistles on

God, he's so bloody ungrateful! Let him drive off. You'd be so much better off financially.

I do not like the sound of this man at all. You're paying more than him and he's still moaning and wanting to run away. Stop too with handing your money over if he needs it/is short. You are not his mother.

Do not bring a child into this particular relationship, knock the ttc completely on the head.

Also if you both have credit-cards and loans, you should review those and make sure you're on the best rates, or look at consolidation, or what's best to pay down faster.

He should probably look at doing some part-time work in the evenings to boost his income. It's good that he's retrained, but running your own business is hard, and not everyone is suited to it. There are sparky PAYE jobs which would give a steady income as an alternative if it doesn't work out.

it's not your responsibility to make up his shortfall.

And yeah, again, stop TTC.

Why is he only charging £60 for a small job.
Dp is self employed he charges nearly double that for call outs. Also in the early days he sub contracted to give himself a stable income until he was established.

Eventually though your Dp should see some impressive returns from his business.

I think you need to have a discussion with him to spell out that he is getting a lot of support from you and is not seeming to appreciate it at all.

Let him go, don’t pay him more to stay.

If he's a qualified electrician he could walk into a job tomorrow with a decent salary and actually pull his weight. This is a choice.

Do they have a business plan in place? What are they doing to drum up new business/attract more clients? When do they envisage their profits will be enough to give them both a decent salary?

If he can't answer any of these questions, then this is a sign that the business is never going to be successful enough.

You aren't, actually, supporting him by providing him with funds/paying his bills. He needs to understand that running your own business is hard - and that they have to find a way to make it sufficiently profitable. If they can't, then he needs to find a job rather than be indulged by you in this way.

(Sorry, that sounds a bit harsh, but you are actually not helping him by acting as his parent in this relationship)

So when you earned less than he did, it was fair to split it 50:50, but now it's his turn you've got to pick up the slack, even though you're already paying for his debts, and you've run through all your savings?

I'm perfectly happy to do this right now as I know its a struggle for him and I'm sure he would do the same for me.

But he literally didn't. You have both credit card debt and a loan of your own, was he helping out with that?

At minimum you need a complete financial reset and I agree with PP that unless age is against you, you need to stop TTC. Work out your actual outgoings and income, think about how you both accrued the debts in the first place (how large are they? The car loan is presumably a significant amount, is this a work vehicle?).

Normally I would say you should both pay in a percentage according to your relative incomes, so you would pay in more than he does. But given the lack of certainty that he would start to pay in more if he had more, I'm not so sure that's wise.

It is hard establishing a new self employed business, but he seems to be blaming being in a relationship and you not selling things and giving all the money to him, which is completely unreasonable. If he wants to leave the relationship, sell some things online, get a bar job, take a PAYE electrician job then he has the power to do that. You’ve done your bit.

Your DP is the issue
it’s nothing at all to do with him being self employed
so your dp has you paying for stuff for him
and instead of being grateful, appreciating that you pay out, seeing that unlike him you couldn’t give up work / risk losing your job / start your own business because you need to support everyone now, instead of thinking he is lucky to have a kind and caring Dp who supports him
hes looked at that whole situation and thought, you know what I’d be better off single and I’m going to tell her I’d like to run away. Rather than just actually running away. I’m going to stay and continue to take her money, but also make her feel bad. Not only that, but I’m going to tell her it’s her fault too.
You should’ve said off you fuck then.

how many hours is he working a week? If it’s less than 70-80 then he’s being ridiculous. He can sell his own stuff. He can find you a cheaper place to rent. He can get a second job delivering, bar staff or something else to make up for the short fall of money that has been created because of his job and his poor business plan. £60 for a job is stupid.
does he have a business plan in place? How’s he going to fix this situation?

get rid and be grateful you’re not pregnant. He doesn’t pull his weight or appreciate that you do more than your fair share now, it’ll be unbearable with a baby

Are they charging double for when they're both on the same job? Charging as little as £60 for a small job for both of job isn't sustainable. It's barely sustainable if it's just one of them.

They need to be working separately most of the time and only working together on the occasional times when it's needed. Most electricians work on their own most of the time. It's only the big jobs that need two pairs of hands, such as house rewires etc - and saying jobs "up to £300" sounds like they're not doing anything big like that.

Are they actually "working" all day, every week day, or are they wasting chargeable time on long lunches, mid morning bacon sarny runs, early afternoon finishes and Friday afternoon off to go to the pub, etc?

How much repeat business and referrals are they getting? If they're not getting much, then it's a big red flag as to the quality of service and their attitude etc - most tradesmen get very busy, very quickly based on referrals and repeat business.

He’d be earning more than that as an employee as a qualified electrician.

He needs to find a new job. In the meantime stop TTC. I’m seeing red flags here.

Hang on, is he fully qualified? Just seen it was only August last year he started…

He is dreaming if he thinks he would be better off single on 1k a month. It sounds like he is trying to guilt trip you into paying for more.
Downsize, a one bed flat would be significantly cheaper and you will both have more cash until he starts earning more.

Why would he be better off? In a house share? Living with parents? I agree he could work for someone and get more than £1000. Maybe a second job if he’s not doing evenings and weekends? Like you say he was happy for you to pay 50% when you earned less and now he’s expecting you to pay more than 50% and support him in other ways. Don’t do it. I’d work a second job if I wasn’t earning enough, before I expected someone who wasn’t earning a fortune either to support me

He needs to get a job as an electrician or supplement his income by sub contracting.
Dp says it takes upto 2 yrs to become established.

When my husband went self employed I picked up everything initially but we had a hard limit of 6 months. If he hadn't been able to pull enough from the business to pay his share by then, he would have needed to go back to employment. This was because that was the end of my savings. This was a very explicit agreement at the point he handed his notice in. As it happens, he met the deadline and the business is now doing well

I think he's dreaming if he thinks he'll be better off alone.

OP what's the plan for if you got pregnant - you will be on maternity pay and he's only pulling in £1000 a month - what would happen when you went back to work as he can't afford to support you as a SAHM but how would he pay half the childcare bill?

Self-employment is for mugs.