Husband lost 80k

[crosseydlobster]

I'm just so overwhelmed and have nobody to discuss it with. I don't believe in airing out my relationship problems with other family members so none of them know. During the pandemic my husband was fearful of losing his job. He took all the money from his 401K so we could have a nice sized safety net. It was $80k USD. A few months later he bet it all on the S&P without telling me and lost it all. I was devastated and considered leaving him. I chose to forgive him. Since then I had to take a 50k government business loan to try and salvage my business amidst covid to pay our debt. My business is failing anyhow, I'm working the equivalent of 3 part time jobs (which feels like 2 fulltime jobs), we're saddled with debt all in the midst of me unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant at 40 years old. Had he used that $80k as the safety net we had discussed, I could have shut the business down, the company had a decent amount in the bank at the time, i wouldnt have taken a government loan and it would have covered our payments. I'm so exhausted. I just want to give up but I have to work harder all the time. Sometimes I want to scream at him about how much he screwed this up. But I forgave him and so I bite my lip because what is done cannot be undone and I stayed. I can't take care of myself there's no time, I don't think I'll ever have a baby. Life seems more and more pointless

Your comment was rude and a little smug, though. I winced as I read it a) for the snide tone and b) for the financial ignorance.

FTR, I am British and understood perfectly.

OP, do not have a baby with this man. You have wasted too much time already, do not make the sunken cost fallacy mistake.

Skimmed a bit but surely you need to see statements and documentary evidence and take it all to a financial advisor to see if anything can be saved. Stocks do plummet but then they recover a bit. All may not yet be lost.

However, he sounds completely and utterly financially incompetent - whether you forgive him or not.. the only path forward is to get a registered independent financial advisor to go over this mess and to pay the fee as it will be worth it to avoid any further repetitions. He can't be set loose on joint finances ever again without oversight or supervision.

Oh the irony.... ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Why are you trying to have a baby with him?

Just because your financial literacy and reading comprehension is piss poor doesn't mean you should get arsey with people. You're making a tit of yourself now.

Perhaps an indictator that this is a not a thread for you. Oh, but you still want the drama.

You can still have a baby on your own, I did.
You don't have to put up with him because you want a family.
My ex husband of 20 years persistently did things like this and I almost had a nervous breakdown working to pay back all of his mess.
I reckon I've lost abut 100k clearing up after him.
I finally left in my 50's because I realised that if I stayed with him I could look forward to a retirement that was poverty stricken and I'd probably lose my home.
It was a horrible decision because I did love him but now he's been gone several years it's SUCH a relief, I have had to downsize my home but I have no debt now and no worries at all. I'm spending my last 6 years of work saving for my pension.
I also have a lovely 40 year old DS who is a delight to be with. I had him on my own some years before I met my ex husband and brought him up alone.
Ex husband is now living in a rented bedsit and last I heard was £50k in debt, had lost his job and couldn't pay any of it back.
I didn't plan on growing old alone but it's a heck of a lot better than the constant worry and the endless jobs I did to pay off his stupid decisions.
Keep your options open OP.

I had no clue what was going on either,never heard of S and P and thought itwas 401 thousand pounds....I resent the implication that it should have been obvious and to have "financial literacy" what OP was going on about.

I thought the S&P had gone up so he could have made a shitload? It’s hard to just ‘lose’ £80k betting on the S&P. Something is rotten in Denmark.

So sorry this was supposed to be a standalone post not on an already open thread! Silly me! Does anyone know how to delete?

You need to report you post and ask for it to be deleted.

report it and ask mumsnet to delete it for you (the ! report) button that appears underneath each post

He's a liar

It is colossally stupid to take money out of a 401k before reaching age 59 1/2. The penalty is 10 %, plus the money is taxed as income in the year it's taken, at your highest marginal tax rate. Taking money out doesn't create a safety net. Having money stashed away is the safety net.

Also, a quick online calculator shows that $80K invested in the S&P in 2020 would be $106,000K today.

Your husband may have stupidly withdrawn the money, but he didn't invest it in the S&P. He's lying to you.

To translate for us UK folks, her husband took 80k (dollars I imagine) from his pension pot and op says he gambled it on the S&P - a bit like the FTSE. She says he lost it all.

This doesn’t make any sense as the S&P hasn’t collapsed, and it would be nigh on impossible to lose everything in an index market anyway. I think he’s a big fat liar and I would suggest he might well have put it into crypto which did crash heftily last year. Or something else, maybe even gambling, who knows.

What is clear @crosseydlobster is that your husband is not to be trusted financially, and I don’t think he’s being honest with you about where this money went, as what he has told you simply doesn’t make sense. I would neither be trying to have a family with this guy, or trusting him any way financially in the future. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark!

If you’d bothered to read any of the thread you’d have an idea. You should try it sometime.

A gambler is a gambler no matter how you dress it up.
If you do have a bit of fortune, the temptation to invest again is all too tempting for these people and you end up in a bigger hole

If you are going to stay with him make sure you are responsible for your own finances and he does not get to touch them.

As for trying for children while in debt. Not a good life choice.

He's lying
S&P goes up and down over time
Ask him for statements
The fact he went against your wishes would be all I needed
What a mess
Don't bring a baby into this

She isn't mixing anything. The questions you ask have been answered on the thread. Maybe it is best not to answer on a thread if you literally don't know what it is about. There are plenty of knowledgeable people who have offered advice. A quick google would answer your questions.

It is very easy to lose $80k betting on the S&P. It has actually been falling for the last month but, even if it was rising, you can lose money.

Imagine you go for a spread bet where you think the market is going to go down, so you sell at, say, 3900 (the value of the index) at $1000 per point. If the market actually goes up to 4000, (i.e. 100 points), you have lost $100,000.

He isn't. He hasn't invested in S&P. He has bet on it. Very easy to lose all your money that way.

You should also read the thread. Somebody politely explained it to me and I thanked them. Reading the thread applies to you too. I am not au fait with Americanisms. But I suppose he gambled on what we know as futures.

He's lying. 100%.

If only for the fact that the 401k is merely a vehicle for the investments. You can still put it "all on the S&P" within that vehicle - and it would a lot more tax-efficient too (especially if he feared a job loss, he could withdraw at a much lower marginal tax rate in the future than the rate at which he contributed).

If he withdrew, it was for wasting away, not re-investment.

Plus what everyone else is saying about the S&P not going down to zero. Google NYSE:SPY to see an aggregate ETF performance.

Summary: he's full of shit.

Oh hell, OP. Awful situation. Echo what others have said - you've not had the truth of it as to how he's lost the money. It could be crypto, but sounds to me more likely spread betting on the S&P index. Poster further up has a good explanation. I knew a guy once who thought he could outperform the traders at this and he came an absolute cropper.