DH has invested / gambled away our life savings

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Hi, my DH and I have been married for 7 years and we have a 3yo. Husband works in a high-earning city job. I teach and have been part-time since going back after maternity leave.

Our household income is higher than average due to DH's job, and I caveat this whole post by saying we are very fortunate. I've never taken anything for granted through and neither of us come from well off backgrounds.

Having said that we live in London, and costs are high so it's all relative. We own a 2-bed flat and we're hoping to be able to afford a small 3-bed house but not for another few years while we save up as you need at least £1.2m for that which we are nowhere near. DH receives annual bonus which can be a really big chunk of money, and we have been planning to save these up for a decent deposit.

Anyway, DH confessed to me last week that he had lost almost all of our savings - £30k. He has been "investing" in things like NFT's and crypto. He also took out two loans without telling me and so we are now £75k in debt. Apparently he was desperately trying to make it right and get the money back before I found out, and got into this mess.

I was obviously angry and beyond furious / hurt / betrayed. I've been through all the emotions and we've talked at length.

To cut a long story short, DH did this before with his bonus a couple of years ago. It was about £30k at the time and again we were planning on saving it for a deposit. We went through a terrible time of it but came through it with DH saying he'd learnt his lesson and I really thought he had. Fast forward to last weeks confession.

DH says he thinks he has a gambling problem (even though it's technically investing not sports gambling he says the highs and lows are essentially the same). He is sorry and has found a therapist specialising in addictive behaviours. He came to this conclusion by himself without my input. He is saying that any future bonus's should come into my bank account or into our shared account so I can see everything (he previously had it in his own account). I've suggested that his salary also be paid into our joint account from now on as up till now it's gone into his and then he sets up a standing order to our joint account for household expenses / joint spending. Basically I need oversight of everything. He agrees.

I have been furious but am now at the stage where I'm trying to look forward, and holding into our marriage vows. He is sorry and keeps telling me, and I can see he is deeply upset and hates himself. I think the therapy is a good step.

The problem is we now owe interest on the loans he took out and he maxed out our overdraft facility. It's to the tune of £400 a month. This is money we don't have so we are looking at what can be done. Ironically me giving up work and reducing nursery fees might actually give us the cash, but I hated being a SAHM full time and I worry my resentment will boil over if I have to do this. Instead I'm trying to look at all the cut backs we can make with grocery shopping, food, etc etc.

Not sure if anyone's been through this before? How can I / we make this work? Not just financially but as a couple / family? My husband is otherwise a decent guy but it seems he clearly has a massive problem. In my darkest moments last week I did see that this could tear us apart but I don't want that. Despite everything I love him and I want our family to stay together - we have been very happy and DD is a happy child. I don't want this to spoil it and I'm furious with him for potentially wrecking it all. I have therapy already so I'm going to make sure I can offload about the impact of this on me.

Anyway sorry if this is a confused rant. Does anyone have any tips for us / me?

Crypto is not investing,
It is a set amount of money, and your DH was indeed gambling to see if he could get more of the pot.
The only way someone gets more of the pot is when someone else loses theirs.
It is immoral and just another version of a Ponzi scheme.
He needs help. If you decide to stay.

🙌

Crypto is not investing.

Say it louder for those in the back.

I work in the city and know a guy earning roughly £1mn a year who was previously always talking about crypto and trying to get other people to invest, and now he's bitter and upset he's lost so much and he's worried about money. Imagine earning that much and then risking it all because you want even more!

I said something similar in my post upthread.

Something is not quite right. Even if he were only an analyst (i.e. entry level), to have only saved £30k when he was supposedly saving his past ‘bonuses’ (plural, so we can assume at least two…) is unexpected to say the least.

I must say I thought the same having known people that work in the city.

It's all propped up by new idiots buying into it thinking they can make easy money when they realise it's bollocks it falls again

You have every right to be so angry. That this is the second time he has done this is even worse.

Are you sure he does have a "big" job in the city with large bonuses? As I agree with others that "only" saving £30k is actually low in what you have described. Sadly I know of men who have been demoted/lost their jobs hiding the new less paid job from their wife.

I think you should say you want to see monthly copies of his credit reference agency reports to ensure no new borrowing is being taken out. I also think he should be getting a second job to help pay off the new £75k debt quicker.

Remember his decisions have cost £110k - both the savings lost AND the new borrowing

Does anyone have any tips for us / me?

I'm rarely so definitive on threads like this. There is no other advice I can give except to end the marriage. There is no way he will change - look at what he's done so far! Huge amounts of money, gambled away with utter deceit - you had no idea on either occasion.

Like @Gettingbysomehow & @Deadringer I have direct experience of financial abuse. My exH lied before our marriage & I only realised he was €30k in debt several months into our marriage. He promised to change. He didn't. He wouldn't take any meaningful prolonged steps. And what's really noticeable is, like you, I tried to fix everything. Consolidated loans, made budgets, used my own savings to plug gaps, lied about why we hadn't money to do things. He never changed. Your H has done this more than once. It will only get worse.

You are making lots of excuses and justifications for him it seems - on this thread,

I agree. I also understand where you are coming from. I did this too. If I didn't, the alternative was to face up to the reality of his deceit and the implications of that.

You currently can - kind of - absorb this loss, as significant as it is. But almost certainly you'll face a scenario where due to employment, kids' needs / costs, or something unexpected in your life, that buffer won't be there. That's what happened to us (recession, his illness, unemployment, 3 DC) and I found myself despite ostensibly having a good income unable to pay for groceries or (quite literally) shoes for DC.

In my case, this was part of a wider pattern of control. He finally left. A decade on and I'm still struggling financially.

Keep your job. Think very hard about what you want in life. Can you live life as his gate keeper, auditing & checking everything? Can you truly accept that he has lost you more than £120k (I feel sick typing that amount)? Can you believe he lied to you & made a fool of you?

Is he worth this?

Sorry OP but reading your follow up posts I have a vision of you with your fingers in your ears going lalalalala. you have decided to stay with him, nothing anyone says, based on their own personal experience of the horrors that this will bring in the future is going to make you do anything different. I give it two years. He will get bored of the control and find a way to circumvent it or you will get bored with having to be the financial parent to his profligate child role. I am sad for you now as I know what is to come and its awful. you draw a red line and say its a one off then it happens again and you forgive again so its no longer a red line is it. and it will happen again and again. but next time it will be more lies and subtefuge and also even more money lost. and one day your child is going to ask you why you dont live the same life as whoever and you will realise how much both of you, because now you know you take joint responsibility have pissed up the wall. Listen to those of us who have been through this. it isnt going to end well and that can either be today or the future. your choice.

I don't want to derail your thread, and I really feel for you, but to answer your question, a family member worked in the city and wasn't even a banker, he was in a supporting role, and one year his bonus was enough to pay for a year long round the world trip, first class, which at the time me and DH worked out to be costing in the region of 70k.

I'm only bringing this up because I suspect your DH may have been lying to you about more than the gambling, and you may have a much bigger problem on your hands.

@zurala
Appreciate the sentiment but honestly that's not a concern. I have many concerns but that's not one - I have all the payslips and have populated a spreadsheet. Yes vibists should go up (depending on the economy abs the banks' bonus policies) so he will be on track to achieve much higher in the next few years.

@mummymeister

Absolutely.

I actually feel a bit ill reading this thread. I remember so vividly all the conversations me & exH had. I'd be pleading, crying, explaining. In the early days he'd be apologetic remorseful & all about change. Never lasted. Never even started sometimes.

Later, he didn't give a fuck. Wouldn't even bother making excuses. He'd laugh in my face.

I'm not saying your H is like mine in every respect, or that your life & financial situation is the same.

But the core element of deceit, exerting control by financial misspending, placing the burden on you to sort out - it's all there. He'll blame & resent you, and say you are seeking to control him, and that will entitle him to go back squandering money.

@Jk987

Also how does it save money? The monthly nursery rate can't be more than you earn as a teacher?

I'm a teacher part-time. Nursery fees in London are high so it costs us more to send DC in than it would for me to stop working. Crazy - but the reality for many. We've been pushing through waiting for primary school.

It's worth considering selling up and moving to a different part of London. Assuming your budget is a few hundred thousand. You can get a lovely 2 bed apartment for that in a elsewhere (and still a decent area).

Not sure how familiar you are with London but that's not really the case. To be clear we were saving to move to a lovely area with outstanding schools (obvs less likely to happen now). We currently have a 2-bed flat in an ok area, but it's not great. No way would I want to downgrade area with our DC.

Not making excuses at all but City work isn't like that. He's working till 11pm most nights, sometimes 2am, very occasionally can come home for the evening. And on call the whole weekend and holidays.

To cut a long story short, DH did this before with his bonus a couple of years ago. It was about £30k at the time and again we were planning on saving it for a deposit. We went through a terrible time of it but came through it with DH saying he'd learnt his lesson and I really thought he had. Fast forward to last weeks confession.

Come on, OP. He did this once before already. There should be no getting past that, nevermind you allowing it a second time.

Sorry but there seems to be a bit of confusion about what husband earned in bonus and questioning if I am in the loop on that. Just to clarify - apologies if this wasn't made clear in my OP- that DH lost our savings pot of £30k as well as loans. This was a pot we saved for a deposit. I didn't say his entire bonus was £30k. There was more which we immediately put into other things like our property. But he wasted £30k.

Sorry I hope it makes sense. Trying to clarify as I feel like some posts are going off on a tangent suggesting I don't know the reality of bonus payments - I completely get why you would question it given his dishonesty. I have the payslips though.

"....No way would I want to downgrade area with our DC....." give it a couple of years OP and you wont have a choice because he will have lost so much money that you will have to sell your house. will you look back to this thread then and wonder why you didnt listen? or will you be making more excuses about his long hours, how hard he works etc. I'm going to have to walk away from this thread because its like watching a very very slow car crash with an horrific outcome and I just feel so incredibly sad for you knowing what you and your child have yet to come.

What is the total debt / loss OP?

I just feel so incredibly sad for you knowing what you and your child have yet to come.

Same.

My life is a good one in so many ways. But also financially very tough. It's not where I thought I'd be 20 years ago when I married.

I wish desperately I hadn't tried to plug every hole he got us into, to the extent of using all my own savings by the end.

When have I made excuses for him though. I mentioned long hours in response to a pp who suggested he get an evening job, which is objectively the case. I never mentioned how hard he works.

No way would I want to downgrade area with our DC.

This is unrealistic in your financial position (as I understand it). You can't afford to be snobby.

I live with my dh and dd in what you might call a "downgraded" area of London but it's also leafy and quiet and we have a garden and spare bedrooms. And - this is key - we can afford it. We aren't 75k in debt (I'm not counting the mortgage)

When you're that far in debt your repayments/retrenchments have to come from somewhere.

@EarringsandLipstick respectfully, your posts remind me of what someone I know had to learn the hard way, that she was his enabler by constantly swooping into fix his losses.

Working harder and longer, reorganisation of finances to facilitate paying back his debts.

Finally she realised that her misery had been partly her own making through her enabling him.

It took her going to GamAnon for the penny to drop.

She bitterly regrets being a bit snotty about the prospect of going, but said it was the saving of her.

It gave her the strength to say No more.

When she pulled the plug and told him to go, it was her finally doing that and knowing she meant it that had him seek help, finally.

She told her daughters it was over and they were divorcing.

He went into a treatment centre and is doing well.

She really loved him, he's a nice guy, but she gave him 25 years that she will never get back, 25 years of stress, anxiety and juggling money, picking up the pieces after him.

Absolutely not worth it.
She too has paid a huge price financially, but at least she kept her home.

She bitterly regrets not leaving earlier.

The thing is that you are mothering him in trying to sort out a solution to this huge problem that he has created. He will never ever learn if you keep doing this. There have been no real consequences for him, have there? You need to look up addictive behaviour. You will see that another person cannot prevent their partner from being addicted.

My ex DH was not a gambler but he was terrible with money and lied about debts and wasted large sums while I slaved at a well paying job to make up for it. He also had drug and alcohol problems that led to a lot of spending we couldn't afford.

Every time he would confess or I would discover what he had done, we would argue, I would rage, he would apologise, we would work out a plan that usually required me to take greater and greater responsibility for our finances. We would initially feel relieved and united in helping him to straighten out.

But within weeks or even days he would start undermining the situation and trying to get round me and I tried to control the situation harder. After years of this I gave up and we separated. I cant describe the relief I now feel that my money is my own and I have no terrible surprises when I look at my accounts.

So my advice would be watch out because at the moment you are trauma bonding and being unfairly loaded with his problems. It is not up to you to mother him as a pp says. It doesn't help him and will eventually fill you with resentment.

This is very smart op.

Divorce him asap. You can still see him and live as married but seperate the finances.

You have kids now.

No matter how much you "manage the money" this man will access credit.

@billy1966

That's a difficult situation your friend faced.

Mine was really quite different - I wasn't my H's enabler, he wasn't a gambler. He was abusive, in many varied ways, and how he used (abused) our money was just one element.

He decidedly wasn't a good man either!

But yes, like your friend, I kept trying to 'fix' everything (we had 3 DC, I wanted the marriage to work) at increasing cost to myself.

(Not saying OP's H is abusive in this way. But his breach of trust & deceit is so egregious that I doubt he will ever change. She'll be dealing with similar situations over and over).

I recognise that dynamic so much. The pattern of thinking you'd sorted it out thus time. Then the undermining & return to the same situation again.

I'm glad you have financial independence now.