Argument over a £1

[ForGentleBeaker]

Years ago my best friend and her husband ran into severe financial difficulties and were going to lose their home. I was pregnant, hormonal, emotional, my head was all over the place, and I desperately wanted to help them.
At that time I had no money but we owned a property in an absolute rundown part of London - my husband purchased it with a gift from his parents and I was added to the deeds after we were married.
Long story short, my attempt to help my friend went awry, and my husband had to sell the property. The property is worth an absolute fortune now. The whole area has undergone gentrification, and we missed out on the crazy London property boom.

My husband doesn't ever want to discuss and I had thought we had put it behind us. I have immense guilt.

Last week, whilst grocery shopping with him, I exchange a premium product for a store brand, and he went ballistic. He started mumbling about why I was saving pennies when I happlynlissed away so much trying to help my friend.

In the car, I was called a jumped up bitch, and he spent the journey home ranting at me for making him sell the property; being a SAHM when the children were younger; spending money; and diminishing his role and magnifying mine.

He is refusing to speak to me because he doesnt want to listen to the verbal diarrhea coming out of my mouth - his words.

I don't know where we go from here. We have 3 children, and he is an excellent father, and husband, till now. It seems he has been harbouring this resent towards me but there is nothing I can do.

It wasn't equally to the value of the property. The property was a highly leveraged BTL.

To be honest, I wouldn’t have continued a marriage with someone who took a loan to help a friend (presumably without discussing it and getting agreement from the other partner). It’s probably blown a hole in his trust in you and your judgement. What did you do to repair that broken trust??? You cannot make big financial decisions alone when you are married. You should have found a solution to your friend letting you down that wouldn’t have included your husband having to sell assets.

I think realistically if you want to stay married, you should propose counseling as a couple and see what comes up through that. I expect he will say he has no faith in your judgement; I think you need to be prepared to consider whether you are a ‘good’ partner in the marriage; there are two of you and I can sense from your post that actually you are living to your own standards and not what your husband is expecting from a partner…
it needs fixing or I suspect he’ll ask for a divorce. He probably feels trapped aswell that as you’ve been a SAHP and he’s been working, that even if he divorced you, you would ‘take’ from him… of course that is not reasonable but I suspect for him it’s all cumulative and extreme in his mind.. counselling would help you to unpack it all but prepare yourself for him to be very critical.. Best of luck x

So to help them not lose their home, you ended up losing home. Sometimes you need to put yourself and your family first and you prioritised your family. It’s not a resentment over a minor thing. I think you need to talk to him when he has calmed down and plan how you and him can move past this, which I believe includes you listening to him about the money. Because you can’t be over generous to the point of losing home and then become penny pincher, it is not a one off resentment, it’s your attitude to money which impacts your husband.

Also the title is incorrect, he didn’t argue with you over £1.

@ComtesseDeSpair yes not that much financial detail to go on. As you say the OP’s DH probably thought he was doing the best thing at the time by selling the London property. That decision has then come back to bite both the OP and her DH. I don’t blame him for getting angry regarding the original loan, the selling of the property and the penny pinching of the OP when he popped an item in the shopping trolley. That recent small act probably tipped him over the edge. I do think the DH is being unreasonable regarding the rise in the property’s value since it was sold. As another poster pointed out no one has a crystal ball when it comes to property prices. If we did we would all be multi millionaires😂.I suppose he thinks he would still have the property if it were not for the OP’s actions. Very difficult for the marriage to survive I guess.

The problem is that, once you have cashed out, it is hard to get back into that same market. Sounds like the DH bought the property pre-marriage. Say he bought it for £100k. Sold it for £200k, but had to pay off, say £75k worth of OP's debt. And now he also is the sole bread-winner and has a family home to pay for and a kid. To get back into the same London market and buy a similar property to the one he sold, he needs to raise an additional £75k to buy it as well as pay for stamp duty and legal fees. Psychologically, buying something worse than you sold for twice as much probably not that palatable. Maybe he invested any difference into the family home or other investments instead, but probably nothing that could compete with the value of the investment he would have now had he not had to sell his London property.

Edit, just seen the OP's update. So it was a mortgaged property, probably nothing left after paying off the mortgage and OP's debt.

We have a second mortgage took out by me, on my property, to do something for us, that was my idea, but husband agreed to as I really wanted to do it. That didnt work out and we have nothing to show for it. It still comes up in arguments 5 years later. There is still some resentment, i don't think we will ever fully resolve it sadly. There is still that element of you did that and thats why we are in this position now. Which is true tbh. But I am also the higher earner so hold some cards there and have supported my DH financially through a career change.
Do you have your own money now? Why did you want to be a SAHM? Did you railroad your husband into the lend to a friend?
I think you need some really deep conversations about how to move forward and you should really try and be an equal contributor financially or as much as you can. Plan for the future from now, and discuss how you can draw a line under it. Couples therapy which we havent done is expensive, but you can do some paper excercises together. Writing stuff down.
I saw a video about a couple that do a family offsite once a year, like a planning and strategy weekend, which ai thought was a good idea that we are going to try.
Talking it through is the only way forward tbh.otherwise things fester.

My rundown part of London was around £100k about 25 years ago. You would need to add a million pounds, and then some, to that to buy a place now. It’s insane.

OP is being vague and drip feeding. This is a reverse I think. Something doesn't add up.

Even if prices didn’t go up and area remain ghetto like, you are responsible for your dh losing his home. It does not help you are downplaying your contribution to the situation.
I disagree with the poster that your husband is playing the script. He is beating the consequences of your actions and he is angry.

Nah, babe, everyone managed to use their tiny lady brains to work out that you're a Bloke Here from the gross misogynistic content of your post.

What is a reverse? I mean, what does it mean??

This was an investment property / BTL property that he had purchased, and I was added to the deeds. He sold it he didnt have any savings as he'd invested everything in this BTL.

Nor did you have any savings and you blew his which he invested for your future.

But then he would have to financially support her which would be irritating as hell after what she has done.

If I was your husband I would be extremely angry. You betrayed his trust entirely by getting the loan and then you both lost out on a shed load of equity.

Thats more than enough to end a marriage but as you were pregnant at the time he probably didn’t want to leave you with a new born.

was he right to lose his shit at you? No. But you need to stop making excuses and acknowledge you betrayed him, made a stupid financial decision and now you have much less money as a result.

Which bank would give the OP a £75k unsecured loan?
Anyway it’s redundant now, as due to a massive drip feed, the property was a highly leveraged BTL.

If this is genuine, leave immediately. Protect yourself hard.

There have been loads of posts recently about women being abused but not running for the hills.

I came here 12 years ago because my then partner was abusive.

He was found guilty - eventually - of assault against me and my eldest.

At that time, this site was really good and supportive.

It now seems to be all about subtle politics and the opposite of supportive.

Women's Aid are great. If you can get through.

What responsibility have you taken since to earn money to repay what you took?

When you post pretending to be the other person in the dispute.

This wouldn't happen.

You're right.

People are saying OP couldn't have gotten a loan... you are all assuming this was through a proper bank for a huge loan with modern standards.

For all we know it was an illegal loan shark that would knee cap them (she clearly has ZERO common sense)

or

Given it could have been one of the many LEGAL loan shark companies from the early 2000 through to late 2010s.

If OP got the maximum pay day from some company like 'Wonga' it would likely be less than £5k intial loan (possibly only £100 or so). Then if she didn't pay it back and just buried her head in the sand for months ignoring the missed payments at rates up to 1,500% interest it would very quickly get wildly out of hand.

Yes its now illegal and you can sue those dissolved companies but AT THE TIME they where legal. Even if you are lucky to win a court case now then refunds are usually less than 10% of what was lost (just a token amount).

Ohhh! Okay, thanks for explaining.

I think you're on the wrong thread! 😜

Frankly, I don't think I could forgive someone who did what you did. Your DH didn't want to do it and you did it anyway, with no money to back you up if it went wrong...which it did.
Did you think you were their saviour? What made you think it was your responsibility to help them out versus your family security?
Your DH probably sees the position you would be in if you hadn't made a unilateral decision affecting you both.
You were lucky he bailed you out and your friend should hang their heads in shame.

She referred to not being able to pay "the bank".

And if the property was highly leveraged then I guess that means not a lot of cash was released from the sale.