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.

I meant you. But then you knew that.

Where is he beating her up about it ? OP was shocked and surprised at his outburst because he’d never brought it up like this before. In ten years. I think that takes some considerable self control considering what she did. And why do you think they weren’t guaranteed to make money from his inheritance. Had OP not done what she did, against his wishes and in the full knowledge that she had no means of paying back the bank loan, he would likely still have had the property when prices went through the roof and would have benefited from it.

And no, OP hasn’t said they’re living in poverty but their finances can’t be all that good if she’s replacing premium products with store versions, and her DH is worried about losing his job. The money OP borrowed was clearly significant as it necessitated the sale of his investment property. It sounds very much as though now they have a mortgage and three kids, and are not financially secure enough to ride out the loss of DH’s job, when they could have had a valuable property to sell and be comfortable and financially secure. And all because OP put a financially incontinent friend above her family.

And a final point. I think what most posters would like to see is OP stepping up and supporting her DH the way he supported her. She’s a SAHM. That needs to stop. She needs to get a job and stop piling all of the financial responsibility onto him. Assuming the marriage survives.

This. All day long.

”She’s a SAHM. That needs to stop.”

In her OP, she says her DH said something about her being a SAHM when the children were younger. That suggests that she isn’t a SAHM any longer. But even if she was, why would it need to stop?

There’s been loads of comments like this on the thread implying that she hasn’t provided value to “pay back” for her poor decision because she wasn’t in paid employment when the children were younger. That she should have taken on umpteen jobs and worked round the clock to make up for it. Has anyone considered that perhaps her DH supported her being a SAHM at the time? That he didn’t fancy doing all the pick ups, rearing, bedtimes, cleaning, laundry etc so that she could gallivant off on her many jobs?

The suggestion that she needs to support him in the way he has supported her is bollocks. She has been supporting him, she’s been producing and looking after his children, his household, so that he can work on his career unburdened by his family or the cost of care.

They contribute to their family in different ways but both ways are valuable and both ways require sacrifice. Being a SAHM isn’t parasitic.

How is it the right thing to do ? OP exhausted her savings to bail out her friend. It wasn’t enough and it was only then that the friend revealed the true extent of the debt - and instead of withdrawing and accepting her losses, OP went to family and friends to borrow more money which she had no way of paying back, and had to resort to a bank loan to repay them - again which she had no way of paying back. It’s cost her her family’s long term financial security and may yet cost her her marriage. I don’t know of any friendships worth that - especially when it’s clear from the beginning that the friend is financially incontinent and has no way of repaying the money OP is borrowing on their behalf.

Nope, sorry I don’t think the value of OP’s time at home raising children is equal to the hundreds of thousands her reckless behaviour has cost the family.

If she had not stayed at home, the cost savings from the children not being in nursery would in no way equal the increased value of a London property over the years.

My parents bought a house in a not very nice nice part of London decades ago for £26,000. We recently sold it for £1.2 million. Let’s imagine my mother had been as foolish as the OP and ended up forced to sell that house years ago to clear a debt. I very much doubt the years she spent as a SAHM would compensate for the loss of over £1 million pounds in equity.

Honestly I’m all for valuing the contribution of SAHM’s but let’s keep it real. There is always a lot of talk on MN that high earning men owe their career progression and high salaries to their stay at home wives. Perhaps to a point but I think most successful men would be successful without a wife. I know it sounds unpalatable but it’s true. If their wife left or died, a high earning man would just pay out for childcare (and quickly remarry)

Just based on my own London nursery fees:

For one child to be in nursery full time you would need an income of £40k pre tax to cover it. For two, your income pre tax would need to be £75k.

Now comparing that to the average salary in London…..

I thought that parents of young children are now entitled to 30 hours of free childcare a week. Even before that, it was tax free. Apart from that, many families receive considerable free childcare from family members or do shift work around each other. The great majority of families are definitely not paying full London nursery fees. Let's not pretend that a SAHM's financial contribution is equal to the loss in this situation. I have nothing against SAHP when the children are small but, in this situation, a decent person would be highly motivated to earn and improve the family finances.

Do people 'gallivant off' when they are working? For most people, work is something that you do to earn money to support your family. Why are you suggesting that it's a leisure activity?
What you have written is a figment of your imagination. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that this DH is lazy and didn't fancy caring for his children. The opposite is much more likely to be true as he expressed anger at her having been a SAHM during their argument (? another thing she bullied him into) and she says that he has been an excellent father and husband. You've totally twisted what even the OP has admitted in an attempt to justify her lack of financial contribution.

I had similar thoughts too. I wonder if she effectively prevented him from discussing his feelings regarding her initial mistake. She was initially heavily pregnant, then had a small child, she may have player the MH card to some extent, making him feel guilty and as if he needed to support her, bullied him a little into being a SAHM, then they had more children, etc. I'm getting the impression that this could be correct from reading the OP's comments, although it is impossible to be sure.

This is nonsense. The plain fact is that OP has been financially irresponsible to the point of being abusive. If a man was posting that he had done this he would be torn to pieces. There are alternative to being a SAHM and there is funding available for childcare while parents work. Others do it, why shouldn’t she ? Whatever he supported at the time, he’s now paying the price for what OP did and the fact that you are excusing it is reprehensible and misandrist.

Not everyone has a village who are able to provide childcare.

You’re right that there is a reduction in nursery fees after the age of three.

The point remains that if you had two children and put them both in nursery full time, you would need to earn somewhere between 40k and 75k to cover the cost.

I’ve never suggested he is lazy. Presumably he was busy providing his own value to the family with his paid employment.

I don’t need to justify her lack of financial contribution. It isn’t a position that needs justifying. SAHM’s provide a valuable contribution to their family.

Why shouldn’t she? Presumably because the arrangement worked for their family.

She made a very poor decision over a decade ago.

IMO, your position of defending a man who verbally abused his wife and ignored her for a week is reprehensible. He’s stressed about his job and rather than regulate his emotions like an adult, he’s lashing out at his wife. If he isn’t capable of getting over it he needs to leave the marriage.

I think everyone knows that not everyone has a village. We never had one for starters and had to pay a very large percentage of our salaries towards childcare. However, more than half of families do have help so you certainly can't assume that everyone is paying full time nursery fees, particularly not London nursery fees. There are also tax breaks and free hours and that is extending a lot from next month.
The average cost is no where near what you state.

She made several poor decisions over and over, against her dh's advice amd wishes. That shows a lack of care for his feelings at the very least.

He shouldn't have verbally abused his wife, but with financial abuse history, his resentment is understandable.

I think he'd leave the marriage if he could.

You actually did suggest that he was lazy @heroinechic. You are suggesting that he was a lazy father who didn't want to parent his own children or do any housework.

'That he didn’t fancy doing all the pick ups, rearing, bedtimes, cleaning, laundry etc so that she could gallivant off on her many jobs?'

Actually, the OP should be able to justify her contribution to the family finances given the circumstances she describes. Also, whether a family has a SAHP or not should be a joint decision, not a unilateral one. There is nothing to suggest that the DH encouraged or wanted her to be a SAHM. Indeed, the OP comes across as rather controlling rather than the other way around.

I did not suggest he was lazy. I suggested that he didn’t want to do ‘all the pick ups, rearing, bedtimes, cleaning, laundry etc’ on top of his full time job, so that OP could work every hour god sends. Most people wouldn’t want to do that. It doesn’t make them lazy.

It strikes me that posters see SAHM’s as lazy and so believe that OP has lived the life of luxury without being suitably punished by her DH. It is not palatable to you that she has not suffered for her mistake. Being a SAHM would be the punishment for me. Being a solicitor is much easier.

The only person OP needed to justify being a SAHM to was her husband, not you. If he didn’t want her to be a SAHM he simply could have said no. She could not have been a SAHM for THREE children without his support. There is very little point in him complaining about it now, years after the fact. Oh, a pattern is occurring.

Agree to the extent that he should have left the marriage ten years ago. He may have verbally abused her and ignored her for a week, but this is as nothing compared to what OP did to him.

She also couldn’t have escaped the debt to the bank without his support, despite the fact that she went ahead without his agreement. OP hasn’t articulated whether she was a SAHM by choice but from what she has posted l’d guess her DH had no more say in that than he did when she made the decision to put friends above family and plunge them into financial ruin. Why on earth are you supporting that ?

Why are you guessing that he had no choice when he quite clearly did? He could have said no, I will not financially subsidise you. Instead, he did.

I don’t support the decision she made. I’ve said over and over that it was very poor judgement. I just think that if he couldn’t get over it, he should have left.

Out of interest, what could he do to her that would compare to what she did? If he physically abused her, would that be justifiable too? Or is it just verbal abuse that’s ok?

Fair enough, I did miss the 'all' in your post.

I'm afraid this is nothing to do with what I find palatable and nothing to do with enforced suffering. It is what the husband found palatable and about adults taking responsibility for their mistakes. What the OP did was a huge mistake, which she doubled down on several times. Please don't be disingenuous and pretend that he could simply have said so if he didn't want a SAHP. The pattern that I and most other posters can see is that the OP has a bad habit of doing exactly as she wants and ignoring his protestations.

Well no, she didn't lose them the money the house would have been worth because they never had it to begin with. Do you understand the logical fallacy you're making here?
This is hindsight bias. People are acting like the outcome (the house gaining value) was guaranteed, but it wasn’t. Saying she "lost" that money assumes a future that never happened. In reality, there was no certain gain, so it’s just a hypothetical.

They would still have the property though. And as it was heavily leveraged and bringing in rental income, they got less out of it than they'd have had if they'd kept it longer, even if it hadn't appreciated so much in value.

There's no doubt it was a terrible financial loss, necessitated by terrible financial decisions. OP hasn't really given us a reason except for wanting to help her friend and having her "head all over the place" due to pregnancy. She hasn't told us about how her husband felt about her being a SAHM except for what he said during this argument. Tbh she hasn't told us much at all.

This is the difficulty of forgiveness. To some extent, you do have to just get over it. It's very hard and we don't know what OP has done to try to make this up to him. Sometimes people think feeling guilty is enough but it isn't.

What utter fiction.