I’m almost 40 and I’ve f***ed up

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Name changed for this. Sorry it’s long.

I know I’ve been naive and stupid, but I honestly didn’t worry about the future until fairly recently. Now I think I’ve really fucked up.

TLDR we rent, don’t know how we will get a mortgage, are on just above NNW and make minimum pension contributions.

In all honesty our pensions will probably have just about enough to buy a cruise and throw ourselves overboard on the last night. I’m only half joking, I don’t want to live to a long age. I can’t see how we will cope if we have to retire???

My credit rating is shot to bits through poor judgment and spending beyond my means, my (and DH’s) career is stagnant, I have no savings as we spent £30K on our wedding and honeymoon and have spent all small inheritances on going on holidays . I know this makes me sound like such an idiot.

Growing up, my parents had a long and happy marriage and lived in a house worth (now) around £800,000. Stupidly stupidly stupidly (as they always said that me and my 2 brothers would inherit the house) I just assumed I didn’t need to worry about a mortgage as I could just buy outright in my old age in a cheaper area, or have a hefty deposit to help get a mortgage more easily if I inherited before my retirement.

However, my DM died, and my father finally remarried 2 years ago after a very short relationship of 6 months. He has already put the house in joint names (as he should, that’s his wife) and I can easily see a situation whereby he leaves everything to her and we get nothing. They haven’t made any wills. It’s not that I don’t trust my step DM, it’s the fact she has a disabled grown child who will ‘need’ more than us. In this circumstance I can see us being cut out.

She is also very funny about money. For my birthday my DH and I paid for all the alcohol which was the biggest cost. I asked if the rest of the family could split the food between them, giving them a smaller bill than me. She thought my dad should pay nothing even though he is a high earner (over 70k). He paid without any problem because it was only £80 and it was his daughters birthday, but she wasn’t happy about it at all.

Anyway, none of this would matter if I hadn’t been so silly to think that my old age would take care of itself. If my DSM cuts us out, or the money goes into a care home I feel I’m fucked.

We have joint income of about £3.2K, living expenses of £1.8K debt repayments of £600 at minimum for about £12K of cc and a loan. We are still living outside our means.

How can I pull this back!

Sound like greatbplNs being put into place, well done! We did the same with pensions 8 years ago (around your age, had NOTHING saved), now we have close on 100,000 dollars. Contributing the 8 percent, plus get government contributions. It’s a start anyhows.
Both my hasband and I have alcohol issues. I e been sober now for 8 years (go me :). He still drinks, and that’s ok. I realised I wanted to change for me. The self esteem, the depression, the insomnia... all so much better. Long hard journey, happy to share my experiences if you ever want to chat by pm.
You sound like a lovely person, I wish you all the best

@WitchesGlove

My dear friend who die of liver sclerosis was actually great fun to be with she was a functioning alcoholic. We meet when I moved three doors down from her, we were both young, our kids were about the same age and we were both living in another city that we were not from with no family living near us. Also both our husbands worked away in the oil industry which is very common were we live. My friend was great fun to be with and to go out with!! We would go for great nights in or out in town, we had so amazing girls away weekends a few holidays together.The first ten years her drinking was probably only a bottle of wine a day and a couple of gins. I also enjoy a drink but I can go days or weeks without one, in fact I suffer for days with hangovers. over the years I did not release how bad the problem had got as I move to the other side of the city we both did stints abroad with our husbands jobs and did not see her as much but we still saw each other as much as we could . By the time she died she was up two a bottle of gin a day and a bottle of wine. I’m not the kind of person who turns my back on someone I care about just because they are making bad life decisions. In my book good friends stick together through think and thin. I know her for nearly twenty years and she felt like a sister to me. As for other people I have know as I have said my husband work in the oil industry were he was overseas a lot !! A few of his friends that I also knew have been very hard drinkers and have died from drink related illness.

So I’m not disapproving of other people’s choices but I have seen what those choices can some times lead to and believe me when your liver gives in the end can be very quick. So if you find that hard to believe I really don’t care !!

Have a private and honest conversation with your dad about the future and wills.

I would never want my children worrying like this, adult or not.

how is the OP supposed to avoid alcohol when she works as a waitress?

I’m actually a wine waiter! My main task is to help guests choose wines to pair with their courses, and that involves tasting every wine we serve at regular training sessions. For this reason I didn’t want to do cold turkey using a drug such as Antabuse as I love that part of my job.

More importantly though, I’m not yet ready for AA, and as PPs have suggested, you have to be ready and committed for it to really work.

However, I have come some way since my treatment. Prior to me losing my job (for being drunk at work) I was a total mess. My first drink was when I woke up, if that was 6am, that’s when I started. I would drink a minimum of 1 bottle of wine at work, then 1-2 bottles afterwards. I was completely shitfaced, all day, every single day. I’m not sure how but I also managed to complete a business degree during all of this. I was even a bit drunk at my lectures.

My GP gave me a full ‘MOT’ and said that by some miracle there was nothing wrong with me yet.

After I got fired, I decided to take a few months off to concentrate on my final exams and the 3X weekly treatment/therapy appointments I was doing. When I went back to work I was very different. Now I never ever drink before work, and after work I have between 4-9 units depending on whether or not I go out after.

I’m well aware that changing my job completely would make it so much easier to quit. This industry is rife with drugs and alcohol, particularly if you work in a high end independent. At the last staff Xmas party there was so much coke on the back dispense bar it looked like a nativity scene, just with bottles of beer and packets of fags instead of the baby Jesus. The last party before that people were taking drugs (pills) when they DIDN’T EVEN KNOW what they were. Some NZ waiter was just handing them out like they were sweeties.

nzeire thank you so much, and congratulations on your sobriety!

So much coke on the back bar looked like a nativity scene!! Now that made me laugh!!

I watched a programme Gordon Ramsey did on the hospitality industry and drug taking and it seems it’s riff!!

And no chance of going cold turkey if you are a sommelier!!

Good luck with your money plans !! And just keep trying to keep to drinking down to manageable levels as it sounds you already have.

And ask your doctor or a liver function test every year!! And even if you get a bad result one year it can be reserved. The liver is a organ in our body that can self heal.

As I have already said good luck and remember onwards and upwards!
You can’t change the past but u can change the future!!

Surely as a Sommelier you taste the wine and spit it out. You don’t swallow it otherwise how can you possibly know the difference between wines if by 3-4 glasses in you are too pissed to notice.

Sorry if that isn’t the case. I cannot drink as even the tiniest amounts of alcohol leave me very drunk.
Tried 2 tspns of vanilla essence (on a low carb diet and someone said vanilla essence was a substitute for sugar). I was zonked out with the room spinning and couldn’t drive.

Surely as a Sommelier you taste the wine and spit it out. You don’t swallow it otherwise how can you possibly know the difference between wines if by 3-4 glasses in you are too pissed to notice.

Depends on your tolerance. A minimum tasting amount is 5mls. This means you could taste up to 25 wines and still only have the equivalent of a small glass. Obviously I’m not drunk on one glass!

What we tend to do is pour a larger amount (say 15mls) and after looking at colour, aroma etc just take a very small sip. The rest gets dumped in the spittoon straight from the glass.

Obviously at large tastings where you will have dozens and dozens of wine you need to spit, but in my experience lots of people don’t and end up wandering around the cheese boards at the end totally plastered!

Why are you still here Missingstreetlife?

If your nearly 40 if you took a few years to save/pay debts you can still buy a house. My dad did at 45, it’s a 15-20 year mortgage so a little bit higher but you can still do it

Thank you. I looked at a typical 15 year mortgage and for a house up north it would be less than we pay in rent for our small apartment here.

I’m going to ask MN to move this thread to addiction support as I think that’s where it should go to sleep.

Thank you all so much again, and onwards and upwards!

If it helps.... my DH went into rehab in his 40's (we hadn't met at that point) and knew this was his last chance and he had to make serious life changes if he was going to live happily in the future. He came out and was living in cheap rented accommodation and managed to get a decent job and worked his way back up to a reasonable position. (We work in the same field and I know he'd have been higher up the ladder if he hadn't fucked up in his early forties.)
Thankfully, it's been more than 20 years since rehab and he's stayed completely sober, gave up the fags too and we met when he'd been sober for about 6 years. We moved overseas to his dream spot and we now have a young child together.
He's the most amazing person I know and rehab gave him his life back.
It really isn't too late for you, if you're willing to make big changes to your lifestyle. I wish you well.

One of my closest and wisest friends in AA went into rehab in his mid sixties. Absolutely never too late, to echo a PP!

And I always remember someone saying to me that relapses are part of recovery. It might be an excuse but if it gets you back on track, it really doesn't matter.

Can I just say, my dad was addicted to class A drugs for years, lost his home and business. He bought a house at 47 shorter mortgage term but he turned it around. Sort it out OP & buy yourself a lovely house & I hope your life improves nobody is perfect we all make mistakes. You’ve still got a lot of time to fix it! Go for it

I just wanted to wish you the best OP. Moving up North sounds like a breath of fresh air for you. You have a good set of ethics to your behaviour, you just need to apply that same set to yourself and looking after your body, because you are valuable and worth it JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE. Getting away from the environment of booze is probably your best long-term aim. Just think to yourself, in 10 years time I do not want to look back and regret the last decade. Also, now is the time to make changes because unfortunately long term alcohol use leads to cognitive decline and makes it harder to change later.

You need to get to the bottom of what is causing your addictions to alcohol and your poor impulse control.

Those two things are strongly associated with ADHD/ADD. Might be worth reading up on those and other neurological conditions.

Cut down on drinking. Stop getting take aways - meal plan and shop online or somewhere like Lidl to keep costs down. Forget going on holidays you can’t afford - buy a tent and camp in the UK or houseswap.

First step of recovery is acknowledgement of addiction. You've realised you have a problem and well done on the first step. You now need to keep going whether it snail paced or full steam ahead but each step is an achievement that will make you proud. Never a greater feeling in life than doing something that makes you feel proud of yourself. They'll be people whether close to you or distant that will root for you.
Good luck and keep going good