Mortgage payment difficulty advice

incogni2

Spartacus_Mills wrote: »

Lower, you earn nothing my friend.

Is your transparent dislike related to my earning or my spending (to the extent that they can be separated)? If I was working in a bar, would my wife (on her much higher wage) still be 'keeping' me?

Everyone seems to have their opinion as what my wife should be saying/doing. She, however, is capable of making up her own mind.

incogni2

seraphina wrote: »

deal with a husband who is incapable of spending within his means and won't take responsibility for his actions.

Are we not both failing to spend within our means? It is my responsibility to find work (because I currently have none) but don't we share responsibility for the spending decisions that are being made in the current situation?

seraphina

incogni2 wrote: »

Are we not both failing to spend within our means? It is my responsibility to find work (because I currently have none) but don't we share responsibility for the spending decisions that are being made in the current situation?

Yes, it's a joint responsibility - but this isn't about your wife's spending or whatever, it's about you thinking that spending nearly £50/month on Sky is acceptable when you are £700 down a month and unemployed. Who knows what your wife is spending or not spending - that's not detailed by you in your posts, and this thread isn't about that. It's about what your contribution can be to the joint problem of a £700/month hole in your finances. And at the moment, it's not much. It's not about whether it's acceptable to rely on a partner to help support you.

Look, you are not smarter than everyone else, no matter how much time you spend trying to look clever on internet forums. If you were so smart, you wouldn't be in this mess. You are *just like everyone else* who is struggling with money. You are not a special case, you are just like everyone else who has just been made redundant or can't find work. That means everyone's (well meaning) advice applies to YOU and your situation. It means that any income in your situation is better than no income. It means that the Sky goes. Just because you spend your days recompiling kernels, depositing on Sourceforge or being some l33t hacker d00d doesn't mean that you are exempted from the normal laws of money - spend too much and you'll be left with nothing.

iB1

Are you autistic or do you have aspergers? I just wonder from your posting style. I had an ex-colleague at work who was very similar - drilling down and down and down into unnecessary detail and off on random tangents. I'm just asking because I'm trying to find if there's a reason why you're being so obtuse

barnaby-bear

incogni2 wrote: »

Well, I guess that the balance is important - is it not to everyone?

I think that it just means working more (or reducing spending).

But you are working LESS. The fundamental issue is you don't have the salary anymore to maintain the mortgage and the lifestyle. In this economic climate the chances of you earning more or getting the next big contract are going down.....

Kez100

Can I ask? How much do you both spend on mobile phones each month?

barnaby-bear

incogni2 wrote: »

In the many interstices between jobs I was also contributing to open source and community projects as are (probably) 100s of thousands of others. Some open source contributors are paid to do so, some do so without financial reward in their spare time, others when they are temporarily out of work. A breakdown of these various employment statuses, and their background contribution to the infrastructure most of us use every day, would be illuminating.

A number of you who are contractors, or your friends who are, have a day rate which is partly predicated on the efforts of these people. If you simply use the web then part of your experience is likewise as a direct result of these peoples’ efforts.

If I am out of work for a couple more weeks then I will be releasing my own open source product/project (probably via Codeplex). It is small in scope (since it has been written in 3 months) and reasonably limited in the number of people who will find it useful. However, for those small number of people (it is targeted at an enthusiast marketplace), it will enable them to achieve something which was difficult or impossible before. Yeah, I’m sitting on my ar*e – guilty as charged; but lazy? I see little to justify that claim.

(Again for those who object to tone or phraseology, I am not claiming that there is anything special about anything I personally have done or will ever do. There are umpteen programmers who are doing and will do so much more that it will render my small efforts trivial by comparison. It is just worth remembering sometimes that these people tried to give back something out of the goodness of their little hearts, or due to ideological commitment anyway. By all means, persuade them to eschew their guilty debt-building pleasures but don’t kick them too hard just because they are down.)

Hacking around on open source is all very well but it's not a job - it's a bit of fun a lot of us fit around the day job. I work in Silicon fen and it's littered with adequately qualified IT bodies convinced that a Ltd (what's that £40 to register), an ok turnover but no real salary, some expensive professional registrations etc, the chance they might be the 1:100 surprise start-up success etc.... most of these guys are single can take the punt cut back when times are hard, fly off to silicon valley if needs must, move back into a shared house for a while etc... being educated, middle class it's a business that's just slow... but realistically if you are earning below minimum wage and have a home, family to support then it's not a business it's a failing business. A decent business has high enough highs to make provisions for the more meagre times. Contracting is tough at the moment and with hiring freezes and projects postponed and no work for new upcoming hackers rates are falling.

incogni2

Kez100 wrote: »

Can I ask? How much do you both spend on mobile phones each month?

It is in this thread somewhere but quite difficult to find. I spend £35 (approximately), it is an 18-month contract. I don't know if I can legitimately 'break' that contract somehow but I'll look into it (it probably ends in April/May).

My wife has a Pay as you Go mobile. I don't know, at this moment, how much she spends on top ups. Not that much, since I think she only really uses it to text/call me to let me know that the train will be late or whatever.

incogni2

iB1 wrote: »

Are you autistic or do you have aspergers? I just wonder from your posting style. I had an ex-colleague at work who was very similar - drilling down and down and down into unnecessary detail and off on random tangents. I'm just asking because I'm trying to find if there's a reason why you're being so obtuse

I don't believe so (and in the case of autism, I imagine that it would be extremely difficult for it to be concealed), though some computer programmers do seem mildly aspergic perhaps.

incogni2

barnaby-bear wrote: »

Hacking around on open source is all very well but it's not a job - it's a bit of fun a lot of us fit around the day job.

I'm not trying to claim that it is a job (though a lot of people would disagree that it is simply a bit of fun), just something hopefully useful to be doing while looking for work.