Cant afford my wife anymore

Miss_Poohs

She's not going to like it Enabler, but you're going to have to have a heart to heart with your wife.

My husband ran up huge debts behind my back and I mean huge, approx £86000, not including the mortgage.

All ran up much the same as you guys, using cards to pay cards.

Boy was I p1ssed off when I finally did uncover the brutal truth about my husbands debt.

I was hurt, upset, deceived you name it.

I had no idea how much he had.

I've always worked, even when our son was young, I just worked around him. I've always been careful with money too, so I was utterly devastated when I found out about the debt, and believe me we don't and never have lived extravagantly. Looking back on things I never could work out why we never had any money - little didn I know eh.......... it was all minimum payments I guess.

From what you say, your wife isn't a stupid woman, and she must know deep down you're both kidding yourselves.

I'd wait until you have the house to yourselves and lay the facts bare.

She's not going to be happy but thems the breaks.

Put it like this - your wee one is nearing school age, and perhaps a baby brother or sister is on your wifes mind - can you imagine what your finances will be like 4 yrs from now, if you carry on regardless.

SUESMITH_2

i can't believe she doesnt realise you are in financial difficulty - she doesn't work, spends money like water and you live in a massive house thats totally ott for three people. it seems like its all for status. like everyone else says you need to tell her now otherwise tomorrow she will be ringing you on that expensive mobile phone demanding to know why her cards have been declined.

Poosmate

gggareth wrote: »

yup snakes with t its:d

Are you Gareth Gates?

Poo

katiepatie

Well done for facing up to things, OMG if this had been posted in Dec i would have thought we were married lol, i only noticed we had a problem when my OH used his cc for our christmas food shopping...anyway after getting the truth out of him, i am now looking after our money and it was the wakeup call i needed, tbh i didn't even know the price of milk a couple of months ago:o! honest if she likes her life style she'll work hard to keep it, you just have to tell her

slummymummyof3

Please speak to your wife so you can work at this together.
You could do some research in to cheaper or even free groups/activities for your child to attend.

Do you have Aldi or Lidl nearby? Even if you bought your fruit/veg and milk here it would save you quite a bit. I have gone from using Clinique lipstick @ £14 a time to the Aldi lipstick @ £1.99 (could be £2.99 sorry can't remember) and the Aldi one is better than the Clinique one. It is fashionable to shop in these supermarkets - daily mail had an article a few weeks back which made very interesting reading.

How long have you had your life insurance? Obviously this is not something you can cancel!! However, prices have come down quite a lot over the last few years.

Can you have a sort out and ebay any unwanted items? There must be quite a number of things with the expenditure you have had.

bluebag

enabler wrote: »

I know.............

she spends most days shopping, at the gym or taking our daughter to one of her classes -not sure what she will do with her time if this is entirely cut.

Get a job??
Your wife has a very nice lifestyle, very sadly it's one you both can't afford. You can try and kick the can down the road a little longer with more loans /cards etc, but hey, your a smart guy, I think you know how this ends.

If you keep doing the same thing, nothing will change.

At the moment you still have choices, would be smart to take them while you both still can.

Further down the debt road you will wish you had, I know, I've been there. I was once the high earner in our house, my situation was similar, later on came the repossesion notice, CCj's, the bailiffs the phone non stop, the red ,oh very very red letters and most of all ...the shame. Grab the courage and make the changes while you still can.
Wishing you the best.
bb

HyperAngelKaeverak

It sounds like you need to really take a look at your finances, figure out how much you can afford to spend each month. If you really feel like your wife is the problem here talk to her about it. While asking here helps a lot of situations this sounds like something you need to speak with your wife about

inca_2

Ok, so on the positive side you are looking at the situation knowing it can't continue and have made your first steps to taking some action to deal with it. However, I don't mean to be harsh and I know it's by no means easy but you have been given some really good ideas here but it seems that you either accept that your wife doesn't want to cut back on her lifestyle or that you're not giving her the option by not having that conversation with her. I know it's not an easy conversation to have but the longer you leave it the harder it will become and the more serious and immediate the problem will become.

There are no two ways about it, the lifestyle that you as a family have been living has got to be cut back, luxuries like the gym/nails/beauty treatments/sky are just that, luxuries, you have those things when they are affordable and right now they are not. You could gain so much of your shortfall by cutting these added luxuries out and by cutting down your grocery shopping and phone contracts onto PAYG (you can triple up with Tesco top ups). Yes of course nobody actually wants to do these things but you cannot say you are dealing with the situation and genuinely still struggling whilst you refuse to cut down on these spendings.

Talk to your wife and give her the opportunity to say what she is willing to do because right now you are speaking for her without actually speaking to her. If she is not prepared to make any sacrifices (and I don't consider giving up beauty treatments etc to be a genuine sacrifice given what lengths others on this board have gone to to reduce their debts) then she needs a big fat wake up call. Soon enough there will be no money to pay these things anyway so she won't have an option. Stay strong and take the next step in facing up to things by talking to her about it. You've done the right thing in realising it needs addressing and between the two of you you can start to put things right. People are always here and will always offer help and advice. This is an extremely helpful board from what I have seen and people will be rooting for you and you will never be on your own. So do what you have to do and if things go badly then we'll all be here to listen to you and offer suggestions on where to go next

yenool

If your wife's salary used to be twice your own then she must be an intelligent woman, and so she must share the blame with you. Common sense suggests that you cannot cut your income by over 50% and still go around spending cash like you used to.

You obviously have done wrong by not telling her sooner, but she has to share responsibility for going out and spending all day while you work, the huge house and generally keeping up with the Joneses (which is what appears to be going on to me).

You will have to cut your spending dramatically and your wife will have to get a part time job.......... it will be hell but if you start now you should be able to save your house and get yourself sorted out in time.

Tell her what is going on ASAP....... No offense intended, but if she goes mad or fails to see the problem then I think you have bigger issues than just money.

RobertoMoir

I'm going to speak fairly plainly here.

Firstly, your wife WILL find out about this (assuming you didn't already tell her last night). Your choice is that she can find out because you tell her that you need to work together to fix this, or she can find out because all her cards get declined when she goes shopping or she can find out because bailiffs knock on your door one day.

You're worried she's going to be mad when she finds out but which of the scenarios above is going to make her the least mad?

You talk about her spending stuff, you not being able to afford her habits, etc. Well your username is apt - I'm sure you know that and that's why you picked it. While she perhaps... ok definitely... should have stopped to ask "can we afford all this", you also should have spoke up before now. You can't blame her for spending money you don't have when you've told her that you _do_ have it. Sorry, but that isn't fair.

Your choices are to take drastic steps to fix this now, or to sink further in the mire, making it harder each day to get out again. You can't do the first one without her co-operation if she's the one spending most of the money. You need to get her on board. Then you need to take joint responsibility for the problem. It isn't your fault. It isn't her fault. It's down to both of you together. That's how you got into this and it's how you'll get out of it.

You need to sit down together and look at the SOA you've shown us, you need to both be brutal and realistic about what you spend, what you earn, what you would like to have, what you can afford to have right now and what you hope to be able to afford once this is sorted out. If that means she goes back to work at least while you fix the current debt crisis that is what she has to do. If that means you have to give up something you like then that is what you have to do too.