Very Annoyed at my OH too

tesuhoha

Im annoyed at my OH too. I suppose its just trivial really but I'm really irritated by it. When my daughter went to Africa on a school trip a few years ago, he bought her a really expensive camera for her birthday. She only took a couple of rolls of film on the trip and then left the camera in her room gathering dust. In the early part of this year I started selling off loads of stuff to help with our debt and it really did make a difference. I sold a lot of my boy's computer games and used the money to pay off debt. My logic was that it was helping the family finances as a whole and if we were better off then so would they be. With this in mind, I sold her camera. He helped me take the photos of it and I got £59 for the lens and £52 for the camera. I think he expected me to give the money to her because she was going to Thailand and Cambodia but I didnt, I paid it off our outstanding debt. In June she popped home from uni to pick up our small tent as she was going to a rock festival in Holland and I found out afterwards that OH had given her the digital camera, the one I used all the time to sell stuff on ebay. His reasoning was that I had 'sold her camera and pocketed the money' :mad: He said that the trip she was going on was a trip of a lifetime and its nice to be able to look back to when youre young and look at the photos. I said a disposable would be good enough and he said it wasnt. :mad: We had a row about it at the time because I still had loads of stuff to sell on ebay and no longer could. He started looking at digital cameras on ebay, but to get one comparable in quality to the one he had given away was over £160. Then I was even more annoyed to get an email from my DD apologising, she had left the digital camera in the tent when she went to Holland (before the Thailand trip) and it had overheated and was totally destroyed! :mad: So now she is on her trip to Thailand and Cambodia with a disposable camera and I have s..... loads of stuff still to sell on ebay and cant and loads of debt to pay off which would have been really helped by my ebay sales. :mad:If it is mentioned now he just looks rather sheepish.

wuckfit

tbh, I think selling the camera in the first place was the wrong thing to do. regardless of what's happened since. selling possessions that aren't even yours 'for the greater good' is a bit off. I think there's a limit to moneysaving, and this crosses the line of acceptable, it's theft IMO.

How would you feel if somebody sold your possessions/gifts to service their debt?

sorry.

tesuhoha

Well I didnt sell it without asking her. At the moment because we are so deep in debt I am unable to do anything for the kids to help them and we have always put them first in the past. If we werent in debt then I probably would have paid for her trip to Thailand and everything else. As it is I pay her rent and fees and most other expenses at uni as well as a lot of her clothes so I thought it was the least she could do was to help out by donating her camera to the cause of paying off our debt. Once we are debtfree then she will benefit in many ways again. I am not a selfish person in any way and always put my children's welfare first even though they are older now. I just feel that the debt has to be paid back somehow and we will all benefit as a family if it is. All the interest we will pay on this debt will harm them too. She was not interested in the camera and obviously didnt value the one given to her. My OH had the same attitude as you and giving her the digital camera was a double edged sword of spite.

bluezone

tesuhoha,

I quite agree with you, I would be angry aswell. At the end of the day you dont mention that your daughter was mad about the selling of the camera and IMHO if she can afford to do all these trips then she can buy her own camera rather than accepting to take yours away in the first place.

I dont mean to offend as this is just my own opinion which obviously may differ from other peoples.

bluezone

Also why are you paying for all of her rent when she is not paying and just saving for TRIPS away. I have never expected my parents to fund my rent if al I was doing was saving my money for exotic trips away!!!

Graham_Devon

I do think selling the camera was a bit off, and your husband saw his little girl without a camera and we aint good when our little girls want something!

However, paying for her rent while she's at uni? I paid my own rent all the time, never been to uni, but did at home. So in this respect, the camera can go towards her rent! So I wouldnt feel to bad if thats the case.

Surely by paying her rent and fee's when she can do what most people do and get a 0% uni loan, like most of the people at uni did, is spoiling her? Therefore, not looking after the camera etc?

lynzpower

oh god tes, your hubby just hasnt twigged on at all has he?

cant he come here so we can give him a good ol talking to

sanfrancisco

Just get a mega cheap digital camera so you carry on selling. Doesn't have to be flash, just functional.

mocolo

Have you tried freecycle to get a little digital. Some do come up sonetimes and you never know who has upgraded theirs. You can also ask to loan one for a period of time. Might be worth a try,
mocolo

tesuhoha

I'm going to ask her to bring the camera back when she comes home so that we can have a look at it and see if it can be salvagedl

llh189

I totally understand your position, I would be mad too if were in your shoes.

I would like to make a couple of non judgemental points though:

Your daughter is now at University and needs to start standing on her own two feet, she won't learn the value of money and stuff if your OH keeps giving her really really expensive things and then not taking responsibility for them and if you keep paying for she rent, food, clothes etc.

How exactly is she funding all of these wonderful trips?

If you are paying for them - stop paying, if she is using student loans, CC or her overdraft, get her to stop funding them that way. If she is working maybe she could use some of that money to pay for her day to day expenses and then let you pay of the family debt quicker.

I had a great time at Uni, but it wasn't fully funded by my mum and dad, I'm not saying that she shouldn't have fun and you shouldn't help look after her but you need to start letting her live within her means and value the cost of her possesions and money.

Some people learn their attitudes towards money from their parents, geting everything in life really easily could mean potential but now pay later problems for her.

I take it as s a family you got in to debt, I think you need to seriously talk to your OH about his attitude to solving family problems, and tackiling your debt problems, not in a shouty confrontational way but in an adult sit down way, he should be both supportive over family issues and procatively help you solve your debt issues.

I don't agree at all with Wuckfit about selling the original item, most of us are in in debt are in it because we have bought stuff that we don't really need, or constantly get the lastest this, that and other. Selling used stuff is one way of trying to recoup some of the overspend, it also makes me think twice about buying something for £100 knowing that if I don't like it / use it someone will only pay £5.00 for it. If it was your daughters prized posession A - she would have used it B She would have taken it to Uni with her and C She would have been upset when you so it. So I think that you did the right thing in getting rid of it!

HTH

L x