Some advice please - we just keep arguing!

GeorgieFTB

Oh my... jadal you sound just like my mother about 15 years ago, I'm not going to dwell on that, doesn't end well...

I think you're best bet is to put your foot down, if you are in charge of the finances then you are in charge. Bargainbetty got here before me. My mum basically took away all of my fathers access to money, gave him a card with petrol money and spending money, from what I remember it was £50 a week.

The bargain between them was as long as he got to work there would never be any questions or nagging about what the money was spent on, it was his to spend as he wanted, in return my mum managed the rest of the finances.

It stopped a lot of the arguments, until my mother found out about a CC my Dad had got without telling her...

It might just be your turn of phrase but it seems like there could be a lot of wine consumption, another issue of my Dads, only he liked beer... As I said you could be my mother from 15 yrs ago...

Good luck, I hope you manage to sort this out better than my parents did. Not doing anything about my fathers spending caused a lot of resentment, still does...

When I started writing I thought I had answers, reading back I really don't, sorry about that!

Gx

jadal

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Tixy - I have tried giving him a daily rundown of what is left in the account - it makes no difference! We are in overdraft at the moment, have been for the past two months or so. My plan to use the savings would clear this at the end of this month and so we would be at a good starting point. We have a joint account
and everything comes out of this. I do have my own current account that the child benefit goes into and this is what we have been saving.

I think I am swaying towards the option of using the savings, not telling him I am going to do that and then every month putting £500 aside to build up the savings on payday so it's not there.

I think the alcohol issue has to be addressed as well but again he refuses to listen and I am just made to feel like a nag. He is overweight too, a lot of which I think can be attributed to how much wine he consumes. He moans that he's put on loads of weight and isn't as fit as he used to be, but if I say something about the wine he says his job is really stressful and he never goes out. He does go out, albeit very occasionally and he plays football twice a week but he makes me feel like he has no social life so I shouldn't deny him his pleasure of a bottle of wine. I wouldn't mind so much if he would just stop saying 'I'm going to get fitter', 'I want to lose weight' and 'I'm not going to drink this month' and then carrying on as usual. In a way I wish he could just be honest then I could budget and get his wine cheaper as suggested.

The only worry I have though is that if I bulk bought his wine so it was cheaper he'd just drink more!

GeorgieFTB

jadal wrote: »

The only worry I have though is that if I bulk bought his wine so it was cheaper he'd just drink more!

Then you really do have to worry... he sounds like he has an addiction. He needs to hit rock bottom before he will change, all I can say is good luck, again!

Gx

jadal

Hi Georgie,
Don't worry about not having answers - in a way it's quite cathartic to just 'talk' about this with someone, I think I have been bottling it all up and looking for answers on my own. I think we have stopped communicating because of the tension it causes. I hope we can rectify things before its too late - it's just very difficult to sort things out with someone who would rather pretend everythiong was fine than deal with it!

jadal

I don't know whether you would call it an addiction. I wonder whether he has a problemn from time to time. I don't drink and my parents didn't really drink. Dad would go out Friday night for a few beers and that was it. He drank alot when I met him at Uni and has always drunk a bottle of wine about four times a week.. When things are tough at work he drinks more. In 2008 he decided to stop drinking for a year and he did it - never drunk a drop, ran a marathon, was healthier etc etc sop he can do it.

Thimngs went downhill at work and he started again. After Xmas he said he was going to go for another year without drinking. Within a fortnight he was drinking again. I can't understand why he has to be alll or nothing. It seems reasonable to me to limit it to the weekend, he agrees with me but never sticks to it.

MyLastFiver

Hi,

Tell him you're going to clear the overdraft and cancel it. That way neither of you can dip into it. He'll soon stop going to Tescos after work when his card gets declined. Yes there'll be a row, but if he won't stop spending then maybe you need to remove the means.

Another thought - if you're going to have 700pm to put away for the kids, then how about cutting your husband some slack and relaxing about the odd bottle of wine. Say, 60pm. This still leaves 640 in savings. 60pm = approx 10 bottles of wine, or one every 3 days. If he wants more than this, then he has a problem with alcohol!

DVardysShadow

While I do agree with borrowing the kids' savings, I think that the issues with husband and his spending needs to be dealt with first. Fight like a tiger to protect the savings! Once they get swallowed up, if his spending is not under control, you'll never put the money back.

GeorgieFTB

We keep cross posting so I thought I would wait to see your response.
It really is striking how much your situation is like my parents, you even sound like my mother. She made excuses as well.

Please don't take the next paragraph as a guilt trip, it's not meant that way, to some extent it's what I would have told my mother if I had been self-aware enough at the time. I'm not sure you want my input, it's deeply personal, there are many things I'm missing, I don't know you or your family, I'm speaking from my experience.

I'm 29 with 2 kids. I have chosen to be a single parent I realise now bacause of my childhood. I would rather struggle on my own than live in a cold war atmosphere. My parents would shout and scream at each other, it used to frighten my younger siblings but I much prefered the shouting to the "cold war" we lived in at other times. I've never been very good at walking on egg shells.

My siblings have reacted in different ways, the 'baby' (23), she will kill me for calling her that, is afraid to go out into the real world, she has only just got a pt job, so clings onto my mothers apron strings, well she would do if my mother could cook. The middle of us clings onto girlfriends, cannot be single, he saw what a mess my Dad was when they divorced and decided he would never go through that, even though he is turning into our father, drinks too much can't look after himself.

We all dealt with my parents issues differently, but none of us have a fully functioning relationship, now, we are all old enough to take on the responsiblity for that but I still see the behaviour learned in our early years having an effect.

I think the lack of respect your husband is giving to you might be at the heart of some of the issues, if he has handed the running of the finances over to you then he needs to respect and trust you enough to manage them, including telling him how much money you have budgeted for him to spend.

Whatever you decide to do you have one cheerleader in me already...