PigginSkint's DFW Diary

itangel1981

Hi Pigginskint

I feel compelled to post as I used to be in a similar situation to you; big debts, unsupportive OH. In the end I dumped OH because I realised I was almost 20K in debt and he wasn't helping, just gradually adding to the debt. He lost his job and I somehow ended up supporting him for over a year, all the time he promised me he would get work etc and in the end I just realised he would never change and was in it for a free ride.

Listen, i'm not trying to have a go at you, but it just seems that your OH is taking the **** out of you. It's great that you have had your LBM, but without your OH taking responsibilty for earning money then you don't have a chance at paying your debt off.

It just makes me mad reading your posts because you are trying so hard and it seems that you take 1 step forward and he makes you take 10 steps back.

I think your OH needs to seriously wake up and smell the coffee, and perhaps you are making it too easy for him to get a free ride.

GOod luck.

PigginSkint

itangel1981 wrote: »

Hi Pigginskint

I feel compelled to post as I used to be in a similar situation to you; big debts, unsupportive OH. In the end I dumped OH because I realised I was almost 20K in debt and he wasn't helping, just gradually adding to the debt. He lost his job and I somehow ended up supporting him for over a year, all the time he promised me he would get work etc and in the end I just realised he would never change and was in it for a free ride.

Listen, i'm not trying to have a go at you, but it just seems that your OH is taking the **** out of you. It's great that you have had your LBM, but without your OH taking responsibilty for earning money then you don't have a chance at paying your debt off.

It just makes me mad reading your posts because you are trying so hard and it seems that you take 1 step forward and he makes you take 10 steps back.

I think your OH needs to seriously wake up and smell the coffee, and perhaps you are making it too easy for him to get a free ride.

GOod luck.

Hi and thanks for posting.

I completely agree with you - he is taking the p*** at the moment and I have told him so, in the nicest possible way of course! I also agree that he needs to wake up and smell the coffee - I am doing my best now to make him do that!

I have one trick up my sleeve yet which I shall use if he doesn't buck his ideas up. I haven't mentioned it to him yet, but if necessary I will first threaten it, give him an ultimatum (e.g. he has a month to improve matters), then if necessary act. What am I talking about? The credit card - he has an Egg card as an additional card holder on my account - I shall take it off him if he is not very careful. He really will be up the creek without a paddle if I do that!

Thanks very much for posting on my diary.

PigginSkint

Hi All

Well I have updated my figures and therefore my signature – it’s not pretty. Basically the numbers that count have actually gone up instead of down – total credit cards and total debt. This is bearing in mind that my minimum payments are over £700 a month. :eek:

As the space for the signature is fairly small here is the summary in a bit more detail:

Total Credit Cards
1/1/08 £24,309.73
1/2/08 £24,170.31
1/3/08 £24,515.21
1/4/08 £24,919.74

Total Non-Mortgage Debt
1/8/06 £41,680.59
1/1/08 £37,085.88
1/2/08 £36,789.14
1/3/08 £37,182.72
1/4/08 £37,404.51

So, to put it mildly – not good!

More talking to OH needed I think!

In other news… my Avon delivery came this morning…at 6:25am! Ouch! That’s early! So tonight the job is to bag everything up and get the books ready to go out. I think OH is working tomorrow but I hope he might have time to put my books out for me.

OH is working today and tomorrow (I think!) – let’s hope he gets paid! He is still waiting for a cheque for work he did a few weeks ago. Then he is filming on Thursday – a short film for a student project – unpaid apart from expenses and a copy of the DVD. Grrrrr!!!!!! I keep telling him, if it’s unpaid the answer should be ‘no’! :mad:

OH managed to find a couple of jobs in The Guardian yesterday but he hasn’t told me yet what they are – I was very busy yesterday evening so didn’t get chance to ask!

Oh well, better do some work I suppose. Bye all!

PigginSkint

Why has most of my last post ended up in bold? D'oh! I will go back and see if I can change it!

PigginSkint

Hi All

I have had a very busy week which is why I have not managed to update much. My performance and development review is next week so I have been having to do quite a bit of work to prepare for it. It could lead to a pay rise so though, so obviously it is quite important for a DFW!

OH’s teaching application is progressing – he has now had a reply back from GTTR. Just got to wait for the Uni he is interested in to process his application. He is planning to send them an email though, to discuss the fact that he does not have Maths GCSE and to see what can be done. My goodness – OH being proactive!

OH also looked at a job he found in the Guardian and as a result of my nudging, downloaded the application pack and printed it off. He also showed me the ad in the paper – I had to explain to him what pro rata meant though, so it does not pay as much as he thought it did! OH looked at all the necessary experience and qualifications – he is more than qualified to do the job – but reading over his shoulder I immediately spotted the part that he hadn’t. Under ‘Essential’ it said current clean driving licence and access to car for his use – he has neither! Oh bum! So I suggested he contact them as well (there is a contact email address) to see what other options there are. If nothing else it will bring him to their attention should something more suitable crop up.

Yesterday and today he has been filming a short film for a student project at a local university – unpaid apart from expenses. When he went yesterday he discovered that the other 2 actors who should have been in it had both pulled out, so he had to rehearse and film a different part. He said he was very tempted to walk himself, because they messed him about so much. I wouldn’t have minded if he had – I read the script when he received it and it is utter pants! Oh well, as he says, it could be good for showreel purposes.

OH has actually done some paid work as well this week – including this afternoon (the filming today was only the morning) – so hopefully he might actually get some money in the bank sometime soon. I have also been telling him that he really needs to be much more proactive about job-seeking – contacting places that he would like to work at, rather than just waiting for the adverts to appear in the papers.

I have put MSE on our laptop as an alternative home page so it is easy for him to go into, and I have showed him some forums of interest that he might like to look at.

I know I moan (a lot!) about OH and his lack of organisation and his procrastination, but I will say this about him, he does accept what I say and takes it on board, even if he is slow to act! It’s not (quite) like talking to a brick wall!

I will work on him some more at the weekend and see what else we can get done.

I have been gradually delivering my Avon orders over the course of this week – still a few more to go. I shall probably try to do a few tonight (don’t normally do Fridays) and the rest tomorrow.

I really must get down to money saving/increasing income planning this weekend. I need to list some more stuff on Amazon and, if I can find the digital camera (which has obviously been tidied away into a very safe place at the moment), I might even have a go at listing something on ebay – it could happen!

Moneywise, things are O.K. at the moment – I have got just enough money to pay the rest of the bills this month without dipping into the emergency fund again and of course the Avon money is starting to come in now.

What I must do is sort out my balance transfers that I need to do, in order to save as much money as possible on interest.

DS is with us this weekend so it won’t be as quiet as last weekend – lots of silence in our house last weekend as I was so annoyed at OH. Going to my Dad’s for dinner on Sunday so I will get to drink some of his wine. Woohoo! Alcohol that I haven’t had to pay for!

One thing I forgot to mention at the beginning of the week was the spending I did on Sunday. I was given a £25 M&S gift card for Christmas by some work colleagues and last week I got my new travel pass and we were all give a £10 high street voucher (O.K. that represents less than 1% of the cost of my travel pass but still a bonus!). So I went to M&S and bought £25 worth of tights, pants and knee highs (got loads actually – 6 pairs of opaques, 10 pairs of normal tights in 2 colours, 14 pairs of pants and 5 pairs of knee highs). Then I took my £10 high street voucher into Boots and bought some more t-gel shampoo, cheap talc (BOGOF), deodorant, handwash and something else which I have forgotten for the moment! So quite a good haul and it cost me precisely nothing!

Anyway, suppose I had better do some work, although I don’t really feel like it today – got a bit of a headache threatening. And I shall go home at normal time today – worked late on Wednesday just to try to get stuff done and I was invigilating yesterday afternoon so I was late home again.

Have a good weekend everyone!

hypno06

If you have a headache threatening, take a bit of time out and get shot of the pain. otherwise it will linger for much longer.

Have a good weekend!

PigginSkint

hypno06 wrote: »

If you have a headache threatening, take a bit of time out and get shot of the pain. otherwise it will linger for much longer.

Have a good weekend!

Thanks! I just tried not do too much or to stay too long!

bubbles0169

hello could have a recruit for you here
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=10294941&posted=1#post10294941

PigginSkint

I can't sleep - most unusual for me. I did fall asleep on the sofa for a couple of hours this evening but that doesn't normally stop me getting off to sleep.

Very p****d off with OH again. I was actually feeling a bit more positive today but then he went and messed with my head again (unintentionally as always). Last week his friend contacted him asking him if we would have liked to go out for a drink on Saturday night. OH did realise that we couldn't afford to do that and so said we would do it another time. When I got home today he said that the same friend had been in touch again to see if we would like to go tomorrow night (well, tonight now, if you see what I mean) and OH was seriously considering it. I couldn't have gone anyway because DS is with us this weekend. But I mean, what has changed in the last week?! !!!!!!!!!!:mad: We had a chat in the week about stopping all non-essential spending - we have just finished a bottle of gin and I said that I am not buying another one until we next have a Sainsburys delivery, we will just have to manage with what we have got. Also agreed not to have any takeaways. Non-essential spending also includes going out - what planet is he on?!

Then to cap it all, in spur of the moment thing (I had actually already gone up to bed but OH was still down here on the computer) I decided to log into Egg so he can have a good look at just what he has been spending (and not paying back) over the last few months. I pointed out the transaction I noticed earlier today for 70p at Woolworths on Monday and asked him what it was - probably a newspaper he said (it would have been the Guardian he bought for the jobs). Why did he use the Egg card? Because it was convenient, he said! (what's wrong with using his debit card!!!!) I told him in no uncertain terms that this is not on. Using his Egg card for random spending like that means that he is not actually paying for it at all, it's me that's doing that!!

I got the usual spiel about the fact that his pay was late coming - he finally got the cheque for the ad he did, which less commission came to about £550, and he is also got a cheque for about £200 for some other work he has done. The ad is the 2nd one he has done in 18 months - not exactly a regular income. I asked him how many weeks worth of earnings the £200 one represented - he didn't answer but I know it is a few. As I pointed out to him, £200 is less than I earn in a week, £550 is less than I earn in 2 weeks and the 2 amounts combined wouldn't even cover a month's worth of minimum payments on my non-mortgage debts, so it is really not a lot of money at all.

I told him that I thought he was being really unfair and that it seemed like he was taking the p**s. He said he wasn't but I said that it feels like he is. He contributes absolutely nothing to the family finances (e.g. the mortgage), the 2 bills (for debt he has racked up) he is supposed to pay, I think he has only paid once since the new year, he is buying food and bits and pieces at the moment but just lately I discover he has been using the Egg card to pay for them, so in fact he is not paying for them at all!!

When I came down here a little while ago to get a fix of MSE I had to clear a bit of his post off the sofa and I discovered a letter he has received from student loans (nice of him to mention that!) - it is only asking to confirm contact details but it would seem to suggest that he will actually have to start paying that off soon - what with??!!!

So is it any wonder I can't sleep!!

falady

Hi pigginskint,

Just wanted to send you a hug. I'm new to your diary, so don't know the full story, but i can feel the frustration in your last post! It sounds like OH needs a good kick up the wotsit!

Hope things today are better,

Ali x