Please Help.

AlexLK

Thank you all. I will respond later as I'm really struggling to think straight right now, going to try and deal with a few orders I have outstanding from the weekend and then try to deal with the rest of this including opening my bills.

Surprise, surprise the wife has text me telling me that she's going to her brother's after work so I'll be left to deal with an upset boy who wants to see his mother before bedtime.

Bublin1

The wife is a spoilt young lady.

She expects and gets too much, hubby is doing most of the childcare. Seriously for someone who had a hard upbringing she sure does act entitled.

If she walked out I'd hold the door open for her and tell her to leave my son. She can come back when she has grown up abit.

WAIT......she actually didn't come home to you and your son. Lock the da*n door, give your boy a cuddle. She sounds like a gold digger. When the gold ran out, she walked out.

wegle

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and I do really hope that your wife just needs some time to absorb and reflect on the situation, but surely she must have known something was going on. She knew you had taken a drastic drop in salary and presumably being a woman with her head screwed on knows how much things cost? She must have known you were living beyond your means.

Maybe a certain part of her reaction is a bit of personal shame, she knew what must be happening but was to naive/proud/ashamed to admit it. It's probably easier for her to blame it all on you than to take on any of the responsibility. However she and you both will need to realise this will take a joint effort from both of you to resolve. The good news is that it is completely resolvable, it's just going to take some hard work.

MoneyMission

Oh, Alex. This is all getting worse rapido but things have to hit rock bottom before they can go upwards again. At least its all out in the open now.

Your wife is going to be angry but only because you've kept her protected in the past from the full knowledge. Now she knows the situation, she needs a bit of time to face up to reality. Not sure how leaving you at home with your son to care for whilst you also try and work is going to help, but her actions are probably an expression of her anger.

Personally, I can't imagine either Mr MM or I having secrets about money from each other. We are both responsible adults in the boat of married life. We have to keep afloat and honesty is the best way to stay that way! Mr MM does bang on about how he'd like a new bike, a new car, a new jacket, a new suit (this was all in the last week!) but he knows we don't have the money right now. Its just his pipe dreams and I know I can say mine out loud too. Doesn't mean we'll get into debt to achieve them. We'll talk through our wish lists and if anything is feasible we'll work towards it - TOGETHER.

Sorry Alex. I wish I could be a qualified marriage / debt counselor and pop round to wave my magic wand for you. But I ain't!

Sending you good vibes though and fingers crossed that you work it out.

MM

debtbustingdeb

Just read your post from the start.

Sending you a hug

If your wife really loves you i'm sure she is just mad and needs time to come to terms with everything. You do need her to help you through this if you stay together. Let her have the time she needs to come to terms with it all. Enjoy the time spent with your son it goes too fast. When he's gone to bed then get on with opening the bills.

You have taken your head out of the sand now open your eyes to everything you owe.

When you hit the bottom the only way is up.

LannieDuck

Hi Alex,

You didn't gamble your money away, or buy a second home on credit cards, or do anything especially irresponsible. You lost your job because of your health, and then you and your wife continued to spend as if you still had a high income. This isn't only your fault. She may not have realised she was getting into debt (so I can understand why she's upset that you were hiding it)... but she knows now. It might take a few weeks for her to get over the shock, but if she's reasonable she'll come around. The only alterantive is for her to carry on spending more than she earns and racking up more debt.

You have £5000 debt. Sell some pens and get rid of it. If you don't, you'll need to pay interest on it every month and it will just end up costing you extra in the long run. It may play well with the wife too - give her a clean slate and then sit down with her to to tackle your incoming/outgoings as a team.

When you get rid of the loan interest, you're still about £350/mth short of breaking even. It sounds as if you've got that down some way by speaking with BT. But however much it hurts, you must get your shortfall down to £0/mth. How you do it is your choice. You could:

£50 - halve your alcohol intake
£50 - halve your present allowance
£100 - halve your clothing allowance
£150 - reduce your holiday allowance - perhaps just have one nice holiday per year instead of 4?

Of course, you could substitute these changes for others, e.g. if your wife has fewer haircuts, you could put more away into the holiday fund. If you put the child benefit into the school fund, you could free up some of the school fund money to cover the shortfall. Or you limit your car hobby to birthdays and christmases only.

You have endless possible ways to tackle this. I'm afraid you just have to pick your poison

AlexLK

And it gets worse. Opened the credit card bills that I've been ignoring for far too long, what I thought was getting on for £20,000 is more closer to £30,000. Starting to wonder if my wife really would be better off leaving with my little boy in order to give him a better life. For the first time in years, I feel suicidal again.

HPoirot

Are you adamant that you won't return to your old line of work, if only for a few years? Might help pay the debts off, when these are cleared then you might want to concentrate on your business?

Mrs_A_2

AlexLK, I have to echo what everyone else is saying. You have not mustered up that kind of debt by yourself. Whilst your wife may have been oblivious to it all, she most certainly knew your salary had gone down and that she was doing nothing to claw back! Please don't burden all of the guilt for this. Her walking away from you is the equivalent of you doing the same to her over it. You created the debt TOGETHER.

tallyhoh

AlexLK wrote: »

And it gets worse. Opened the credit card bills that I've been ignoring for far too long, what I thought was getting on for £20,000 is more closer to £30,000. Starting to wonder if my wife really would be better off leaving with my little boy in order to give him a better life. For the first time in years, I feel suicidal again.

How would that give him a better life? He wouldn't be any better off financially if that's what you mean & he would miss his dad as well.

Are you actually having any letters etc about the credit cards?