Nst; fearless february

Fmess

Thank you thrifty, synonymous, lilt, mothernerd and everyone else who has offered advice on OH/financial situation. I will keep to my resolve and pay off 'my' debts first. It does seem that there are a lot of financially irresponsible OHs out there. Mothernerd - you are right, OH only wants the money for non-essential 'fun' spends.


Hugs to your mum lilt


Calling and abundant - I think you are very brave and inspirational for living alone


Today has been SFD number 2, LTW but no exercise or official 15 minutes tidying - my excuse is 11.5 hours at work. I'm shattered and off to bed.


Thank you again everyone

mothernerd

liltdiddylilt wrote: »

Here you are Apple - I read this the other day. Cured some fears for me

Thanks for that lilt. Just made a sandwich and sat down for a read.:(

apple_muncher

Thanks Lilt - having always been a phlegmy one myself, that's what I thought!

Bobarella

Wow Mothernerd. Your ex OH sounds like he took advantage somewhat...how does the story end?

[Deleted User]

Sorry to keep posting and running. Looking forward to reading up properly on a bigger screen at weekend. Grateful today for DD, who is old and sensible enough to make her own way up and to school so I could leave early today (only 45 min before she left, but felt like forever to me waiting for the text yo confirm she had made it out of the House!); for my lovely family - nephew who I babysat who made me giggle all day long, his mum who trusted me to care for him today, and my folks who popped in at lunchtime to play with him too!
NSD - left wallet at home when we went to playback, deliberately. Toothpaste once again v low, found another airline sample to eek another day out of it! Exercise - walk to park, generally running after toddler. All meals from stores. Veg pasta for lunch, sweetcorn and rice for tea, banana mid afternoon. Your encouragement is helping me to add extra veg portions in! 15 mins....cuddles with the baby, curling up with good book now, earlier night than rest of week. Nighty night x

thriftylass

Well, took pictures of some my attic finds and found this collecters catalogue online. In prestine condition part of the collection would be worth in excess of €500 to collectors in Germany :eek: :eek:. So contacted a museum/catalogy place about where best to sell. He got back to me and said I could send him pictures etc and my price and he'll see what he can do. Still not getting my hopes up but...:D. Also still got a few extra bits for eBay. Will also have to be carefull if he buys it how to handle payment vs sending the items etc. as it's without the securities of eBay and PayPal. We'll see....

liltdiddylilt

mothernerd wrote: »

Thanks for that lilt. Just made a sandwich and sat down for a read.:(

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Sorry!!!!!!

stewby

Evening...

Incredibly tempted to blow my nose and have a look after reading that but continuing with my new-found maturity, I didn't.


The problem with eating yourself out of house and home is that at the beginning of the month, you have to restock.
£60 out of the food budget already. That's half of it gone.
:eek:

To really compound the little annoyances of the day: after four hours of waiting in a freezing cold house, I phoned the boilerman's office and was told he would phone me back. Still waiting, still freezing.


Our uno, dos, tres account won't do the switching so we have to do that ourselves. Great for OH and his four standing orders, not so good for me and all mine (all the housey stuff).
Plan is to do the swapover after the 15th as the council tax is skipped this month. Which gives me two weeks to swap everything over. Hopefully.
:undecided

Hope everyone else is doing okay.
Hugs.

mothernerd

He was made redundant when DS2 was 4 months old. Decided to go contracting, he decided, no consultation. Worked 300 + miles away for the next few years, developed a gambling addiction and put £1000 a month in slot machines. His earnings were around £2000 a month (we had to set up a limited company) and train fares and rent where he was staying was over £500 a month.

I kept a house and three children basically on my child benefit plus did the book-keeping and one day a week full-time study at the local college. After DS3 was born (luckily he made an appearance in the Easter holidays and there were only a few weeks left to the year end) I did a short (10 weeks, 3 days in school hours 1/2 typing, 1/2 using computers hoping I would be able to get temp work if he had further spells without work).

The one day business course I dropped the two eldest with my mum's cousin so she took them to school/ nursery, ran to college, ran back at dinner time to breast-feed DS3, ran back for the afternoon session. Teatime we only had half an hour so I would have a taxi waiting outside college, eat the sandwich I had made that morning, jump out, take DS3 off mum/auntie (auntie took over if mum was working) feed him again and get a taxi back. After finishing at 7pm collect boys from mum's/odd times the childminder's, walk them all home, put them to bed and relax. I think 30 something was on then (first tv thing that involved lots of people who did West Wing etc) I remember watching that and running round with the hoover in the ad breaks.

When DS3 was 6 months old, he and I were involved in an accident. The routine of college kept me going but I suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and it took a full two years till I was normal. Because OH was gambling I couldn't trust him with personal or business finances so had to limp along coping as best I could.

OH joined the Reading GA group and he cut back a lot. He still managed to spend £200 in one evening stuck on a railway station with a cash machine and a slot machine. He had been allowed a card again (at one point we cut all his cards up) and had done some shopping and didn't put the card back in the drawer at home. The rest of the time when he came home (he cut back to once every 3 weeks towards the end as 'travelling was so stressful' - as opposed to being at home with a five yo, a 3yo and a baby) I had to run round doing all the shopping, buying his train tickets, cigarettes etc because he could not be trusted with money.

He thought we should re-locate to Reading. For every one job where we live there were about 600 down south. House prices were roughly double down there. My house (I had bought and paid for my house by the time I was 25 and did not get put in joint names when we married - he kept trying to add unnecessary expenses to the budget whilst me and my mum were cutting them, did all our own catering etc) would cover half the cost but I would have to get a f-t job to cover the other half of the mortgage.

DS2 was half way through his first year of school but they didn't start till the year later in Reading so I would have to sell my house, find the house, new school for DS1, nursery provision for Ds2 and DS3. One week he started to go on about looking forward to some home cooked meals when we moved to be with him.

At which point I asked him what his role was and suggested he took DS3 back with him for the week. He could get him and baby ready, drop him at nursery on the way to work, pick up food on the way home then do bedtime. He couldn't do that but expected me to do it with three of them.

DS3 has a cousin a year younger than he is. We went away to visit for her first birthday on a bank holiday weekend. On bh Monday I got myself and the boys ready, went round his parent's house putting any leftover items in our bags as we were catching the train home after the party. I spent the morning helping the baby's mother get the food ready. At one point OH was boasting loudly about the money he made.

I had been wearing a pink panther t-shirt for most of the weekend (my brother had been given it on holiday and my mother passed it on to me because I had no money for clothes). He had to dress smartly for work and I clothed the boys before myself. Even my mil once remarked that mothernerd will wear what she usually does, as the blouse I had for my wedding was worn for every dressy occasion until it fell to pieces.

When we got home I gave him three months to do something about our marriage. I had already left the boys with my mother and gone to spend the weekend with him to try to discuss things - he refused to talk about it and 'spoil the weekend'. He did take me to a local GA group with a family support group which helped me come to a decision.

I divorced him when DS3 was three years old. I kept my house. He has never paid maintenance for the boys. He has never apologised. He never told his family about his gambling. If you have ever watched 'My name is Earl' you wil have realised that some people only follow the steps in the programme that suit them (Earl is constantly trying to make amends to all the people he wronged whilst he was drinking).

I let the cat out of the bag at ex-mil's funeral (his family were basically asking if there was any chance I would take him back now that my main rival was dead, so that they wouldn't get stuck with him).

There is always a funny side if you look for it. There was a spelling error in my divorce petition. I made them correct it but it still makes me smile to think of my 6'4" 22st ex 'gamboling' in the fields amongst the lambs.

[Deleted User]

Wow, mothernerd, that is an epic story of survival. Hats off to you for getting through each of the challenges presented, no wonder you have a lot of wise advice now! Am running between jobs myself but didn't want to.read and run.