Life After Lockdown

[Deleted User]

Hi V8D,

First of all, well done on taking the leap and starting a diary. The sooner we get our heads around paying our mortgages down, the better and your future self will thank you for it 😊

A couple of things that stick out for me. Second hand appliances, there can be all sorts of genuine reasons why good quality second hand items come to the market. For example, we sold my grandmas appliances online when she sadly passed away, all top quality still in warranty etc, but for reasonable prices as we needed to realise the cash. Also a lot of people sell when they are getting new fully fitted kitchens with integrated appliances. Just something to be a in mind.

You have done wonderfully on your weight loss, well done. I have no idea how old you are, but assuming you are younger than me (34), and your hubby may be similar, I am astounded that he is not contributing to the household pot. What if one day you decided you want a change of career which would make you happier but would mean a lower income? Or if you decide to have children? If the sole responsibility to earn is falling to you
and you still have high levels of debt to service this puts you and you alone in a very awkward position. Also the fact he is waiting for you to earn the money to buy and sell houses on the side is maddening. Surely he can do something to contribute to make this happen sooner, why on earth js it all up to you? I'm sure the majority of the working population would rather not work, but we just dig deep and get on with it to provide for our households 😊

I am sorry if I speak out of turn, but as an outsider reading your words he seems to have done a good job of making you think it's okay for him not to do anything at all to bring money in, he isn't 'retired', which by definition alone means he has worked for a living and is now living off the pensionable income that he rightly deserves for doing that work, he just sounds apathetic about it all.

Please take care of YOUR needs NOW, your future self will thank you for it xx

South_coast

Hope you're OK V8D x

Moneywhizz

Just stumbled on your diary and have read through today. Sounds like you are highly motivated and hard working and manage your life and work really well. You are now getting to grips with your debt and mortgage and with your income will surely be able to realise many of your goals. The thing that I cant quite understand is how you can accept the situation you find yourself in with your husband making absolutely no contribution to your household. I am assuming this means he has no income of his own and is dependent on you to supply everything for him. I may have misunderstood the situation  but does this mean you also supply a car for him and spending money for his hobbies? if this is the case he is actually using you as a provider and instead of being a support to you, is making things twice as difficult for you to realise your goals. If he can't be bothered to work then really he doesn't deserve to have any money to spend on anything. I think it is time for you to have a serious talk with him and explain that you would like your marriage to be a partnership and that it is time for him to contribute equally to the household by getting himself some employment and at the very least covering all of his own expenses including, food, cars, hobbies etc but also making a contribution to the normal bills of a household. Sorry if this sounds harsh but you deserve much more than this and you are the only one who can change the situation you find yourself in. I wish you well and hope that things do change in this area. 

V8D

Hi All, 

I will try to respond to each individual reply over the coming day or so. To cut a long story short after posting my financial position on here I really struggled to come to terms with the fact it was out in the public eye for all to see so haven't been on here for quite a while. I have also been questioning whether the criticism of my relationship would be the same were it the other way round; maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't, who knows?

On a more positive note, I have been progressing with paying down the credit cards. Since lockdown I have become solvent on a day to day basis, paying off the overdraft and not using it since. We are not eating out (obvs 🤣) and sold a few bits on eBay in addition to lockdown income. This has meant that our current credit card balances are as follows:
Credit Card 1: £3,570 (down from £6,450 at the start of lockdown) 😀
Credit Card 2: £1,595
Credit Card 3: £3,075

Feeling like we're making real progress and managed to speak to my husband about us having an amount of spending money each month once the income is back to usual levels. 

Moved the mortgage onto a new rate meaning payments are £390 from August. Husband and I have also agreed that from August when the new rate applies we are going to pay £650/m in total.

South_coast

Fantastic work on the credit cards, and that mortgage OP will make a huge difference 😀

longway2go

Hi, 
Lovely to see you back and making progress. 

Tropically

On the holiday note, I like to find women only retreats. I pick an interest, yoga, painting, tacos, surfing, planting trees etc. and find a ladies-only holiday to go on. You won't know the other people but usually leave as friends, I have never had a wholly bad experience (though the occasional lonely day). 

Bargainhunter30

Try not to take comments to heart, noone knows you or your circumstances. Most people on this board are very kind and will only be looking out for you and offering an opinion incase you hadn't thought of it. 

Well done on the progress x

V8D

Saving Holmes:
Firstly, a big thank you for having a look at my SOA. 🙂
Lockdown income is £2,500 and some of the spends in the SOA aren't being made because lockdown.
Cars: we are selling one when lockdown is over. 🙂
HP: it's my work car, £0.45/mile claim usually pays for it. Yes, I'm sure you can get a new car cheaper (it's a Jaguar XF) but I spend a lot of time in the car and really like it. The rate is the standard one on a new Jaguar. I went back through the paperwork and found it was 3.9% rather than 5.9%.
Broadband: thank you! Definitely going to look at the Vodafone deal. Does that include calls?
Mobiles: one of my mobiles the business pays for in expenses (£49) so the actual bill is £16.
Groceries: happy to have a look at that, thank you. 🙂
Clothing: I have lost a lot of weight and literally have about 2/3 outfits. 😂😂😂 That's the reason for the planned spend.
Car insurance: with the car we're planning to sell gone, insurance will be c.£60/m.
Car maintenance: XF has a full Jaguar warranty so is servicing only. My husband does c.2,500 miles a year in the dog/ shopping car and we've got a classic American car which we do c.2,000-3,000 miles a year. So despite having a number of cars we don't need a lot to maintain them. Sports car is being sold as my husband can't bear to be in it with his back issues. 
Health Insurance: no particular reason just think it would be a good idea incase one of us got ill.
Life Insurance: this is something we need to sort.
Entertainment: this is £0 at the moment in lockdown so we are saving it. I have written down that amount as a target for the future. We were talking about personal spends and plan to do this also post lockdown. 🙂
Emergency Fund: we are concentrating on paying the cards down, so plan to save much more aggressively to get the emergency fund up once the cards are gone. They are not too far off the 0% running out so would rather get them cleared first than enter into balance transfer fees / interest payments. 
Where was the money going? Entertainment / eating out. Before lockdown we were spending over £1k per month on restaurants alone. Not pleased about it and this was actually my trigger to get this sorted as I saw an opportunity to 'reset' during lockdown. 🙂

V8D

Deleted_User said:

Hi V8D,

First of all, well done on taking the leap and starting a diary. The sooner we get our heads around paying our mortgages down, the better and your future self will thank you for it 😊

A couple of things that stick out for me. Second hand appliances, there can be all sorts of genuine reasons why good quality second hand items come to the market. For example, we sold my grandmas appliances online when she sadly passed away, all top quality still in warranty etc, but for reasonable prices as we needed to realise the cash. Also a lot of people sell when they are getting new fully fitted kitchens with integrated appliances. Just something to be a in mind.

You have done wonderfully on your weight loss, well done. I have no idea how old you are, but assuming you are younger than me (34), and your hubby may be similar, I am astounded that he is not contributing to the household pot. What if one day you decided you want a change of career which would make you happier but would mean a lower income? Or if you decide to have children? If the sole responsibility to earn is falling to you
and you still have high levels of debt to service this puts you and you alone in a very awkward position. Also the fact he is waiting for you to earn the money to buy and sell houses on the side is maddening. Surely he can do something to contribute to make this happen sooner, why on earth js it all up to you? I'm sure the majority of the working population would rather not work, but we just dig deep and get on with it to provide for our households 😊

I am sorry if I speak out of turn, but as an outsider reading your words he seems to have done a good job of making you think it's okay for him not to do anything at all to bring money in, he isn't 'retired', which by definition alone means he has worked for a living and is now living off the pensionable income that he rightly deserves for doing that work, he just sounds apathetic about it all.

Please take care of YOUR needs NOW, your future self will thank you for it xx

Hi ASparklyBlonde! 👋

Thank you. 😀 I'm glad I started the diary even if I've not done much with it these past few weeks, I have been thinking about the finances and working to find a budgeting solution which works for us. 

Second hand appliances: definitely something for me to think about in the future. I suppose I have a bit of a trust issue with strangers and thinking are their reasons the truth? I get lied to about the condition of things doing my job quite a lot. 😂😂😂 As it happened we opted for a new Samsung, £50 over budget at £350 but has a 5 year parts and labour warranty. Bought out of last month's surplus.

Thank you re. weight loss. 🙂 Really enjoying building up my fitness level at the moment. I'm 31 and my husband is 34, so we are quite close in age. I completely appreciate where you're coming from. I don't mind about him choosing not to earn but do feel frustrated sometimes that he sometimes doesn't really contribute to the house in other ways. During lockdown, he's been a lot better and we've had the chance to talk about the finances and what's a good amount for us to have each as personal spends once the debt is clear so there's no guilt or frustration. Sorry for being somewhat forthright but I'm not sure you'd ask a man what he'd do if his wife didn't work and he wanted a career change or a family? I love running my business and am very driven to grow it. My husband have discussed if we ever had a child he would be the main caregiver. We discussed this very early in our relationship (I was 20 when we met!) and that would work well for us also we would only have one child if we do decide to have a family. We are not ready yet, though. Maybe one day, maybe not.

You've hit the nail on the head re my frustration about the "retired" thing. 😂 He is very apathetic to work / business / money etc. and always has been!

Thank you re taking care of my needs, I've really tried to do this over lockdown. The other week I put a sports direct order in for the new trainers, asked my husband if he wanted anything and explained the whole trainer thing. He thought I'd got a lot of trainers, I showed him they were old (like 10 years), two pairs had big cracks all the way through the sole and two are hiking shoes so not suitable for running and he was just like 🤷🏻‍♀️ why do we have these things still in the house (the damaged ones)? 😂