Moving on with things

Yankee24

I’m looking forward to Alt’s return where he realises that he loves time away with his family and that it is worth all the monies. 😎

alt80

This coming week is work wrap up and Lapland. I always close the office between Christmas and New Year. I am looking forward to it tbf just hope I can get a bit more sleep. Really struggling with it again. I need to get on and stick with one of those sleep routines. Had my sister and her family up yesterday, it was a nice day tbf but the usual from my BIL choosing the most !!!!!! expensive lunch he possibly could. He does it purposely 100%. Some things never change lol.

@ladyholly / @Sarahwithlove I hope you’re right tbf she says she wants us to grow old together, just can’t help thinking she’ll just go one day. I’ve changed since pre-Covid times idk don’t feel good about myself and think she deserves better. I’m trying not to think about it too much; I can get into a really depressive spiral when I let the !!!!!! shame take over so I am trying to keep myself busy with my family, business and the house. 

She’s gone off the nails room a bit but tbf Christmas is just round the corner, idk I think it would be good for her but it’s not my choice. 

@warby68 ha ikwym, she’s literally been crying in the bath over me telling her she’s either going to get a bike for her birthday or one of the Cartier pieces on her list. She wants the bike for passing her test and the Cartier for her birthday. I’ve told her I can’t afford to do that, individually they are already every bit of spare money and the Cartier piece she really wants is a fair bit more so it’d have to be the second or third on her list. She wants me just to pull more money by using the SSAS money. I’ve told her it’s not happening which I hate having to say no and gave her the option that we don’t have a holiday next year instead. She loves her holidays so that was a no go and tbf I was pleased she decided our holiday budget was better spent on holidays rather than this Cartier piece.

She’s so upset because she thought things would get a lot better once the card balance had been paid off and has admitted to me that she thought we could just spend again, worry about paying for it later. I’ve told her I’m 100% done with that but feel !!!!!! awful for doing so. Tbf our son wasn’t very nice to her today either. He wants a bit of space to play with his mates without her joining in which I get tbf he’s growing up a bit.

It always makes me smile when she’s telling our son that money doesn’t grow on trees. I do !!!!!! worry about his work ethic in the future, he doesn’t want to work towards anything. I try to give him things to do around the house but he’s just not bothered. I have to clean his room and make his bed everyday, my wife reckons if she and I leave it he’ll just no longer want to live in filth. At that age my sister and I wouldn’t have dared leave our rooms like that I know that much. 

@stymied I think you’re right tbh, wish I’d seen this earlier. I’m not going to get away with just keeping the money in the business with my wife. She sees it as £2k for spending each month. I have told her I want to put some of it towards clearing my mortgage on our home which she thinks is a good idea but gets upset when I show her the figures and that the £2k won’t go towards her list.

I did think about suggesting she could perhaps have half the money towards the bike and earn the other half by doing nails hoping that would encourage her, much like @Sarahwithlove suggested. 

@Yankee24 Ha, I usually really dread the lead up to holidays and time away from work but I’m really looking forward to this one. Once I’ve got there I do love the time away with my family, I have since being in recovery. Looking back I hated leaving the office and going on holiday because I was away from the stuff, it !!!!!! breaks me looking back and realising how bad it got. I didn’t see it at the time.

They are 100% worth the money spent, although it is not the right thing for me to spend more than I have on them - as much as I would like to give them the world, I’ve come too far and getting into debt is out of the question for me.

Cherryfudge

It's hard for you that your wife hasn't got the hang of realistic spending: she sounds a lovely person and I get that you want to give her the world. I'm not sure there's ever satisfaction in that sort of consumption, though. There's always the next thing.

As a parent, please can I suggest you stop doing your son's room, or at least his bed? It won't hurt him in the slightest to have to sleep in a messy bed. Doing chores around the house is rarely rewarding in itself, so I wouldn't expect him to want to clean and tidy if that's not his natural mindset, but doing a simple job for him is never going to teach him to do it for himself. And when he does do it, don't expect perfection. Even a roughly dragged-on cover is 'I noticed you made your bed, thank you'. Don't remake it for him, praise him for making the effort. Perfection won't come till he's had practice. Having friends round and possible comments from them about his unmade bed may be the best motivator.  Also, get your wife on side with this - if you stand together and don't budge, eventually you will have a child who can do something for himself.

(My stories on this: I hated giving up ironing for my children. I liked them to look smart and cared for. However, it was a necessary lesson for them to take responsibility for themselves and they've all managed that.

On bed making: after a few weeks of changing their own bedding, my daughter came to me with 'Mummy, there are no sheets left'. I knew we had plenty so I went to have a search and no, there were no sheets left. We found them eventually: for weeks my oldest had been getting away with putting a new sheet on top of the old one to save time! There was a ridiculous amount of bedding on his bed! With three children, I'd somehow not noticed the throughput wasn't what it should have been. Incidentally, he's now a successful manager. I'm not sure how the two are linked but I suspect thinking outside the box comes into it). 

katsu

As your son becomes a teenager and a young man, he indeed will want not to play with his mum, so maybe she does need to start thinking about what else she wants to do with her time. I'm sure that will be a big change for her so maybe the nail studio idea is at a good time? Or some volunteer work if she doesn't want a paid job. 

daisy_1571

Re your son.  We weren't given many jobs to do around the house when we were younger so by the time we were asked to do stuff, teenagery ages, I think we had teenage hormones and felt life was very unfair, why should we do it, thats mums job etc and im sure we did it with very bad grace which must have been a pain for our folks.  I wonder if we'd been given more jobs earlier it might have been better.   Or if parents had explained everyone makes the mess, the dirty dishes, the floors dusty etc so everyone should take a turn in cleaning maybe that would have helped us see how selfish we were being.  5 people in a house, my logic now says it shouldn't have been up to 1 person to do all the housework.  We shouldn't have felt we were 'helping', cos its not, its pitching in and doing whats needed for the household to run efficiently.  

As far as individual rooms.  As a child you don't get much control over your life.  If everything is done for you you don't get to see what you like and don't like.  Once we all got our own rooms (2 of us shared in different combinations as we grew older until my folks could afford to put an extension on - 2 brothers shared and I had in my own room, then oldest needed his own room when he was studying so brother and I shared for a time), our folks were actually quite good at leaving it up to us to decide how we wanted it.  We werent allowed crazy crazy stuff but our own posters or pictures, choosing wallpaper (probably within a limited choice but it still felt like a choice),  I remember being allowed to paint the woodwork in my room - door frames lime green and window frames pink - when I was about 14.  It was nice to have some control over that little part of the house and walls/woodwork can easily be changed once my folks had the house back to themselves again.   Similarly while none of us kids wanted to live with filth, piled up dishes etc it was up to us to put our clean clothes away, bring out the dirty washing (otherwise it wouldn't get washed and that was quite rightly our own fault), shove a hoover round from time to time and pull our downie up.  But tbh if we hadn't wanted to do that, let our friends see it, get in an unmade bed at night, it was up to us.  Looking back it allowed us a modicum of control over things that didn't hurt the household.   It let us decide if we wanted a messy or neat room.  And mum and dad just shut the door so they didn't have to look at it. 

These things are not important in the great scheme of things so picking your battles is the way to go.  Everyone has different standards, just because you think its nicer to see a made bed doesn't mean that he cares, maybe you'll find that after a time of not doing it he decides he'd rather have it neat and will do it better than you.  Important thing like cherryfudge says, praise whats done even if its not done to the standard you like - its his room.  If he has jobs in the shared areas that different, your house, your standards can be imposed there.

Dxx

alt80

Managed to catch a winter cold which I could really do without, just hoping my wife and son don’t get it now.

Going to leave the workings until next week but I know I need to have a look at the household budget for the coming year. I really would like to pay something towards the principal of the i/o loan.

@Cherryfudge I’ve asked her to think about speaking to the pros in the new year. I hate seeing her upset about this stuff and blaming myself for not being able to give her everything that she wants helps nothing either. 

You are on the same page as my wife re my son’s room. Idk I just don’t want it in my house- I pay a lot of money for us to be here and to my mind he should have some respect for the place and for his own standards. My mum and dad wouldn’t have stood for it but what was acceptable back then isn’t now. Although my wife and I are too soft 100%, I know that.

Ha re the bedsheets lol fml, that’s kids for you. Tbf like you I do admire his thinking if I don’t think about how !!!!!! revolting it is. Suppose I’ve been warned haha. 

@katsu I know that and so does the rest of the world including my wife if she is honest with herself. She just doesn’t want to lose her little boy. Neither of us do but that’s life isn’t it. 

It’s not really about money but I think some work would be good for her. Christmas and the bike school are a big part of her life rn but both will be over soon. She still loves doing nails but lost the social circle she had when she stopped spending money on the girls. Mums from school don’t really get her tbf a lot of them are high fliers so she has our son, me, couple of gym mates, our friends with the classic cars who are the ones who got her into bikes everyone else has drifted off.   

Volunteer work would upset her too much, can’t remember if it was you or someone else on here who said she could look to do nails in a care setting. It would break her heart. We do still give to a few charities, it’s quite important to both of us and our son too actually- he gets that it is right to do what you can to help those less fortunate. 

PollyWollyDoodle

So pleased that you are doing so well, and looking forward to Lapland.  

You know volunteering doesn’t just have to be about care situations or about doing nails. What about driving someone to appointments? Reading with children in your son’s primary school? Helping at a visitor attraction, calling someone for a chat regularly, working in a charity shop … There are dozens of different ways to volunteer and it would get her out of the house and meeting new friends.  

You seem to me someone who is goal oriented, now that the cards are paid off (congratulations) maybe you and your wife need new goals, not just ‘reduce the mortgage’ which isn’t very exciting. Pick out something to save for, a holiday or something you both really want to do with your son, and open an account.  She could put any earnings from nails in there, anything you sell, any surplus from the housekeeping etc, and focus on reaching a certain amount.  

Also, something I heard recently: ‘it’s no good asking people to forgive you if you can’t forgive yourself’.  

I hope you enjoy the break from work and have a great Christmas - you really deserve it. 

warby68

Would it be too much to increase payments to the IO element as if it were repayment by the end of term? You would see progress and your wife might like the idea its on target for retirement. Assuming of course it doesn't take too much of the 2k. 

I'd also give yourself a smallish pay rise - that's not unreasonable either. I bet you review pay annually for everyone else. 

Show you can compromise a bit perhaps.

ladyholly

This may be controversial but you frequently say your wife gets upset when things dont go as she wants. I just wonder if she is really upset or using it as a way to get her own way because it make you feel guilty and then you give in to what she wants. I realise you are giving in less but it is still working to make you feel bad. I could be completely wrong but you might consider it. 

With regards to your sons bedroom I understand you want it clean and tidy and it must drive you mad (it did me when my dd left her room looking like a bomb had hit it) but dont let it drive a wedge between you and him. As he approaches his teenage years it is very easy to lose the trust and communication with your children. Mr LH did with our dd and he has never got it back and she is about your age now. Be patient and just close his door and try to forget it. Its not worth losing that connection over an messy bedroom.

Sorry if this seems very preachy. Have a wonderful time in Lapland and I hope there is plenty of snow.

RelievedSheff

Hope you have a great time in Lapland.

Your son is growing up quickly. It will be hard on your wife when he has been such a major part in her life and daily routine so far. 

It is time for your wife to find something else to fill her time and give her some fulfilment. I think the volunteering idea is a good one if she has no interest in earning money. It doesn't have to be with terminally ill people.