shened

I've been browsing this forum for awhile as a guest looking for answers, and finally joined this helpful community.

I'm at my wits end right now over the financial issues my husband and I are having. A little background, I met and fell in love with my husband at the age of 21. He was 43 and had been divorced for 5 years when we met. He has 3 kids and 2 of them are pretty close to my age while the other just turned 18.

My career was just beginning and although I wasn't making a lot of money I was self sufficient and carrying no debt. I was actually saving money to move to Los Angeles, CA when I met and fell in love with him. Oddly enough he grew up in Los Angeles and expressed to me while we were dating that he too wanted to move back in the near future.

Needless to say I did not move when I planned to and we fell in love. His finances were a pretty big mess at this time because of a failed business that led to a bankruptcy.

Fast forward 3 years we are both financially doing very well, living together, and pulling our own weight. He then proposed to me with a very expensive ring. I love my ring but honestly whenever we talked about marriage I always expressed to him that I only wanted a band.

I had reached a plateau in my career and was ready to make the move to Los Angeles. I had already mentally moved because it was always on my mind. He seemed to be ready for a change of pace as well and to my surprise received a job offer from an old friend that financially made sense. This was in the Summer of 2010.

I am a freelancer so before we even moved we had a plan. He was going to be making the steady income with the new job. I could 100% focus on my career. He called it an investment for our future. I of course felt like everything I had ever wanted was coming together.

By December of 2010 he was let go, his so called friend created this job for him with ulterior motives. Looking back on it when this happened we should have moved back right away. At the time we both overestimated our abilities to stay afloat and financially healthy. He also began freelancing as an athletic trainer, something he always has done on the side but now had to fully rely on. So there we were two freelancers trying to build a clientele during a crappy economy in a competitive market.

Now it's 2012 and my clientele is growing steadily but I don't even know how to climb out of the hole that we are currently in. For the past 3 months he has been traveling back to our old town to generate income from his old job because our combined freelancer income was leaving us too strapped. I did manage to find a job that paid a decent amount as an administrative assistant about 3 months ago. This was helping to climb out of the hole but about a month after I started working my hours kept getting cut back and then finally I was let go. I have a job interview today and really need to get hired to survive at this point.

He moved back temporarily to make money and promised to pay this months rent because May was incredibly slow for me and I got let go from my job with consistent income. June, July and August I can fully take care of without any help from him. Lease is over in August and then we are either going to relocate or stay here depending on where we are generating more income.

Yesterday, he tells me that he's not going to pay the rent and I need to figure it out on my own. This stemmed from his daughter's boyfriend wrecking her car and his other daughter
needing her health insurance renewed. I have my personal opinions about money when it comes to supporting his kids but never open my mouth about it. I just feel it's not my business to judge him as a father so I don't even go there. However, the rent is still due and now I'm pretty much screwed

He pretty much verbally abused me all day yesterday to the point where I thought I was going to have a breakdown. I really love him but the verbal abuse has been happening for about a year on and off. Unfortunately I remember the bad things that he says more than the good things and it's really starting to take it's toll on the relationship. My confidence is also getting pretty low and I'm wondering if this is all my fault because he blames all of our problems on me.

Sorry for the long post

Mavash.

There are so many issues here I don't even know where to start.

Your first mistake was getting involved with a man twice your age and it's just been downhill from there. He preyed on someone young because he knew you would be easy to manipulate. And I'm not surprised that he blames all of your problems on you. Of course he does.

I don't see this ending well for you.

Cherry

I'm confused then, if you can take care of the rent on your own, then I would suggest you do it and not worry about it. Is it the principle at this point?

As for taking care of those things for his children, it happens. They are still fairly young and personally if I could financially help my oldest (18 now), I would, especially with wrecked cars and health insurance. As for the boyfriend being responsible for the wreck, I would take him to small claims court to recoup some of whatever y'all are out if he's not helping already.

ETA: I would help my oldest IF she was doing something productive with her life, not just being a bum on my couch

shened

I can't take care of the rent this month, I realized this last month and he said he would cover the rent for June. I have a really great relationship with both of his girls so I'm not knocking the fact that he has an obligation to provide for them. The timing of this has just really put me in a bind.
Posted via Mobile Device

Cherry

Oh, that makes sense. Sorry, I guess what I would try and do is to find the means elsewhere, or see if there is anything your landlord can do to help spread June's rent across the next few months, if that's even feasible financially for you. I'm not a very good financial planner myself (just filed bankruptcy). I do think it was wrong of your H to wait until now to tell you that he would not be able to help. Poor planning and communication on his part

Catlover27

You are still so young and you have your whole life ahead of you. You don't deserve to be verbally abused regardless of the financial situation. I, of course, don't know all that much about your situation but from what I can gather, I would suggest moving back home and maybe reconsidering your marriage. Can you move back in with your parents for a few months until you get back on your feet? If not, I agree with the previous post in asking the landlord to spread out June's rent throughout the summer. One last idea, have you thought about those loan companies that can give you something like $1000 by tomorrow. I know the interest is prob. ridiculously high but if you think you'll have more income coming in soon, that might be another option. Good luck!!

shened

Thanks for your kind words. Update, I ended up getting the rent paid in full but not until yesterday so it was late. Job interview tomorrow again, so I'm crossing my fingers.