# Take job away from family?



## Sameold (Aug 11, 2011)

We've moved (major, several-hundred-mile moves) four times in the last decade for his career, supposedly (once with a toddler and three month old, the next time the day before I gave birth, and the last two times when I'm five months pregnant). This has not resulted in increased income. He should be, with his qualifications, making 3-4 times what he is, if he were working in the sort of job he's qualified for. Instead he's working in an entry level position, doing exactly what he was doing ten years ago for a slightly higher amount of money. I have no career: I'm a music teacher and moving every couple years wrecks any attempt I make at building a studio. I home school our kids. The one time I attempted to work outside the home I had to quit after three months because he wouldn't get home on time to watch the kids and outside child care cost more than I made. So that's the background story. 

This last move involved a three month period where he'd moved and the kids and I hadn't. It involved borrowing money from my parents, and after he blew through it (my opinion: eating out twice daily is blowing through money, his opinion: perfectly reasonable thing to do--there were some bar tabs and a group of guys he treated to a restaurant one night as well--he likes his debit card so I know exactly where the money went) two payday loans that are still, after several months, not paid back in full. He has no intentions of paying back my folks and is mad at me and them because they say no more and I won't talk them into it. I'm a month from my due date with our fifth kid and I've put my foot down about moving again: I'll do it if we're buying a house. I might flex on that if it were for a really good reason, but I'm not telling him that. (We've moved five other times, all fewer than 20 miles. Yes, nine moves in ten years. No, he's not military.)

Now he's talking about taking a new job in another city, same thing he's doing now, not an upwards career move, leaving me and the kids here. He's had this job for six months. He thinks he could make 10k more gross somewhere else. I pointed out that net would be more like 7k, and it's not going to be cheaper for the kids and I just because he's in another place, I don't see how he could live on 7k anywhere, let alone ever see us. He dropped the idea for a couple weeks, but he brought it up again this last weekend. It's tempting to tell him to go do it--which is more a metric of how frustrated I am than anything else, I think, because looking at it from a numbers point of view, it's a stupid idea.

It would make sense if he had an offer for 100k more, but that's not what he's talking about. So what's he thinking? I'm thinking he got a taste of what it was like to be a single guy again and liked it. Anyone have any other ideas, preferably more charitable than mine?


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## Disposition (Aug 2, 2011)

there's really no way to know for sure exactly what and why he's thinking. some people are just prone to certain things. your inital feelings are probably correct. i'm sure he was living it up, especially since it was on the in-laws dime.
i'm not sure how you can get him to realize his errors short of MC or some financial advisor. good luck to you!
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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