Is anybody doing it alone???

lizzie said:
i envy those of you who have a supportive hubby. my hubby reckons he's supportive, but all i seem to get from him is criticism. he sees this as being constructive, but it is very demoralising when he tells me he's not comfortable with a particular purchase, but cannot/won't say why. how can i answer or ally or discuss with him if there is nothing tangible that is bothering him? if only he said "i am not comfortable because .... and here are some other options ... ". that would be constructive, and i have told him this but seems to make no difference.

he has read jan somers, rich dad poor dad and been to a john burley night session with me.

after another "discussion" the other night about the trusts (he doesn't fully understand them despite reading trust magic) and the latest puchase i wish for us to make that he is against he blurted out that he tells his mates how proud he is of what i do. well - that was the first time i had heard him say that and it meant nothing coming in the middle of arguement.

he's a very intelligent man but his brain is just not wired for the abstract. and he's very happy to spend the profits. i jsut wish he would either be supportive or get out of the way ....

my rant for the day.


Hi Lizzie,

Men's brains are wired differently (not better, not worse - just different).

Have a read of Alan and Barbara Pease's "Why Men Lia and Women Cry". It's fascinating.

http://www.dymocks.com.au/ContentDynamic/Full_Details.asp?ISBN=0957810873

Cheers,

The Y-man
 
With us it is the other way round. I am very interested & he.
His comment is "I'm not interested in money". Mine is "You don't mind spending it". It sounds like a fight but we are very close. I just have to accept that in this I am on my own with his full consent.

He is simply not interested. When we have problems with the IP's his response used to be to sell them. Now he has seen that property does go up in value & that no investment is hassle free, he is happy to hang in there.

However regarding selecting, buying etc I do feel the responsibility. When I was single, if I made a mistake I could live with it. He certainly wouldn't bag me, but I would really love him to be involved. Pigs might fly.
cheers
blossomoz
 
Originally Posted by lizzie:
--------------------
i envy those of you who have a supportive hubby. my hubby reckons he's supportive, but all i seem to get from him is criticism. he sees this as being constructive, but it is very demoralising when he tells me he's not comfortable with a particular purchase, but cannot/won't say why. how can i answer or ally or discuss with him if there is nothing tangible that is bothering him? if only he said "i am not comfortable because .... and here are some other options ... ". that would be constructive, and i have told him this but seems to make no difference.

he has read jan somers, rich dad poor dad and been to a john burley night session with me.

after another "discussion" the other night about the trusts (he doesn't fully understand them despite reading trust magic) and the latest puchase i wish for us to make that he is against he blurted out that he tells his mates how proud he is of what i do. well - that was the first time i had heard him say that and it meant nothing coming in the middle of arguement.

he's a very intelligent man but his brain is just not wired for the abstract. and he's very happy to spend the profits. i jsut wish he would either be supportive or get out of the way ....
------------------------------


Lizzie,
ALL the above apply to me , to the very little details.......... May I ask what your hubby's profession is ?
Salsa
 
hi salsa - he's been a research scientist for the last 25 years, so is wired to believe that a+b=c ... always. do you think they might be brothers?

unfortunately - or maybe that should be fortunately - in real estate a+b can equal any darn thing you want it to. maybe that is why he has trouble getting his head around what i'm doing a lot of the time, whilst the high school dropout in me has a very abstract and unstructured way of thinking.

all is calm again in the household after i answered his written down list of 58 (or so it seemed) questions on our particular trust structures, and i didn't stumble once.
 
Good on ya Lizzie.
I tell my wife all of what we do, and she knows almost as much about trusts as I do now (though she would not admit it). It took a serious argument almost 4 years ago to start us reinvesting again - but now whenever I say I wish I had done more its usually my wife who actually points out to me that we have done quite well (in the last few years) , so it makes me feel a bit better.
And tomorrow we make our last payment on our bad debt (i.e PPOR) after owing over 210k 3 years ago - although our investment debt goes into 7 figures its not that big a deal :eek:
 
Lizzie,
Yes it did cross my mind that they could be TWIN brothers. Yes , mine is an engineer........ happy for me to invest as long as comprehensive research is done, it is "low" risk, and ALL possible risks are listed with proposed mittigation :) .

It has been lonely and scary sometimes particularly as the more I go deeper into the game the more I find out how much I don't know. At the same time each decision starts to involve more money, hence more perceived risks......


I am posting this at 2:50AM , sad isn't it :D

Must get back to bed as a full-on day at work is waiting for me tomorrow.

Cheers,
 
Lizzie & Salsa, just keep drip feeding the information. Eventually they will understand & back you up. My Hubby was always supportive, but really left it all to me. It finally dawned on him about six months ago, after repeatedly hearing people at work talk about how good their investments are, that he is a property investor (and much more successful than any of his workmates) & now he is very enthusiastic. I'm sure doing well out of the boom helped quite a bit too. His risk profile is higher than mine now. :eek:
 
My wife 'on the surface' seems to take much less interest in these things than I do.

However, the other night we went out and she began discussing someones financial situation......... She said "What they would be better off doing is ********, that would maximise ********** and allow *******to be used. They'd have to be careful of course not to ******* but if they did ******** that should be covered." Spot on!!

:D :D :D

I sat there with my mouth open and was totally gobsmacked. :cool:

Never underestimate how others may absorb certain information even if they don't demonstrate it in exactly the same way as ourselves.


:)
 
Hi Alan
Well said. Great stuff :)
We had an experience just yesterday when to our amasement our youngest teenager sudenly started asking an eray of well formulated questions regarding realestate and employment. Boy, he did not know what he was in for and the floodgates opened. The moral to this story is that even though they tell you they don't want to know ,they are still taking it all on board at their own pace.
Kind regards
Simon
 
Well you have lucky kids. :)

Yourself and Julie are both a great example and a fantastic source of information.

What do they say about ".......when the student is ready....." etc? :D


All the best.


:)
 
simonjulie said:
We had an experience just yesterday when to our amasement our youngest teenager sudenly started asking an eray of well formulated questions regarding realestate and employment. Boy, he did not know what he was in for and the floodgates opened. The moral to this story is that even though they tell you they don't want to know ,they are still taking it all on board at their own pace.
Kind regards
Simon
Teenagers are strange animals indeed. We have two teenage girls. They HATE looking at houses & don't 'seem' to pay much attention to investment talk at home. When we buy a house they say "another one" and aren't particularly interested in seeing it. BUT, when asked their opinion on something, they invariable give a pretty correct answer, know when a house is a good price, have a basic understanding of IO verses P&I loans, trust structures, good debt/bad debt etc. In fact if a newbie were to ask them for their help they would be quite good mentors as their understanding of the housing market is better than most adults.
 
Skater,
Yes I have been drip feeding for the last 15 years so it is becoming a..habit now :) . As Lizzie said, hubbie thinks he is very supportive (in his own way) and I have learnt to accept it. It's the thought that counts, right !!!

Alan,
I have learnt not to underestimate anyone.

Three years ago at age 20 my son just saved enough deposit for his 1st IP and asked me to help to find a suitable one. I started to lecture him that he needed to have a plan, to set clear goals etc. He said to me :Mum, I have, my plan is to achieve a property portfolio of 1M in 2 years.

I thought to myself "yeah right you can dream !!!" but did not say anything negative to discourage him. However i then wished he set a more "realistic goal" .

Two years down the tract he did it. I am a very proud Mum, you can tell !!!!!
 
It is much nicer if the two of you share the same enthusiasm for investing.

My Husband, at the end of the day just wants to know the bottom line- are we coming out ahead?

I made sure that he read all the same books at the start though, so that he could understand what the hell I was on about! Used to drive him crazy at the start when I would 'natter on' about Investing; now when I notice his eyeballs rolling back into his skull that's my cue to relent.
Every now and then I just need to bring him up to speed and he's happy.

He likes to leave all the details to me and, luckily, I enjoy crunching the numbers.
Basically, he runs the 'Family Business' and I handle the 'Investments'.

This works well for us.

Silene101
 
Got halfway through this thread and was getting worried that there were no gals going to put their hand up confessing to be the main investor and then Kristine stepped in. Thank goodness!

I am the one that drives investment in my relationship although it has an interesting twist. We are not married and we don't even live together. So it kinda makes it harder. But that's because we would kill each other if we lived in my one bedroom apartment :p and we don't have quite the right sum of cash to buy a new place to live in together, because I am too busy saving my cash to buy my own IP's!

I have the vision and the drive to make it happen. Sometimes I wish he was more interested and shared in my excitement and learnt about investing but then I don't get too excited in the latest gadgety thing or software that's out in the market place when he does. Different strokes for different folks!

I think it's important to keep going even if your partner is not interested. If you believe that it's the right thing to do then go for it. People are in different phases of their life at different times. Some have vision for the future and what could be, and some live for the moment. Even though you might be a couple you still have your own life to lead as well so don't be discouraged by their lack of enthusiasm. Whilst it's nice to share, it's also kinda cool to have your own specialities. But that could just be me.... :p
 
perky29 said:
And tomorrow we make our last payment on our bad debt (i.e PPOR) after owing over 210k 3 years ago - although our investment debt goes into 7 figures its not that big a deal :eek:

Congratulations!
 
No one is alone.

Well after sorting through the 90 odd posts in this thread I've once again come to the conclusion that none of us are alone in anything we do. Everything we feel, someone has felt before. Everthing we do, someone has done before.

I was going to ask a similar question to the one originally posed at the start of this thread, but after reading the entire thread (I have a lot of spare time) I am happy that my wife and I will be fine and I will just have to learn to adjust my life and techniques to suit us both.

I think the hardest thing to keep focused on is that there are 2 people involved in the relationship and we can't always do things because we individually want to.

'A bit of give and take', as my mother would say.

BR
 
Hi everyone

Nice thread and good to see I'm not alone! We are just starting off (with investing that is) but while I'm doing all the reading and researching my hubby is happy to support me as long as he doesn't have to get involved... He claims he's just not interested in the actual investing but quite likes the idea of what we can do if and when it works (ie. retire to the country and keep goats ;)).

However I could get him to join me at Bill Zheng's seminar in Brisbane last Sunday and while my hubby left after the first session of a whole day seminar (he though that was all he could handle plus the cricket was on ;)) we've since been discussing our possible 'hidden motivations' for investing and he said he’ll do a bit of reading etc. so that he knows what I’m on about.

So I think that was great and probably all I need as husband support at this stage. I'm getting so much information out of this forum and having done a few workshops - so thanks so much for all you guys contributing, it's such great stuff for me as a beginner!

In case you were wondering about the 'hidden motivation’ thing: Bill Zheng is a finance expert but does quite a bit of investor psychology stuff too. He claims that everyone has a motivation for investing that he/she is conscious of (ie. to provide for retirement, be financially free etc.) and then another, hidden motivation that is much stronger but subconscious. He says that if your hidden motivation does not align with actually making money you’ll have trouble being successful in investing. I like that kind of stuff and given that I think goal-setting is very important at our stage it’s definitely worth thinking about. Bill has an article on this in his latest newsletter (http://www.investorsdirect.com.au/newsletters/102005/investors_direct_oct05_Aemailweb.htm).

Cheers

kaf
 
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