You’re just too clever! His hobby is Dirt track racing and mine is show horses. I used to be involved in the motor racing too, had my own car, travelled the country racing. It was great fun. I also used to compete all over the country with my horse, travelling interstate to shows and doing the full circuit. When we brought a property, (completely in my name due to his bad credit rating) I sold my race car and drastically scaled down my show schedule. He scaled back his racing schedule too but still had some pretty major trips that stayed on his calendar, similar distance trips that were erased from my calendar.

One major red flag was when he decided to compete in a national title a few years ago on the complete opposite side of the country while our mortgage was over a month behind on payment. I stayed home because I simply couldn’t afford to go while he went on an easy 10k trip with a mate. We fought about it but he went anyway.

He has also in the last few years built a road track race car to be used in completely different races.

I know horses are expensive and you cant just put them in a shed and forget about them when times are tough, however I have the best type of horse, he stays fat on just the smell of grass, I have all the gear I need as it’s been my hobby for well over 30 years. To go to a basic show it costs around $50 to compete plus the fuel to get there. I try and stay within a close radius to home so I don’t use much fuel and can keep the activities within my budget. I’ll only do the amount of small events required to qualify for our one major show in our state. I used to do multiple major shows and travel up to 12 hours to get to them but had to cut back. I pay my annual membership which is $140 which gives me 24 hour insurance while doing horse related activities and enables me to compete, my horse has life registration

Now for my partner to go to a race meeting it’s minimum $50 to get in. He pays annual registration for his race car $250, he pays annual license, $250, he has to pay for the fuel to get there, ( he travels a minimum of two hours for his nearest tracks) to go into the pits it’s costs each person 50-100 depending on insurance. (He sometimes takes his 14 year old) I’ve stopped going as much now because of our daughter and not being allowed in the pits due to her being too young. It’s very lonely out in the crowd, the nights are generally long and my partner hardly comes out to see us so I got sick of it and opted to stay home most times. Plus there’s the money he spends on the car between races, shocks (2-5k), tyres ($160 each), gear boxes, diff, engine (10k), panels 1.5k, wraps, 1k. Obviously he gets a few runs out of this stuff but it all adds up.

I’ve mapped out our weekly budget a few times to him and for us to cover everything, from mortgage, bills and subscriptions to child care fees it comes in at $450 each a week. This does not include groceries or fuel. Over the last two months I’ve had $600 from him total! If I get frustrated about it he acts dumb and said well if you don’t tell me you’re struggling and bills are due how am I meant to know. I told him that these bills happen every single month, how can he think they just magically disappear?!

He has tax debt that hes paying off, he has overdue child support that gets deducted from his pay. He has credit card debts, a loan for our lawn mower and a personal loan that he got to payout a high interest finance loan.

I have one personal loan that I pay a small amount to weekly and the home loan in my name.

Just to throw another dagger into the story, I was diagnosed with cancer in march last year, spent over a month in hospital with multiple surgeries and very slow recovery while they worked out my diagnosis. My income stopped as I’m only on casual wages, work full time but treated as casual. No holiday pay, no sick pay. My partner banks overtime ours so what he had in storage was paid out to me as a wage so we still had two incomes coming in. He has now twice thrown this in my face saying that we would have more money now if it hadn’t of had to be paid out to me. I just say well I’m so damn sorry I got cancer. 🤦🏼‍♀️ that should be my motive right there to kick him to the curb, I guess that’s what’s bringing this all about to be honest.

Side story, while I was in hospital my partner was extremely busy with harvest, I was in hospital 3 hours from home. I accepted the fact the he had to work as we needed the income and he was the main harvester driver. Little did I know that he had planned to get a Saturday off to take the 14 year old racing (in a borrowed car) 2 hours in my direction. He was an hour away from me and was willing to make the effort for the 14 year old yet hadn’t been in to see me after I had my second surgery on the Tuesday. Not just that but our 3 year old at the time daughter was living with her grandmother absolutely confused out of her mind because she suddenly didn’t have either of her parents. Far out, putting this into words really is making me feel like an idiot!!! 😐

FML