Hi guys a bit of insight for you I’m 23 got a house, 2 cars one for me and one for the Mrs and a 2 year old daughter I’ve been driving HGV for 2 years now and love my job I do no nights out and earn good money take home about £450+ a week but have to put the hours in I’m at work at the minute and I’ve just had the Mrs on the phone in tears telling me that she misses me being at home and that she never gets to see me anymore, all I want to do is give her and my daughter a good life by having money in the bank so we don’t have to worry about financial things but I didn’t realise how much it’s effecting her and the last thing I want to do is lose her and my daughter over work… so any advice on how you guys balance your work and home life to keep everyone happy would be much appreciated Thanks
Get a job in tesco. Couple of hundred quid a week. Bin the cars. Tax credits etc. Bobs your uncle.
happysack:
Get a job in tesco. Couple of hundred quid a week. Bin the cars. Tax credits etc. Bobs your uncle.
LoL [zb] that I love my job but I love them as well I just want her to see that I’m doing it for them so that in the future I don’t have to do as much it’s just hard to say no like today I’m on £17 a hour it’s two days wages in a day but I need a way to keep her happy as well
I guess you’re on £8.50/hr then? I’d be looking for supermarket work then mate, better hourly rAte & no nights out.
In quoting £450+ take home pay, you’re obviously including your N/O money which is not actually wages. I think you need to re-evaluate where you’re at, my friend.
Good luck.
Look else where for a job mate,if it’s getting your wife down it will get you down in the end…I gave up tramping last year to go on containers with the odd night out here and there and it’s the best thing Iv ever done,I still put the hours in but at end of a long day I get to go home and see the wife and we are expecting our first child in November so I really would not go back tramping again.
Also my take home pay for this work is not much less than you earn
It’s difficult and can make or break a marriage/relationship. I’ve worked away for years (not all driving) and at times felt like packing it all in but worked through and am happy to say my life now couldn’t be much better 
(except I’m still working 
)
Weekend work is not good because this has traditionally been family time when working long hours through the week. When I was tramping I made sure that we had quality time at weekends and also gave the wife deserved free time, a 2 year old is hard work!
There is no hard or fast rule except maybe talking about the future etc. You say you don’t do nights out well that is a bonus in my book. Make sure you help out when you get home though, women at home with young children do more hours than we do! 
Don’t forget that while you’re out and about meeting different people or seeing different things she may be stuck at home staring at the same walls trying to occupy a 2 year old who is also bored.
My youngest is now 19 and I was away Mon - Fri (occasional weekends as well) for about 14 of those years. Talking is good, don’t bottle anything up it will all explode at the wrong time
Thanks for the posts guys i think you miss read my post i do NO nights out that’s the problem I
don’t know where to cut back… and yes I’m on £8.50 a hour and its only class 2 work I work Sundays because it’s double time and have every 3rd Friday off to fit full weekly rest requirements how do I cut my hours back without taking a massive pay cut 
I’m quite lucky in the sense that my wife likes to do her own thing in the week, she has a routine going shopping with her mum, takes my daughter to school and takes my lad to the soft play etc, while I’m away all week. At the minute this suits us, if things were to change though and she didn’t like it anymore then I wouldn’t hesitate at changing things.
If you can afford it drop down to 4 days a week, a 4 on 3 off, or 4 on 4 off will make all the difference.
I think in this industry long days are par for the course, very rare are there 8 hour days, just make sure you make the most of the time you do have together. My place is long dayso, 12hrs + are common, occasionally we get a <10hr day. So my only option would be to drop days but we want to do things to the house so at the minute that’s not an option.
Dogsbody:
I guess you’re on £8.50/hr then? I’d be looking for supermarket work then mate, better hourly rAte & no nights out.
In quoting £450+ take home pay, you’re obviously including your N/O money which is not actually wages. I think you need to re-evaluate where you’re at, my friend.
Good luck.
You a bit daft aren’t you, he said he DOESN’T do NIGHTS OUT!
Rather than post on here! arrange a date with your wife all romantic like and put your views across and let her express herself too thats how marriages work, oh and make sure the back seat is clutter free for on the way home
The wife will get fed up from time-to-time, that’s normal. But if it’s an ongoing issue then it’s not as easy as just getting another job. Especially if you like your job. You will need to communicate at home, mostly by listening! Have a look at where the majority of your spending is going. Is all of it really essential, or could you cut some of those expenses and work slightly less hours? As for your two-year old child, before you know it they will be grown up. “I’m doing this for you” isn’t really going to cut it. What they need is your time, not your money. It’s hard when we talk about balance. It doesn’t mean trying to do two jobs at once. It can’t be done. Try to get regular shifts and stick to them so that everyone knows where they stand, including yourself, your family, and your employers.
Thanks guys some good posts this might all be common sense to you but I’m only 23 and balancing everything is new and quite hard to me so thanks again
The eternal problem this mate in our job.
The thing is, the problem isn’t just yours its for both of you to discuss sensibly, presumably your wife isn’t objecting to the security of a roof over your heads, a car of her own to drive round in and money to spend? no thought not.
Well, that comes at a price, and if you are the sole or main breadwinner then IMHO you are doing your duty and providing for them as best you can, you can’t do that on a basic 35 hour week unless you are extremely lucky and fine a niche job…took me 35 years before i found a job that pays as well as most 75 hours jobs but i do about 42 hours instead…these jobs are rare indeed, for many years i had to do 2 weeks work every bloody week to make good money, just like most working class blokes.
Wouldn’t life be great if we could all get cushy numbers in the civil service/local government/quango/ejukashun etc, work (attend) about 30 convenient hours a week if that, take several weeks annually off on the full pay sick with stress etc, and get paid more than you are getting for grafting your bollox off.
Well life aint like that, and for the average young working bloke you’re doing pretty well so pat yourself on the back for having your head screwed on right, a lot of blokes are away all week then spend their weekends in the boozer with their mates and then wonder why she buggers off with someone else.
On the other side of the coin wouldn’t it be nice if some wives…not suggesting your Mrs thinks or acts like this Samstone…realised that they aint WAGS living in lala land, they aint the current muse of some overpaid bloody premiership footballer, they’re working class women married to a working class geezer doing his bloody best to do the right thing as he sees fit.
It’d be nice if they welcomed their husband home now and again, made him feel special wanted loved appreciated
Life’s a two way street.
About the only thing you can do is cut your hours, or you could as suggested above take a poorly paid job and let the taxpayer (blokes like you and me) subsidise the low pay with various benefits, but somehow i reckon that isn’t you…so my advice would be, find a possibly supermarket driving type job that pays shifts well that suit you, chances are you won’t get the right shift pattern straight away and may have to be prepared to do the nasty shifts to get your feet under the table and transfer onto better in due course.
Oh and sling the telly out the window when you get home, that way she won’t be watching crap mainsteam propaganda broadcasts portraying the WAG lifestyle as within grasp 
…thats tongue in cheek by the way, no offence meant…but i find modern telly broadcasting a bit like mediocre working class skoolkids learning from those who should know better that the world is their oyster and a degree the easy-no-actual-work necessary path to the Croydon money trees.
**By the way those lads who find themselves alone but want someone warm hearted, forget cold materialistic western women, go Latin and enjoy the love of a good woman.
Oh and drop the Sundays mate, sod double bubble, Sunday is one day that should definitely be about spending time with your family, if you can’t afford to drop it totally then do every other Sunday.
Nothing better than sitting down to a roast with the whole family, just don’t look at the pots lol.
NewLad:
Oh and drop the Sundays mate, sod double bubble, Sunday is one day that should definitely be about spending time with your family, if you can’t afford to drop it totally then do every other Sunday.Nothing better than sitting down to a roast with the whole family, just don’t look at the pots lol.
I would agree with you there New Lad, except Samstones wife appears not to be working, in which case it makes more sense to work weekends and milk the premium rate and have two or more days off in the week and shift your weekend clock round to Tues/Weds/whatever.
Its obviously been going on for a long time & your wife has kept quiet. Do something ,like drop the Sundays ASAP. For those of us with diesel in the blood there was no hope for a family life,unless you married a rock n roll chick.In transport you will never be making enough money,I went from BRS,to International from GB firms to Swiss,to Dutch,to Italian,& a spot of Swiss O/D ing. I was on BRS when I was 23 & had my first divorce.Had a fantastic life but its all been ex-wives & hemorrhoids
With the baby an all I would turn the truck round & go home now & let the rest sort itself out later. Domestic problems take precedence over everything in the trucking game.IMO
Juddian:
NewLad:
Oh and drop the Sundays mate, sod double bubble, Sunday is one day that should definitely be about spending time with your family, if you can’t afford to drop it totally then do every other Sunday.Nothing better than sitting down to a roast with the whole family, just don’t look at the pots lol.
I would agree with you there New Lad, except Samstones wife appears not to be working, in which case it makes more sense to work weekends and milk the premium rate and have two or more days off in the wy eek and shift your weekend clock round to Tues/Weds/whatever.
True for now, however it won’t be long until his child is doing 15hrs a week at school so he’ll want weekends off then.
What someone said earlier is a valid point, about staring at 4 walls all day, do you have family that live near by that could take the child for a afternoon a week so your missus can go out with a friend for a coffee or a chat, shopping (clothes not food ). Does she have any friends that have young children? She could go on a play date with friends every week gets her out the house.
Your home every night so you see each other a fair amount, do you eat your dinner together at night? Little things like this mean a lot, it gives you the opportunity to communicate, run her a bath a night some candles, do this regularly as it gives her time to relax, like someone else said give her a break from the baby.
I think it’s probably more a cry for a break ofrom the mundane routine of looking after a young en, she see’s you every day which is more than some married couples get.
I suppose best advice is to talk to her and listen.
I think you should tell her she is being selfish thinking about herself while you are out working paying the bills and putting food on the table week in week out and that if she doesn’t stop with the emotional blackmail you will move her into a bedsit and blow all your wages on multiple 20yr girls in Massage Parlours every week instead.
Watch her keep all that emotional stuff to herself instead of ringing you up while your on the road and having to pretend that your interested! Result!!
get a new job,
even fork lift drivers get more money than a class 1 driver these days, aldi shop workers get something like 9 or 10 quid an hour also for just stacking selves so maybe its a shift in carrer for you
I wouldn’t recommend fork lift driving, I currently do it and after 10 years of doing the job I am ready for a change of career. Money is only good if you drop on at the right place, and not just that, but any fork lift job now is agency work, very rare to walk straight into a company bypassing the agency work. Also, never guaranteed 40 hours a week, depending which sector you drop into if you did it, work is touch and go.