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My Two Cents<\/a><\/p>\n \n Personal-finance columnist Charlotte Cowles asks the nosy, revealing, sometimes uncomfortable questions about money so you don\u2019t have to.\n <\/p>\n \n Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photo: Getty Images\n <\/p>\n When people think of gambling addiction<\/a>, they usually picture feverish bets on DraftKings<\/a> or online poker. But day trading, which allows investors to buy and sell stocks easily (and legally) online,\u00a0can be just as addictive and destructive<\/a> (the vast majority of day traders are unprofitable<\/a>). Here, a woman in her 30s recounts learning that her husband lost $300,000 \u2014 including $160,000 from the sale of a business she had started and sold \u2014 by day trading over the course of about two years.<\/p>\n At first, she tried to get him help; they had a young daughter and another on the way. But after he relapsed, she filed for divorce. She has since rebuilt her life, financially, and is finally at the point where she can start saving money again. \u201cI know a lot of other people have it worse,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I tell other people who know day-trading addicts, they\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s not that bad.\u2019 But to me, it\u2019s still insane. That\u2019s so much money.\u201d Here\u2019s how she extricated herself from the mess.<\/p>\n The day I found out was the first time I\u2019d woken up without morning sickness. I was pregnant with our second child, and I\u2019d been feeling ill for months. I was so relieved that I felt better \u2014\u00a0like, \u201cOh, maybe I\u2019ll go on a walk.\u201d Then my husband came home early from work, around 11 a.m. And he was like, \u201cI need to tell you something.\u201d My first thought was, Oh my God, you\u2019re cheating on me. He said, \u201cNo, it\u2019s something else.\u201d<\/p>\n This was during the pandemic. He had an office job \u2014 he\u2019s a corporate executive \u2014 and I was running a fitness studio. It was my second business. I had sold my first one and used some of the money to build out the new location. We were struggling, though, because no one was going to group workout classes during COVID. We had a cushion from the sale of my first business, about $160,000, so we were better off than a lot of business owners at the time. But I didn\u2019t want to tap into that money unless we had to. We put it in a brokerage account that my husband managed for us. I had asked him to transfer me money from it because I had to pay the rent on the studio space. But he kept forgetting and I kept reminding him. Finally, I think he got backed into a corner \u2014 the money was gone.<\/p>\n That day, he told me that he had been day trading and he\u2019d lost everything from the sale of my business. I felt like a complete idiot, because I had no idea what day trading was. Then I realized I had been getting email notifications from Ameritrade. And I just trusted that he knew what he was doing in terms of picking the investments in that account. I thought we had an understanding about how the money would be invested \u2014 in a low-risk portfolio that didn\u2019t change very much. But clearly that was not the case.<\/p>\n My initial thought was, Oh my God, something\u2019s wrong with my husband. And also, I cannot be a small business owner anymore with no safety net. At the time, my oldest daughter was 10 months old, and we didn\u2019t have child care \u2014 I would bring her to the studio with me. I thought, I\u2019m going to have to get a full-time job. And then I won\u2019t get to spend as much time with my daughter. And I was upset. But I was very focused on how to solve the problems and what the logistics would be. I didn\u2019t really let myself sit with the feeling of what had happened; I just tried to fix it.<\/p>\n I also felt really bad for him. I just couldn\u2019t reconcile that he would be irresponsible with our money. It was unlike anything I\u2019d seen him do before. I remember giving him a hug. And I was immediately strategizing: What do we do next? I knew we had to get him into some kind of treatment. And this sounds silly now, but I didn\u2019t put it together that he had a gambling problem. I thought he was having a mental breakdown.<\/p>\n I told my business partner what was happening, and she was like, \u201cThis isn\u2019t your fault. It\u2019s going to be okay. We\u2019ll figure it out.\u201d But I was very worried about this affecting her; I was supposed to be providing the cash runway for our business, and I no longer could. I also called my parents. Their response was, \u201cHow could he have done this? We love him.\u201d They encouraged me to keep doing what I was doing \u2014 work on the marriage.<\/p>\n I researched mental-health programs that he could do in the evenings after work. I found one, signed him up, and paid for it. He went, and they had support groups for family members that I went to as well. I didn\u2019t really find it that helpful because everybody was struggling with something different. It really ran the spectrum of mental illness. They offered generic coping strategies for depression and anxiety. I was hoping we\u2019d get some kind of diagnosis, but we never got one. No one told us that he was an addict.<\/p>\n I started looking for work and found a job in tech a few months later, when I was about seven months pregnant. I also taught a barre class at a friend\u2019s studio to bring in more money. So I would wake up a couple of mornings each week at 5 a.m., go teach a class super-pregnant, go to the office, and then stop by my own studio on the way home. It was intense. I also took over all of our finances and locked him out of all of our accounts. Or at least I thought I had.<\/p>\n The job I found was doing operations for a tech company, similar to what I\u2019d been doing as a small-business owner but 100 percent in the office. It was a stark difference from being with my daughter all the time. My mother-in-law watched her while I was working. Then my second child was born, and my maternity leave was six weeks, which sucked. After that, we got a nanny, which was the cheapest option we could find until my oldest could go to preschool. The transition back to work, away from my children, was really hard.<\/p>\n I later found out that my husband only stopped day trading for about five months. He\u2019d started again right before our second child was born. Looking back, I should have known. I remember around that time walking into the kitchen and seeing him scrolling through one of the trading platforms on his computer. He assured me he was just looking. And I said, \u201cIf you ever even look again, you realize I\u2019m divorcing you.\u201d<\/p>\n I still don\u2019t have proof that he ever stopped, actually; it\u2019s just what he told me. To know that he was still day trading while I was trying so hard to make everything work \u2014 it\u2019s still painful to think about.<\/p>\n The following year, my business partner and I wound up having to close the fitness studio. She\u2019d been running the day-to-day operations, and we were never able to recover after COVID. It was around the same time that I got another, better job in tech. Then, within a few months, I discovered that my husband had relapsed. It was about 18 months after the first time he said he would stop.<\/p>\n I found out on this weird night. He was often up really, really late. It was a long-term source of conflict in our marriage. I think part of what kept him up was that he was trading, but also, he would just lose track of time. So I usually went to bed earlier than him. On this particular night, I woke up and he still wasn\u2019t in bed, and I just had this feeling. I went out into the living room and \u2014 I\u2019d never done this before \u2014 grabbed his phone right out of his hand and looked at the screen. It was open to one of the trading apps. And I was like, \u201cThat\u2019s it. I\u2019m done.\u201d I made him sleep on the couch. And the next morning, I asked him to leave and I called an attorney. He went to a friend\u2019s house, and that afternoon he called to tell me that he hadn\u2019t just been looking at the apps. It was much worse.<\/p>\n This is where I started to feel really stupid. A little while earlier, we had taken out a line of credit against our home to pay for some improvements. We\u2019d used about $10,000 of it to do some painting and buy window treatments. I had locked him out of the account, but it came with a checkbook that he\u2019d found and used. So he\u2019d taken about $35,000 from there. He also had the log-in information to my old 401(k), from a previous corporate job, which was entirely in my name, and that was gone too. He\u2019d liquidated his own 401(k) and taken out a high-interest loan in his name. All in all, between the $160,000 he lost the first time and everything he lost after that, the total was over $300,000.<\/p>\n He moved in with his parents for a couple of weeks and then found an apartment. He also told me that he had chosen to do this because he was so unhappy in our marriage. It was a real low point. It struck a nerve. I was like, He must really hate me if I\u2019ve driven him to this. I thought that maybe if I\u2019d hustled harder and brought in more income while we were married it never would have happened. I\u2019ve since learned that blaming other people is a classic addiction pattern.<\/p>\n I want to be very transparent about this: My parents helped me out financially while I was initiating the divorce. I was not the primary breadwinner, and without their support, I would have lost the house. All our savings were gone. I was handling all our bills, including our credit card, and my husband\u2019s spending had gotten really erratic. Right before we separated, he\u2019d started buying tons of tickets to sports games with the intention to resell them. Our credit-card bill was over $20,000, which it had never been before. I called my parents and asked for help, and they covered it for me. I know a lot of people can\u2019t do that, and I\u2019m privileged that I could. Even still, I felt very financially unsteady.<\/p>\n During the divorce, he never contested any part of what I wanted with the kids. So I have them the majority of the time. But I did have to fight hard over the financial part. When you factor in all the interest that our \u2014 and my \u2014 savings could have gained if he hadn\u2019t lost it, the damages are astronomical. We finally settled on him paying $2,000 a month in child support and $3,000 a month in alimony over ten years. It\u2019s basically a repayment plan. I also got the house and all the equity that we had in it, which was probably the best thing.<\/p>\n He was not super-apologetic. I don\u2019t know if he feels differently now, but back then he would say, \u201cI\u2019ve already apologized for this over and over again.\u201d It was an angry apology. Now I\u2019m trying to co-parent with him, and I don\u2019t want to jeopardize his job, so I try to keep things peaceful. But it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n It took me about six months after the divorce to get to a point where I felt like I could breathe, financially. I also got a new job at another tech firm. And just now, about two years later, I\u2019m finally at a point where I can start to save money again. I also have a new partner, and I share my home with him. When he moved in, that\u2019s when things started to feel less tight. I could have found my footing financially on my own, but it would have taken much longer. Being in a two-income household has made a big difference. I also got a big promotion at the beginning of last year, so now I\u2019m making over $160,000 a year. That was a huge milestone for me. It\u2019s not the career I imagined for myself, but I can\u2019t go back to being a small-business owner. It\u2019s just too unstable.<\/p>\n When my current partner and I were moving in together, I hired a financial adviser. I was like, \u201cI have PTSD about the stock market. Can you help me out?\u201d I told them the whole story, and they have been life changing. They helped me and my partner structure finances in a way that feels safe for me. We keep our savings separate. We have a joint operating account, so we can pay bills easily. And we also have a shared emergency fund.<\/p>\n Now that I\u2019m on the other side of this, I constantly go back to the realization that I knew something was wrong before he told me. I wish I\u2019d been able to act on it earlier than I did. I was so easily influenced by people around me, well-meaning friends who would say things like, \u201cOh, but he\u2019s so nice. How could he do that?\u201d And I\u2019d be like, Oh, maybe they\u2019re right. He\u2019s a good person. Maybe I should let this go. I wish I could have let myself sit with the discomfort of it instead of pushing it away and allowed myself to get angry. When I was getting divorced, one of my best friends said, \u201cI don\u2019t know if you feel like you need permission to do this, but I\u2019m giving it to you. You have permission.\u201d And I didn\u2019t realize how much I\u2019d needed someone to say that. I know it sounds woo-woo, but most people know when something is wrong. It\u2019s okay if people disagree with you. It\u2019s okay if you lose friends.<\/p>\n I\u2019m also careful about giving advice now. I\u2019ve learned that when financial infidelity happens, people usually only tell you part of the story, because they\u2019re too embarrassed about the rest of it. Assume that you only know about 50 percent of what happened. I was guilty of this \u2014 I would paint everything to be better than it was. And then when my friends found out that it wasn\u2019t, they\u2019d be like, \u201cOh my God, I didn\u2019t know.\u201d And that\u2019s a fair point. They really didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Email your money conundrums to\u00a0mytwocents@nymag.com<\/a> (and read our submission terms here<\/a>).<\/p>\n