Another one about Dh and money

No, I didn’t. I paid all that as well and it still worked out less

Did you miss the bit that OP pays for nursery fees (often far larger than a mortgage) and all child related expenses? Including her step children?

I am amazed that £400 even touches the sides of a contribution to mortgage and bills. Which part of the UK do you live in?

If your living expenses are low, you should be using any lump sums that you receive to pay off any debt immediately and chunks off the mortgage.

You should’ve put that he pays the mortgage and the bills on the main post as I would think the poll would’ve been different. I’d hope so anyway. My DH paid the mortgage and bills but I paid everything else because we thought that was fair. He still ended up paying more than me though so I think YABU

How much is your mortgage and bills?
How much is nursery fees and food?
Why are you both not paying half for child's things and holidays?
Time to sit down and go through financial planning together.

How much is the mortgage- big diff between £500 a month and £2000 a month looking at your contribution.

Why didn't he pay half the wedding costs? And half the deposit? I think that's where your bitterness is coming from and no wonder.
Regular spending sounds a bit fairer.
Children don't need to go to exotic locations to have fun. Do that later. When they are young go to Spain or Greece on a family trip or an adventure place. Stop wasting money.

Surely when you get married you agree to inherit all your husbands/wives responsibilities so you can deal with them as a married couple?
I think not, I am not working to pay his child maintenance

How much is the mortgage?

Crikey - just adding up there's £20k worth of holidays there (including the wedding abroad).

YABU

Stop using all of your bonus for things like holidays (lovely though they are). Stash a significant amount in your own account and in your child's account. Partly because at the moment you are working hard for these because you can but you might get to a stage in not so many years, where that isn't viable. Secondly, every woman needs a running away fund, as I call it and I say that as someone who has been married for 35 years. You need a cushion for you and child should you become single. Thirdly, if he isn't pulling his finger out at work, someone will notice and there will be competition from young, thrusting colleagues and he could well find himself on the redundancy list. Fourthly, perhaps he hates his job. Perhaps he'd like to go part time and do something else. You have the drive and ambition, maybe he just doesn't any more. Perhaps the compromise is that you are the main earner and he takes on the roles that enable you to do that successfully. I can only imagine that you are outsourcing a lot of life crap to succeed in this way (well done).

Discuss with him.

Why on earth are you booking exotic holidays when you have credit card debt? Sort your debts out first before the over-spending.

If you feel something is unfair, then make a list of all costs and discuss how to split them. Your DH brings in a wage that you seem to consider reasonable, but you can't expect a big bonus every year, that isn't how it works.

Hang on a minute - that's quite a big drip feed.

To recap - he pays all mortgage and bills, he pays child maintenance to ex (a largish amount); he's paying off credit card debt left from covid which is now 4 years ago - so must be a sizeable debt - he's also paying off debt from when you were on maternity leave??

And you decide (with his blessing presumably) to book an exotic expensiveholiday for October....

Why are you sitting down together and paying off all the debts first?

The problem isn't just with your husband -

Do you not just...ask him for half when you come home from the shops etc? We have a joint account and pay equally into it for bills, then after shopping trips if we've done a big shop / bought DC clothes / paid childcare fees etc whoever paid it just tells the other what they've spent and we pay them back for half of it.

Without fact and figures how much each pays and earns it’s pointless trying to advise

If you still have outstanding debt on credit deal with that together first before buying anything else. You say you are a team but this seems chaotic. Look at whats outstanding, jointly clear that. Then one pot for all expenses, you need to decide of your bonus goes into that pot too.

if you feel he’s not pulling his weight financially thats another conversation.

Set up a joint account, transfer a portion of your salaries in (he pays the additional bit in for child support) all costs for family stuff come out of there. That way no-one feels like they are contributing more or less. You can work out an equitable solution.

None of this is clear.

You need to work out the tota outgoings inc mortgage, childcare and bills. Then split it.

Maybe have a joint account that you both pay x amount into, all the shared outgoings come from it.

Discuss a new system with him.

In my household that would still mean he had higher outgoings. But we have a big mortgage.

Like other posters have said you can’t be sure how to make it fair until you sit down and add it all up, can you?

or failing that, do you not have or can you open a joint account that you can both transfer the same lump sum into right after you get paid, and everything comes out of that?

This is pretty basic cohabiting stuff.

No. That’s not a given.

Why not?

Surely when you get married you agree to inherit all your husbands/wives responsibilities so you can deal with them as a married couple?

Maintenance is not a discretionary spend though. If they want to create a list of all expenses and compare whether relatively even, that one doesn’t feel like it should come out of his ‘personal’ money to me.
That’s assuming OP knew he had children and maintenance obligations prior to starting this relationship and family though, which hopefully is fair

No one likes a smartarse PP

People argue more about money than sex, I think. It’s a touchy and emotive subject, especially with step kids in the mix. Plus the fact the OP is probably knackered from long hours and young children.

It’s not working so you need to change the system, and get everything paid into one account.

…. so you get equal amounts of spending money once everything is accounted for.

So you are clever enough to earn mega bonuses but too infantile to manage your finances properly?!

The two don’t really go together