For wanting my partner to pay more of the mortgage?

Yuk - his response would be it for me. He's so tight that he's not willing to give an extra 200 a month on his current salary? To help out the woman he supposedly loves?? Nah, I'd be done with him. I'd find another job to increase my salary and move on - without him.

The solution is you realize that you will never be partners in this relationship and he will always look out for himself. Think about what will happen when you have kids and go on maternity with low pay, he will still expect you to continue to pay 50%, or if you have to cut hours to look after the kids or something.

On one hand yeah he can claim he wants supportive of you chasing jobs but as a husband and partner you should be in it together and work things out together not he live as a £90k earner while you struggle to keep up.

I will advise you to consider ending the relation if you're not able to sort things out before the wedding, couples counselling is also helpful and please please please don't bring kids I to this yet.

I also know you will most likely make excuses and find reasons to stay in the relationship and make it work and unfortunately things will only get worse if he has such a selfish attitude now during the honeymoon phase.

I'm not, I said the principle was the same to that specific post, and it is.

OP has asked to reduce what she pays in so she can keep up with the lifestyle of someone earning 90k, a wage which she was earning, or close to it until she decided to take a different job, take out the reasons why she moved jobs, she now earns less than half of her previous salary, that was a choice.

Now, if they had kids and she was working part-time and her earnings had reduced because of this, and he was unwilling to split, I'd be the first to look at how strange that situation is. The simple facts here are that she now earns a lot less and is asking a boyfriend to cover her because she doesn't have as much disposable income. Rightly or wrongly, it's not the higher earners' fault, and they are under no obligation to bump up their payments to help.

I've read countless posts on here, where men are struggling with M/H, and the advice is still LTB, he's not good for you if he can't pay his way etc. And women wonder why young men protect their income.

Without context of the relationship, ie how long have they been together, age, etc it's hard to guess to much. If they were married and had kids, I'd feel very differently and my words would be very different.

It is the situation.

She says the split is down to him paying the deposit.

So that is fair. There is a ringfenced deposit % and then they pay the rest equally. If they decide to sell then once you account for the increase in value and the ringfenced deposit % he would receive more because he has paid in more.

Luckily they are not married, only engaged and no children, only thing shared is a joint mortgage, so should be relatively easy for them to separate if that is what they decide.

• He has a slightly bigger share in the property to reflect the deposit we put in - it's split 55/45 I think.

What happens if you split and sell? Does he get 55% of the equity and you get 45%? If that’s the case it seems unfair to pay 50/50. You both should have ring fenced your deposits and then paid 50/50.

It sounds like he married you for your earning potential and perhaps why you married him too. I would part ways because a 50/50 isn’t the type of marriage you appear to want nor sustain given higher paid roles are going to require more burn out from your end.

This is super common in London, people engaged for almost a decade, together because they can’t afford to live in the city alone so it’s easier to get a partner and join incomes. I would be careful about whether this is what you want the rest of your marriage plus children to be based on primarily.

My DH and I do percentage of income. It’s the only fair way. Every year we put all our joint expenses and updated take home pay into a spreadsheet. We have a formula that calculates what we each need to put into our joint account to cover bills. It’s based on what we earn. We then put that amount into the joint account and keep the rest of our pay in our own accounts for fun money. We’ve used the same formula for our whole marriage. When we got together I earned a quarter of what my DH did. I now earn 5 x more. The formula has always stayed the same. (My contributions have skyrocketed!)

I voted YABU - are you compatible you seem to be going into a marriage/partnership where you both do as you like without taking each others pov into consideration? You said your partner wasn't supportive of your salary drop/less work demand but you did it anyway..you want to leave London he doesn't so will you just accept that?
There's nothing wrong with the choices you are making but you can't expect someone else to finance them. I work part time and have not gone for promotion because the hours/lifestyle suit. However I do that knowing I have to cut back and can't just spend money as I could if I worked full time at a higher level

You can afford 1500 on 35k salary and would pay that for a nice shared house room in London if you split... can you keep that salary if you move away?

So above that you can opt out of fiance s meals out etc . Don't drink the expensive wine it will last longer. Etc . Propose the cheap b and b .
Until you married what is his is his what is yours is yours. How much mat pay will you get? Plan to return to work after 6 months

👆🏻 I do genuinely feel we've got to a point that woman are so afraid to be seen as gold diggers that a lot of men are financially taking advantage of and potentially abusing their partners if theyr left with no money because if you ask for anything but 50/50 you're a gold digger / being subsidised etc etc when you're actually asking for it to be split in a way you both retain some financial independence

Why are you and so many posters equating someone working full time and contributong 50% to someone sitting on their arse contributing nothing? And why if they're splitting the bills 50/50 can the higher earner unilaterally decide to increase their spending and yet OP is being told to "cut back"? If it was OP insisting on fancy dinners and wasn't putting into the pot you'd have a point but I genuinely can't understand the logic of what you're saying.

OP, I have a lot of sympathy with finding the stress and long hours of fee earning tough. I’ve worked at MC and US firms, and frankly it’s rubbish.

At 5-6PQE I became a PSL - currently £120k FTE, genuine 9-5, super low stress.

I would never have quit law at 1PQE though - I had a mortgage to pay (property I bought alone as an NQ). I’ve taken significant pay cuts for quality of life, but couldn’t contemplate a pay cut to £35k while living in London with a partner who wasn’t 100% on board.

You essentially can’t afford this pay cut, and your partner isn’t happy to make up the shortfall. If you needed to leave London to make the career change work, that should have been agreed before you left your job - and it wasn’t.

I don’t get a good feeling about your compatibility I’m afraid - I think this is showing up major differences between you. Tbh I can understand he’s peed off that you’ve slashed your earning power (without his support) just as you’ve taken on a joint mortgage. 10 years to earn £90k in the field you’re now (both?) in is a long time for him to pick up the slack. Separate food shops for a couple sounds impossible!

Do you think he’d be up for leaving London in the longer term? Hope things settle down!

I wonder if he realises that a lot of people on good salaries are feeling poorer these days @AnyPomegranate. We earn a lot more than you and are not feeling as well off as we’d like (these kind of comments don’t go down well on MN but it’s true!) our biggest issue is nursery fees (just a casual £3.5k per month and not even full time argh) but the COL has gone up massively.

I think the fact that he wasn’t on board with you getting such a low paid job makes it hard to ask him to pay more, although I think it’s a shame he isn’t willing to- what he planning to do when you have kids (if this is on the cards!)

Maybe remind him that your relationship is much more than finances and definitely more than the sum of its parts. My husband earns a lot more than me and always has done but we never ever talk about ‘his money’ it’s always been ours. Were you generous/ sharing when you earned more? Did you pay more than half and treat him?

And OP, for the love of God, don't be coerced into a life of poverty while your husband lives it up because you're worried that if you don't accept financial shit for life, you're somehow a gold digger or an otherwise bad woman.

The wedding arrangements!

Borrowing from your mother and you presume you will pay her back when your income increases.

This sounds like you are taking complete responsibility for this. Are you?

He's got over 3,000 a month to spend and you have to borrow from your mother to pay for the wedding? Is that his half too?

Have you even discussed repayments with him?

And if you spend pay rises on a wedding your monthly situation won't get better.

Doesn't sound good.

Your username is how i feel about your comment?

She is your husband in this instance, a little less extreme, but the principles are the same.

I'm in no way bashing the OP, I've always said I'd rather be in a job I love earning less than dreading going to work. But you need to cut your clothes accordingly.

The OP is not married, has no children, and they went into it 50/50. Yes, they may be getting married, but up to this point, they are equal partners.

I agree with this post. Why are you borrowing from your Mum to pay for the wedding, why isn't billy big bollocks covering his share of the wedding costs?

What will happen if you have children and are on maternity leave? Will he expect you to fund your own maternity leave from your savings, or return to work full time asap because he doesn't want to support you financially to stay at home with your DC?

Honestly, it doesn't sound like he will ever be supportive financially when you take the earnings hit to have children and this would be a massive red flag for me, along with his dismissive approach to your mental health when you were working as a lawyer. I agree with carrying on paying 50/50, but don't borrow money from your Mum, don't go out for expensive meals, don't go on expensive holidays and do separate food shops. I personally would cancel postpone the wedding, I don't think you are singing from the same hymn sheet regarding finances and being supportive of each other's choices.

You presumably hope to be married for a long time and there will usually be ups and downs, changes in circumstances and goals during a marriage and ideally you want a partner who has your back and will ride with the change in fortunes etc and face them together equally, this man doesn't sound like he would be like that, he sounds selfish. He also seems very inflexible and to want to keep the good stuff for himself alone - that is not a life partner, that is a flatmate. I really think you should take a long hard look at this man and think about whether he is really the life partner you want to have children and grow old with. Divorce is messy and expensive.

Please please please OP I beg you, do NOT opt out of your pension and future security to financially appease this man and stop dipping into your savings to cover expenses while presumably he is accruing savings with all the money he has left over every month.

We believe in joint expenses, split by proportional income. So as I am the higher earner I am paying more and that makes a lot of sense as otherwise he wouldn't be able to keep up. That includes both of us adding to savings, not dipping into them.

If he changed roles tomorrow to something really highly paid and I took on a role paying 30k I would fully expect the same approach. Otherwise what's the point of the vows? Where's the partnership?

The only thing is before marriage & kids we did split our mortgage 50/50 aligned with the ownership split. But that's all moot post kids.

OP, don't tie yourself for life to a man who insists on living a lifestyle that destroys you. Even if he's right that he has no obligation to his wife to be and, presumably, his wife, the fact remains that doing this will fuck you over. If you have kids it'll be even worse. Men like this think everything financially detrimental is "your choice" so you'll be responsible for paying for nursery, holiday clubs and all the rest of it.

This is simply not how people who love each other and see themselves as a team act. He is out for himself, so let him take care of himself and find someone who truly wants to share theur life with you.

YANBU. Sounds like you are willing to live within your means but he wants an expensive lifestyle you can't afford right now on a 50/50 split. I'd tell him you can't afford it so the options are bills are proportionate to income or you move out of London and make other cut backs.

They were both earning 50k. They are already paying proportionally though!!! Higher earners think that calling it 50/50 means they're not but they ARE paying a different proportion of their earnings, just with them paying proportionately LESS and somehow that's fair logically how?

My penny pinching days are over, I earn £90k and if I want to chuck something I want in the trolley then I should be able to

This attitude sums up the problem. He can see how having a 90k salary means he can spend more when its money he wants to spend. The absolute cheek of saying something like this when you're splitting bills 50/50 with someone on 35k and wanting them to pick up 50% of what you're chucking in the trolley.

If he wanted to keep it 50/50 he could at least let that cover basics and pay for his little treats out of the remainder of his salary. Instead he's blowing her salary without her agreement, but is it only his say/permission that counts?

Just read your update. He needs to be paying more. It's sad how he's being right now. I'd do separate food shops as it isn't fair you're paying half of his preferred groceries. Also I'd decline eating out and some events. You cannot keep up with his lifestyle while on your salary, that's how thousands of people get into debt. You're being very sensible to review your finances, instead of burying your head in the sand. A side note, do you have savings/pension that's suffering as a result? Make sure housework is 50/50 too.