Are you married to an investment banker and have kids?

[Lisbon83]

My husband is an investment banker at ED level and we recently had a baby.

I'm looking for advice from people in my position who get the hours they do and the particular stresses of the work. It's not 9-5 as we know and it's not possible to be 50/50 split on childcare during weekday evenings for example.

How did you manage family life, looking after yourself, baby etc without tearing your marriage apart? Night feeds, childcare, household chores, life admin, weekends, time for ourselves.. how to organise and any tips or ideas?

Pandemic has made it worse and harder to access outside help but hoping this will become easier soon.

Moonpeg, true. People are too stupid, too interested in money, and not emotionally aware to realise that money can't solve everything.

Young women need to be taught to look at a mans whole personality, all his traits, to see if he would actually make a good husband.

First, throw money at this problem. Hire a cleaner, find an ironing service, meal deliveries whatever would help.

Second have an expedition around holidays. He has annual leave and he will have to take it. Plan together when this is and how that works. Basically when he is off work he needs to give you a break from the parenting. Also talk about the important dates he needs to take off like the first day of school or the nativity or birthdays etc.

Find a good babysitter / have family local who can help you.

Talk about how he can make your life easier. This might sound so stupid, but he needs to know that he puts his dirty clothes away, he give advance warning of needing anything particular e,g he wants x shirt for work, you need 2 days notice of this request. If he has a spare min in the day, he empties the dishwasher or wipes a surface down etc. Basically long hours are no excuse to behave like an additional child.

@Lisbon83

My husband is an investment banker at ED level and we recently had a baby.

I'm looking for advice from people in my position who get the hours they do and the particular stresses of the work. It's not 9-5 as we know and it's not possible to be 50/50 split on childcare during weekday evenings for example.

How did you manage family life, looking after yourself, baby etc without tearing your marriage apart? Night feeds, childcare, household chores, life admin, weekends, time for ourselves.. how to organise and any tips or ideas?

Pandemic has made it worse and harder to access outside help but hoping this will become easier soon.

Is he a IB or in IB. I am at ED level in IB (not am not a banker) and have kids. DH (who also works full time) has always been home based to ensure things get done at home and I pay for nursery. He does all the daily housework / diy / shopping / school runs / and most of the cooking during the week. I do stuff like deep cleaning / bed times / planning (school bags, shopping lists, trips etc etc). We don’t have a cleaner but will get one after Lockdown when I need to go into the office.

On a typical ‘London’ day - I wake at 4am, gym. and am on the train by 6; and work until I arrive to the City. Get ready and eat breakfast at work. Am at my desk by 7:45 usually. Then work through my evening commute (and eat dinner on the move) and am at home by 7pm just in time for bedtime.

And that's quality of life?

Not the same job, but lots of women I know (including me) had husbands working stressful and time consuming jobs whilst living in a foreign country with no family around for support, so we hired cleaners, nannies etc to help out with daily life duties. Worked well for us.

@JustSleepAlready

Just reading some of the posts here - why the hell are you having kids if you’re getting a night time nanny, a day care nanny, a crèche, a cleaner, a gardener, an ironing person...? What is the point of having kids if you can’t give them your time? And with all the paid help , what exactly are you doing all day??

I have had all of the above at varying times and it worked for us as it meant that we could give our free time to the children without worrying about chores that needed to be done. We like a clean, tidy home and without all the help we would have spent precious hours cleaning.

Paid staff only work the hours you want them to work, most people utilise them wisely and don't use them 24/7 and so get no time with their kids at all.

When I was a SAHM I supported my DH in his high earning career and looked after my ageing parents and did a degree. When I returned to work I was qualified in a new field and worked term time only.

Now that the kids are adults we still have a cleaner, a gardener and an ironing lady because we can. That means we can enjoy more of our free time together.

Why do have an issue with it?

There was a helpful thread here a while back about identifying the things that make life difficult and seeing what you could outsource. I can't find it now, but the gist was: employ a cleaner, send out some of your washing/ironing, potentially get an au-pair. Try and establish a routine as soon as you can. Accept help from family/friends. Probably unrealistic to expect him to help with night-feeds, and the first few months with a baby will feel really hard (but it does get easier). Lean on your NCT group (or similar, if you have one) for support. Join other baby and toddler groups so that you have people to talk to during the day. He needs to try and commit to putting some boundaries in place in relation to work - leave his phone downstairs at night, carve out family and "relationship" time for you and the baby, when he puts his phone away and is unavailable for work, even for a few hours. Be really open about it with one another and try to make a plan together, so that you don't feel like you are constantly nagging him to work less.

With the greatest of respect, an investment banker is not especially unique. I think you are getting carried away and Believing your husbands hype.

Yes it’s long hours, high risk, high pressure and very high reward. So are lots of jobs.

I hope you have your own fulfilling
Career to return to. But as others have said there is no unique solution for the wives of investment bankers😂. Hire a housekeeper, hire an evening nanny, get a chef if you want, a gardener and some good friends. You won’t see much of your husband, either will your children. Build a fulfilling life of your own. Make sure you have people you can for dinner with, a picnic, even on holiday with.

And of course build your own career. Don’t sacrifice yourself because he is an investment banker. It’s just a job - enjoy the money, but don’t build it up into something it isn’t. He’s not saving the world.

@Oblomov21

And that's quality of life?

Yes because it means I can afford the best schools and areas for my DC and after I retire in 5 years, can support them even more.

Good point about the hype of the job, a few times I’ve had to bring my DH back down to earth when he got a bit carried away with how good his job is and how good he is. We now call it his ‘great’ moments, I’d tell him shut up, all this ‘greatness’ makes him sound like an eejit, it seems to do the trick.

I’m a SAHM and my husband is a banker, or rather was. He was changing jobs when the pandemic hit and all of a sudden the new position he was going to no longer existed.

It’s tough for them to get back in once they’ve been out for more than a year. I now regret putting my own career on hold, it’s been very long since I last worked and I’m apparently unemployable in my field now. The future for our family is very uncertain, and it’s clear our old way of life is gone forever.

We are trying to figure out where to go from here but it’s clear we have to make a lot of adjustments.

Bottom line is that I truly regret giving up work, because you clearly never know where life will take you

I'm not sure if we're defining investment banking narrowly (as in M&A) or more broadly (i.e to encompass traders, equity sales, research etc). Assuming the latter, I was married to an IB (still married but he's in asset management now). I have also worked FT for most of the time that we've had kids. Tbh in his line of banking, the bad hours are before director level (and we were both in shitty hours jobs then), so by the time we had kids he was an ED and it wasn't as bad (v little weekend stuff) and he had a short commute so would come home for bedtime and then do evening calls if needed. It probably also helped that we had kids right after the GFC so client entertaining was seriously curtailed. We only ever had one holiday cancelled. A few tough years when DC were babies/ toddlers due to lack of sleep (but doesn't everyone?). We had a cleaner and a nanny and got a lot of food delivery.

I don't know how to say this without sounding smug, but I think part of it is how involved they want to be. DH was always v keen to have kids, and therefore prioritised seeing them and still does (takes them to all sorts of sports and activities/ was a parent coach every Sunday for years). I think some (not all) men who work crazy hours could actually get home for bedtime more often than they do, but they don't want to because quite often its hellish (witching hour) and they know their wife will pick up the slack

Top tip: peer group. Not sure how (more luck than design) but our male friends with kids are mostly very hands-on dads and I think that makes a difference as from early days they would all meet up at weekends with all the kids for a walk and a coffee and then later at the beach or park or whatever.

Sorry to hear about your husband's ED.

Not an investment banker but DH is a partner in a law firm. Ridiculous hours. Monday - Friday I've had to accept that I do 100% of everything child and house related. Weekends (although he often works at least one day) we try to split childcare and chores 50/50. It's not easy. It's very hard to ever get a break without utilising paid childcare (we live overseas so no family).

My youngest is now 3.5 and I'm looking to go back to work part time. We will be losing money, and I'll probably be exhausted but I now need something for me away from the children/home duties.

@Ideasplease322

With the greatest of respect, an investment banker is not especially unique. I think you are getting carried away and Believing your husbands hype.

Yes it’s long hours, high risk, high pressure and very high reward. So are lots of jobs.

I hope you have your own fulfilling
Career to return to. But as others have said there is no unique solution for the wives of investment bankers😂. Hire a housekeeper, hire an evening nanny, get a chef if you want, a gardener and some good friends. You won’t see much of your husband, either will your children. Build a fulfilling life of your own. Make sure you have people you can for dinner with, a picnic, even on holiday with.

And of course build your own career. Don’t sacrifice yourself because he is an investment banker. It’s just a job - enjoy the money, but don’t build it up into something it isn’t. He’s not saving the world.

Hear, hear.

OP, I know you’re on maternity leave, but I don’t think you said what you do and when/if you’re returning to work. That makes a huge difference to advice.

And to add - it has to be a team effort. DH is at pains to stress that my "job" is the important one in our family, he just happens to earn the money just now

My husband is IBD and we had our kids relatively early (both very early 30s) so when they were very young we didn’t have a huge salary relatively speaking but his hours were atrocious abs so I didn’t have any help until my oldest went to nursery. I did have cleaners twice a week.

So the the second I had a nanny (who had worked for a good friend full time) and she would come three times a week for the morning only which allowed me to go to the hairdresser / shopping. That was when my youngest was about 18 months. At 2.5 she went to nursery.

I didn’t have any family around and my husband was even on calls during the weekend - although home with us. It was expensive but totally worth it. They do say that one on one childcare is better for kids under 2 if you can afford it.

Sorry I meant to say that when the full time nanny had her hours reduced she came to work for me. It’s quite common for nannies to have free time after school drop off but before pick up so that is a good option.

Friends whose husbands are IBD just put their kids into nursery for some full days to get some time off. Mine were difficult to leave at night as they needed me or my husband to settle them so it was tricky to get babysitters in the evening and worked way better to have someone come in the day.

@Ideasplease322

With the greatest of respect, an investment banker is not especially unique. I think you are getting carried away and Believing your husbands hype.

Yes it’s long hours, high risk, high pressure and very high reward. So are lots of jobs.

I hope you have your own fulfilling
Career to return to. But as others have said there is no unique solution for the wives of investment bankers😂. Hire a housekeeper, hire an evening nanny, get a chef if you want, a gardener and some good friends. You won’t see much of your husband, either will your children. Build a fulfilling life of your own. Make sure you have people you can for dinner with, a picnic, even on holiday with.

And of course build your own career. Don’t sacrifice yourself because he is an investment banker. It’s just a job - enjoy the money, but don’t build it up into something it isn’t. He’s not saving the world.

I think one thing that makes high level investment banking and law unique is the absolutely atrocious hours. I’m not talking about 12 hour days but they regularly work 90 hour weeks and need to survive on 5-6 hours sleep especially in M&A and related things. Then on the weekend they often still have calls often at weird times depending on the clients’ time zone.

I have family members who worked in emergency medicine and even as junior doctors their hours weren’t normally as atrocious. Also, when you are at the more junior levels you cannot actually have live in staff members etc - people think that a single income family salary of 150k plus can buy that but it cannot if you are living in London and laying your own rent or mortgage.

If you’re asking this when your DH is ED-level, brace yourself for if/when he makes MD.

Suck it up. The money he’s earning is joint and there to make up for his absence. Use it as you have to, and don’t kid yourself that your DH is paying for other people to fulfil his duties as husband and father.

It’s a venal, bleak, hollow life. Very few (single digit, in my 25 years of being in that world) people manage to bring meaning to it.

We have been married for 30 years and I look back now. It worked because we supported each other and remained loyal.

The compromises:
I was a SAHM for 7 years and my career came second.
We lived in zone 2 and dh had an electric car and parking space to minimise travelling. When electric cars were "weird".
Probably easier in law but Whit week and August were ring fenced although that didn't stop him from leaving us in Cornwall when the DC were 6 and 3 to attend a meeting in The Hague!
Toughing out illnesses and school issues alone.

All I can say is it has its rewards. But going back to work was key for us. I know so many women where the divorce has happened as the youngest hits 6th form, they are in their 50s and haven't worked for 25 years plus and suddenly have nothing but loneliness and bitterness. I have a feeling some of the dh's left because they were simply tired of hearing about: school, tennis club, doing up the house and next year's ski-ing holiday.

I'm ED level in IB, but rates derivatives sales so not M&A. The hours are still long and unpredictable. DH was an FX trader when we met, so very early starts. It really wasn't/isn't that hard. He left for work at 5.15am, so I got DC up and out to drop them at their nursery behind my work when they opened at 7.30am, I was at my desk for 7.45am. He collected them at 6.30pm and brought them home so I could work late/entertain clients.

We had a cleaner, that was it in terms of support. The rest of it we managed between us and it really wasn't that problematic .

One of DH’s friends is married to an investment banker- not sure what level/area his wife is at now, but she’s very successful so I imagine it’s pretty intense. They were both in IB for a while but she was better suited to it so he took a step back and works part-time now, property-related, I think.

They hired a nanny when they had twins and have a cleaner, etc. They chose to stay in NYC so she doesn’t have a commute (pre-Covid). Their lifestyle is worlds away from ours but they make it work. Don’t feel you have to do everything, OP, use your financial resources to make life easier for your family.

@edwinbear that's fine providing the baby/dc is well. DS1 had 4 hospital admissions in his first year.