We lost loads in the property crash - about 60k (all our savings and DH's inheritance from his dad), after a bad investment. We came really close to going bankrupt which would've cost DH his career. We now rent (the investment was supposed to set us up with a deposit etc).
There's five of us. Our rent is over half of DH's take-home. DS1 is moving to secondary school next year but we have to hold on until then. We live in a fairly expensive area (DH can only work in London).
I'm a sahm - we have preschool twins and can't afford childcare. Before DCs I worked for a supermarket so hardly raking it in.
DH earns a 'good' salary but it's all gone as soon as we turn round. We're not on the breadline - we have about 5k each in ISAs and about 2k in a savings account.
DH isn't exactly bad with money but he has some bad habits. He'd always rather get lunch from one of the places near work than take a packed lunch (I have put my foot down on that but he feels aggrieved because he's missing out on socialising time etc). He will pop in to the corner shop and buy stuff we don't strictly need. More importantly, getting him to take action on things (like changing to an 0% credit card or paying off his overdraft with what savings we have - we could do this), is very difficult. He doesn't like my 'nagging'. I end up sort of making him do it or making the transfers myself, which makes me frustrated and him feel dictated to.
He does a regular sport, socialises after work occasionally and is going on a ski trip with friends from work (I wasn't thrilled about that but he deserves a break), so it's not like his life is just work and stressing about money.
Anyway just to paint the picture.
I have 20k savings which DH doesn't know about. It's an inheritance from my grandma. He knew about it when I got it (10 years ago), and it didn't really get mentioned. When we were facing bankruptcy we were advised to keep our finances seperate (the money wouldn't've saved the situation). It's in my maiden name. Last year I put it in a 5 year savings account.
I wasn't thinking very clearly but my thoughts were along the lines of: I want to retrain, and the course I want to do will cost us money, and the money from gran could pay for that as the twins will be starting primary school around the time the savings account vests.
Talking about this year's tax bill and the overdraft old chestnut and DH's reluctance to empty out the 2k savings account (it's earning 3% which is less than inflation and way less than the interest on the overdraft), he said he didn't like the idea of not having any 'ready money' for emergencies. I said well, we have the ISAs and he sort of made a snorting sound.
I so nearly said 'well I have 20k in savings from my gran' - but he'd be furious I've been keeping it secret and as it's locked away for another 4 years it would be an issue for at least that long. And then he'd want input into what we did with it afterwards and while I know he SHOULD - I sort of want to hold onto it, not have it frittered away.
I strongly suspect he'd backslide on our money-saving attempts if he knew about it, I guess. I don't know for sure though.
I don't know what to do. I was all panicky when I locked it away (and angry with Dh about the bad investment), and now it feels like whatever I do is going to cause more friction.