To feel uncomfortable about finances?

[whyohwhydoibother]

Ok. Bit of a long one here ladies (and gentlemen), so I apologise. Also, any monetary figures are not intended as a stealth boast, but more as a perspective to our situation. We recognise that we are incredibly fortunate to be in the situation we are.

I am the breadwinner for our house. Our DC is under 1, and my partner stays home to take care of them. For background, we both have fairly demanding careers which can be affected by time off, however in my current job I earn 3 times as much as my partner.

We decided for economic and various other complicated reasons that I would go back to work after my paid maternity leave finished, and my partner would take the following 6-9 months unpaid leave. So far so good, I love my job, it's very rewarding, and I think is helping me to recover from post natal depression/anxiety.

My problem comes with our finances. Before my partner went on leave, we discussed our outgoings, and agreed a figure for all of his costs, plus 'buffer'. He also gets all of the agreed food budget. For reference, this is equivalent to £1500 a month (£1000 of 'his' money - mostly pre-relationship debts - and £500 a month for food).

For the last 3 months, an average of £1500 extra a month has been taken out of the savings account to pay his credit card. He says this is 'living expenses' which seems to include any coffees, house items or extras that he doesn't deem as being directly related to him. I feel very uncomfortable about this, as I thought our agreed budget covered these extras, as when I buy them, I take them out of 'my' money (budgeted at £1000 a month).

I am in the fortunate position of having none of my own debts to pay, so the budget was agreed to be strictly equitable, however I rarely spend it, and any leftovers are put into the joint savings account. In addition, I tend to arrange a pre-planned food delivery service for myself, which I pay for out of my own budget, not the family food money. He is usually only buying for himself and our baby.

When I try to discuss this matter, my partner gets very defensive, and we can end up arguing. I don't believe he's hiding or taking extra money, as I have access to all of his accounts, however it's the general attitude towards addressing my concerns I can't understand. We are trying to invest as much as we can, so we can ultimately have a choice about what jobs we take, but I end up feeling my partner is spending to 'compensate' for taking time off work.

So as not to drip feed, when we initially set up home together, I paid off roughly £30000 of his debt from my own savings, to allow us to get an investment mortgage, which he wants to decrease at £1000 per month he's not working, in addition to his other outgoings. I am also funding a nanny and the cost of various courses for him to be able to alter his career, and likely allow him to remain close to home once his parental leave ends (the alternative could be him working 1500 miles away), which will work out to around £10000.

Is this unreasonable? Am I being fair in expressing concern about the level of spending? Or do I have to accept that this is just the level of expense associated with supporting a family of two adults and one child?

The other monthly repayments are for... a financial advisory service he's been a member of for a while, but which is now used for family investments, so needs to be transferred into the 'joint bills' pile, but his reluctance to talk about it has meant I haven't been able to find out the amounts!

Which begs the question OP, why the fuck are you paying for it?

And seriously, £1500 a month on coffee, snacks and a few baby and house bits is deranged. This man is burning through money, when you have tens of thousands in debt repayment and retraining costs to fund. And you're doing nothing about it. What is wrong with you?

Absolutely nothing thanks! Just lucky enough and worked hard to have an income many multiples the national average. As I said, our scale of 'normal' has been altered by this.

What's wrong with you to throw personal insults at someone asking for perspective?

Thanks for the update op.

I think you both need to agree a new 'acceptable' monthly amount for him to be spending on odds and sods and little luxuries. I do find it strange that he's so reluctant to discuss this openly with you.

As I said, I am now on maternity leave and I dh and I both agreed that I shouldn't have to live on a shoestring, it's important for me to get out and about with the baby - which means some 'necessities' like baby clothes as well as some 'luxuries' like coffees/ lunch out etc. I've allocated £380 per month, which will also cover nappies - this is over and above our monthly bills, including food shopping, and other 'joint' weekly allowance which we both draw for our weekends together. We've found that we always have enough for necessities as well as a fair amount for the luxuries, including holidays and days out. I keep my receipts and update a spreadsheet to keep an eye on over and underspend and share the spreadsheet regularly with dh - not because he's asked for it, but because I want to be completely open about what we have/ haven't got. It's also good for him to see that the new mop and bucket (or whatever!) doesn't just appear from thin air! If I'm having haircuts and coffees, I'm also buying the odds and sods for the house and baby for which there is no other pot of money available.

No man is worth risking your finances for ever but I am a massive hardcase when it comes to cash as made a decent amount of money from a very young age due to a short spell in a well paid career and because I made some decent investment decisions when very young. This made me wary of anyone ever wanting to live off me.

You are not an idiot and don't call yourself that but I do think you are gullible and beware being too nice because you want your child to have a family all in the same home. Too many women put up with utter shit because they are determined to keep a family together at all costs.

It's a shame you decided to construe that as a personal insult OP rather than a genuine question. Or to deflect it by talking about your income earning ability, when you must realise that your family's immediate need for thousands of pounds to clear debt and retrain means you are not in a position where one of you can fritter away £1500 a month on nothing much.

As I said, you are paying for a financial advisory service when you're not allowed to know the amounts concerned. There is something very, very wrong with that picture.

Sorry ignore I misjudged your intent hyacinth but saying 'what's wrong with you' is a very confronting and blaming statement! It's not that I'm 'not allowed' to know the amounts, more that he felt that he 'should' be managing his pre-existing on the agreed amounts, so I wasn't interested.

We've had a good talk about it, and identified loads of 'family' bills that we actually hadn't budgeted for, that he was just taking care of and not telling me (because I often work long hours and he thought it would be an extra stress to go through all the fine details), but obviously when the credit card bill came in, it blindsided me!

Thanks again for everyone's input - Even the harsher people, in fact they've probably been the most useful - I'm a fatalist and always worry about the 'worst possible outcome', because if I plan for that, then everything else is manageable! I'm not blind to the fact that relationships end and things don't go as planned, and we talk about it openly. However I do think that stockpiling large amounts of my 'own' money, without agreement and understanding from my partner would actually lead to a breakdown in trust, and endanger our relationship more than everything being out on the table.

Presumably if you're paying off his previous relationship debt he didn't come up with a plan with his ex to cover these debts fairly. Luckily he found a new partner who is willing to bail him out. But there's no plan now to cover his debts fairly, he's relying on you to continue to bail him out. It's like you're paying him to be your partner.

He's not going to change as there is no impetus for him to change. If you're happy with earning lots of money and watching someone else piss it up the wall on coffees and debt then this could easily be the rest of your life. If where you are splits everything 50/50 and he's primary carer you could be funding his coffees and boy toys lifestyle for the next 18 years without a relationship. At least look at this with your eyes open. You can't possibly know the true measure of someone after a couple of years, particularly if they've been taken up with pregnancy and a newborn.

I hope it works out for you but you're relying on luck and the kindness of others rather than common sense and some sense of self preservation.

X-post. Awh so actually he's doing you a massive favour spending loads of money! How considerate of him not to bog you down with the finer details of where 3k a month is going. That's alright then, isn't it.

I know you have had one good talk, but I think the only way forward is to have a frank discussion about all your finances. With all your bank statements/bills/saving and investment paperwork, available so you both have a clear idea of all your financial issues so you can get to the point of a real budget that you can both stick to. And perhaps agree that any spending over £XxX is discussed together.

You also need to get a date for him to go back to work and for him to stick to it. If that date is the 1/2/17 for example that's the date and neither he or you can push it back. So you can both start adding to the family finances again.

This man is conning you.

You still haven't explained where he was for the first five months of your DC's life.

Women are financially vulnerable because of maternity and career breaks and because they are usually unable to leave their children when a relationship fails.

You are colluding in his financial abuse of you, OP.

And you're endangering the future financial security of your child.

BTW what is happening to the statements from the financial advisory service?

That really sounds like a crock of shit to me, btw

Did your relationship and baby break up his marriage, OP?

If he's supporting a previous partner or family then that certainly explains the burn rate.

The level of general mistrust of men is astounding! And I say this as someone who has been very sceptical of men my entire life.

No, I didn't break up his previous relationship, that was years before we met. For the first 5 months of our child's life he was living in the same house as me, but he was working. Initially we relocated to where his job was, but after my paid maternity leave ended we went back to where mine is.
As for the finance advisor: we have monthly Skype sessions, where admittedly I'm often told I should be more financially firm, so if he's secretly got a mate dressing up and pretending to do this for an hour at a time for the grand sum of £200, then fair play to him

As I've said, I actually don't value money over things like a stable home for my child and both mine and my partner's happiness, so if I can 'buy' our way out of a difficult situation, I tend to want to fix the problem quickly (maybe I lack patience)

Also, I actually do think it's fairly considerate to make sure that things like the house and car insurance get renewed (for the lowest possible price), without having to sit down and spend hours of my time after work.. he knows I get stressed by it, so he thought he was helping. We previously (before I went back to work) used to have a monthly 'date night' where we would literally get out all of the bills and put them into a spreadsheet, but when he saw me struggling with being back at work and how exhausted I was, he felt he was taking a burden off me.

We're both trying to adjust to this change in our lives, and we may be making mistakes, but when we openly discuss it, we do have the same vision of how we want our lives to look, so we're working through it. Anyone who wants to state that their relationship is perfect and they've never had disagreements about money, or share of the workload or just plain being pissy is lying (although I see a lot of posters on this site claiming this as the case). It's like the Facebook/instagram version of reality compared to the monotony of everyday life.

What on earth needs buying under "things for the house" that goes into the hundreds of pounds a month? You can only have so much furniture, soft furnishings, and kitchen gadgets.

I think you hit the nail on the head. It is easier and preferable short and long term for you to have him at home so you don't mind throwing money at the situation. Except you do, or worry you should.

It's your money but it's a shame to work in a job that comes with the stress of a large salary and be stressed a second time about where it's going.

Sorry ignore I misjudged your intent hyacinth but saying 'what's wrong with you' is a very confronting and blaming statement!

I can imagine it was hard to read OP, but it kind of was intended to try and confront and get you to think about your own responsibility for enabling a very problematic situation. So it is confronting and blaming, really, but my hope was that it might be of some benefit because I think those things need doing to some degree!

Your latest posts sound like you have a disconnect between spending decisions and the impact those have. You say you don't value money over happiness, which is fine. but the amount of money you'd described as being pissed away would also purchase the happiness of knowing you were debt free, or paying off more on your mortgage to give you all greater security. That seems very obvious to me, but I wonder does it to you?

What kind of coffee and snacks is your DP buying? He must be going to a Mitchelin star cafe for him to be getting through that amount of money! Even the most expensive cup of coffee and sandwich wouldn't normally be more than £10 or £12 a day unless you live in a country that is notoriously expensive (Sweden, Norway, Iceland etc)

Op, I think you are being very naive about your financial situation with your DP. There is nothing wrong with setting a budget for spending and if your DP is a decent man he will respect this.

The most alarming thing about all of this are your about-turns.

You started this thread disclosing lots of red flags.

Now you're justifying, excusing, minimising your partner's behaviour.

It's a classic symptom of an abusive relationship.

If yours was a relationship worth investing in, your partner would be pulling in the same direction, but he isn't.

I am going to leave this thread now because I don't think you are going to listen to any advice from anyone until you're desperate, but the very high monthly expenditure on the child/house is a classic lawyer's ruse to ensure a similarly high level of maintenance once the relationship comes to an end. Even though your partner is not pulling his weight, the law may well treat him as your child's primary carer.

Your Skype FSA is taking the piss unless you're much richer than you're letting on. I know 'family office' people who charge their multi-millionaire clients less.

This is all so sad and worrying.

What on earth is he spending all that money on? Is he gambling?!

You make an interesting point op. You see the money as "ours" he sees it as yours

He's helps himself to your money because he maybe feels entitled, also I wonder if he resents your earning potential.

I call cocklodger and secret or hidden account, he's taking you for a ride
Your over compensating him and trying to look after him constantly, he doesn't seem that grateful
In a way it is controlling, all be it for a decent reason from you, I wonder if he sees it that way, and he's punishing you.

Can I just clarify, OP: if you completely disregard the debts and the food bills then he is is spending about £1,500 a month on credit cards and you have £1000 available to spend each month but mostly don't reach that limit?

Is that right?

If so, I think there is some resentment here that is clouding what the real issues are. Are you feeling used re. the debts, his levels of work at home, or the fact that you are doing all the earning? Any of these may be entirely justifiable of course but I would suggest you try to work out what you are actually feeling. On the face of it you are spending similar-ish amounts on yourself and activities and the home - if he is at home, he is likely to be spending more. It may well be too much, but that's a different issue.

Because the numbers are high by most people's standards, and the debts are significant, the real issues could well be being missed. You have broadly the same to spend on frivolities and extras and the odd home item - which is what it should be if you are both supporting the family in your different ways?

I would suggest you talk about how you feel about the debt and your roles - maybe in counselling? Arguing about coffees is not what this is about IMO.

I suppose what I mean, is that agreeing to pay his debts is a decision that has been made now. It was a big decision but laying that aside, is there really a major disparity in spending?

Do you honestly feel that the money is equally earned by both of you and that you both have equal rights to extras? Or are you expecting him to acknowledge the debt repayments and his status as non-earner by curbing his spending?