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?

Even after the debts, he's spending 2k a month. How is that even possible unless he's buying lots of designer clothes or a new iPad every week? Something is seriously not adding up. You have to look at the credit card statements.

So he's spending 3k a month on who knows what and is in shitloads of debt but actually he's really frugal and saving you a couple of quid on your car insurance. Brilliant. And why you wasting £2,400 a year on a financial advisor when clearly their advice does not protect you or it does but you ignore it because you seem to think it's the only way to keep this man in your life.

If he's as wonderful as you say he is, why is he letting you pay for things that are nothing to do with you, not being 100% transparent about where all this family money is going and appears only able to live with you if you're bankrolling his paternity leave and his retraining? Has he done anything financial to prepare for dc? Has he shown any sense of responsibility that the debts he chose to run up with a previous partner and spending on bloody boys toys mean there is less money available for you and your dc? Think of all the things you and dc could have done with 40k.

I haven't time to rtft here but op from your first three posts have I got this right (sorry if it's way off base but I'd be concerned)

New relationship and accidental pregnancy. He has said he wants to be involved. So you buy a house. You pay off £30k of his debt. You go to work and earn three times more. He stays home. You give him £1500 a month. He pays his debt and also spends £1500 on cards. You also pay £10k for his new career training.

Is he taking you for a ride and going to fuck off when he is debt free and owns half your house?!

Sorry if that's way off but seems like he's getting an awful lot of financial benefit from your "fairly new" relationship?!

And he also used £7 K of your savings to pay off his car...

I don't understand why you are paying out for an IFA when there are debts to be paid off. Wouldn't it be better to just build up your savings back up to where they were before you got pregnant?

Did your IFA get commission on the investment mortgage? Are you sure he is completely impartial (whole of market adviser)? Is he a friend of your DP? Sorry to sound so cynical, but I've seen so many hardworking but financially naive people get ripped off by chancers.

I feel for you. You so desperately want this relationship to work and for your child to have both parents, that you've turned your brain off and decided to ignore blatant inconsistencies in your partner's explanations. It doesn't add up. You know it doesn't add up, because you started this thread. He's onto a great thing isn't he? If you don't want to listen to all the things other posters have told you, then you'll just have to fund your partner as you have been doing. Nothing will change.

It's not role model behaviour, though the norm in my experience, but it's the small price I pay for the huge freedom of not working

I'm a SAHM. DH does the vast majority of our cooking. I saw it as a small price for him to pay for the huge freedom of not doing some other shitty household tasks, like ironing. I keep the house clean and tidy during the day (both children are pre schoolers), all other chores are split.

OP, our household income sounds fairly similar to yours (just DH earning). I spend approx £200 a month on 'luxuries' like coffee, lunches out, clothes, haircuts etc. I do our food shopping and it's approx £300 a month (2 adults, a 3 year old and a 16 month old). Just because the money is there, doesn't mean it's reasonable for so much money to be frittered away month after month.

My thought is gambling.

Sorry if that has already been said. I cannot imagine what else someone would spend £1k personal money + another £1.5k taken out of an account on.

A PP's phrase jumped out: It's like you're paying him to be your partner. An idea only strengthened by your own sense that you needed to repay debts and support him as a kind of "apology" for getting pregnant.
It sounds like you wouldn't have time for therapywith a role with such long hours, but I see something there, that I've seen in others IRL: a well off woman feeling she needs to pay a man to keep him around, a fear of abandonment and loss or inadequacy that's cloaked by a traditionally "masculine" exercise of power (providing money). This doesn't look the same to most of the world as would, say, obsessive dieting, housework or similar to try and keep a man or keep the family together, but the underlying motivations might not be as different as one would like.
I am guessing that you aren't sure you guys would have stayed together if it weren't for the child, and that when you met him he wasn't interested in having kids, or not soon. I think you need to be less scared about being alone and about not having a perfect, and very modern, nuclear family. Which would be another "achievement" to add to a very successful career.
It doesn't necessarily mean the relationship won't work if you stop being scared and trying to make it work by giving him money.

And in your partner it looks like the sort of thing sometimes seen in kids of well-off parents, at once depending on the money and grateful but also resenting the sense of control they feel someone else has via providing that money, and that resentment means they spend the money carelessly as a way of subtly exercising anger. It's emotioanlly very complicated money, because it was his ex's debt and now his current partner has paid a lot of it off.

In the UK you are not liable for another person's debts incurred in their sole name: his debts in his name only have never been a threat to your or your child's financial security. I would assume this is the case in most countries (although things abroad may change if people marry, for instance). The fear of them affecting you was an expensive red herring.

Why not sack this financial adviser and get a (cheaper) one of your own? PP seems to know this is too high a charge even to one whose clientele is HNW.

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)
The money that's currently going on meals and coffees and designer bits for the house and feeding the baby Waitrose premium ready meals could be the means to fix such problems in future: if you're made redundant, if someone in the family needs extremely expensive medical treatment not available in a state service (look at stories in the papers where there are drugs costing £10-15k a month), or good quality care due to old age or disability. Or, less worryingy to pay comfrtably for your child's education (I'm guessing this is the sort of career that, without a great deal of scrimping, could make it possible to save enough to pay for Ivy League in cash and still retire comfortably) and help them buy a house when they are old enough to settle down. But that might not be possible if he's letting it all go on consumer ephemera.

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

So, first you said the £1.5k a month was going on 'coffees, his hobbies/boys toys etc'.....
You said you could see the amounts being spent on each transaction and it reflected what you thought....
Now it's going on bills you didn't know about?!

Nobody can use working long hours as an excuse to not know what's going on inside their own home.
What are these new 'bills' and how come you didn't know about them?

I've seen the credit card bills, and there's honestly nothing 'untoward' in his spending.

As far as I can tell, he is spending £2,500 a month. And then another £500 on food. You say some of the £2,500 is repayments for a few gadgets, a student loan and a financial service (£200), but this kind of spend is bizarre. It is over £80 a day every day.

Aside from that, you’ve paid off £30,000 worth of debt and a £7000 car loan for him that is previously accrued debt. And you are paying £10,000 for a career change programme. You’ve known each other two years? And bought a house for the both of you. And you are going to be hiring a nanny.

Now I can understand the debt repayments of £37,000 and the payment for the £10,000 career change. I can understand the house buying. I know spouses of both sexes that have done this for their partners when they had a child.

What I am having difficulty with is the £2.5K a month, unless your house insurance is a grand and your car insurance similar. But even then, over three months, it is £7,500 -- of which only £2000 would be accounted for in the high insurance payments. And this doesn’t include food which would be another £1,500.

This chap is burning through money at the rate of £30,000 a year net. Plus another £6000 on food. This is the equivalent of £50,000 gross a year. That is how much you have to earn before tax to fund this expenditure.

And that doesn’t include general household bills, your disposable income (£12,000 a year net or £14,000 gross) nor any housing payments that you may need to make with your investment mortgage, which he wishes to reduce by £1000 a month (which suggest monthly payments could be quite a bit more).

If I tot up the amounts you have mentioned, we get to £78,000 gross (his expenditure plus food of £50K, plus yours at £14K, plus the £1000 he wishes to reduce the mortgage payments for at £14K) and I haven’t even covered general household bills, major purchases, nor covered the other amount on your mortgage payments or any savings.

This is a heck of a lot, op. If I chuck in an estimated annual household bill budget, we are getting awfully close to £90K a year. Any remainder on your mortgage and we are looking at £100K a year gross. If you can do that, fine. But I would be concerned about earning so much and not putting a fair whack of it away in savings.

Apologies I haven't read the whole thread and my post will doubtlessly get lost amongst the others but me and DH have been through this type of thing (although a lot less money!). Basically, it sounds like your situation boils down to you are funding a lifestyle that would not be possible for your DP if he was on his own because his salary wouldn't stretch that far. On top, you are financially losing out because he spending proportionally more than he should or you would if it was only you.

When I met DH, it was like this. I earned more and would pay for things, including bills, etc. Which then he then took for granted and because he wasn't involved in the nitty gritty of my finances spent more than he should have done believing that every penny he had in his pocket was his (like a teenager does) and he could have more of mine, leaving me skint. Once the pattern was established it became very hard to break. DH would become defensive and just carry on spending as he knew that I would find a way to solve it (usually debt). It took years to overcome this and if our relationship hadn't been as strong, this would have broken us up. And we were equally to blame. Him for being an arse and me for allowing it.

Do not go down this route. Stop it now. Sort out a budget for you both that is fair and equal. I would personally set up individual personal saving accounts and decide whether his debts will be a shared responsibility or his only. That way each person can use their money to play with or to save, with one proviso - do not bail him out. Stop paying for stuff on credit card or reduce the limit drastically. When our finances got really bad I took a certain amount of CASH out each week and divided it. Not a penny went on the credit card and if either of us spent all their cash - tough, we were eating beans, no internet, no phone credit, nothing until the next friday came round. Another thing I did was give him responsibility for paying for a certain bill (the rent) and if he was unable to pay for it, I refused to give him the money. If he defaulted on the payment he had to contact the landlord and explain why, then rob a bank or whatever was necessary to pay it and then I would leave with DD. This scenario happened once, then strangely he was always able to find the money every month afterwards.

I was like I had to teach DH how to treat money - his and someone else's. No doubt some could consider me to be financially abusive then (and now to a certain extent), but we have realised that he is shit with money and will spend it on rubbish and I can save. I take care of all the finances and now we have paid off his debts and are building healthy savings - all of which are in my bank account. He actually appreciates the good things that having a large lump of money can mean rather the pointless small things that are bought because of instant gratification. After years of arguments, we have reached a situation that we are happy with and we finally respect each other regarding money.

Good luck. If it seems depressing to you, think of Mariah Carey and her latest - they split up over money!!!

Thanks again guys - a few of you have really hit the issues on the head: a concern that without the baby we might not have stayed together (the distance was going to be a problem), my 'high achieving' nature which can make failure an almost impossible concept, plus my guilt at his sacrifice to stay at home with our child, and not going out to a career that he loves and gives him purpose when I get to (plus having to rock the boat severely with his employer in order to take the time off - we're not in the UK where this is well trodden ground.. 'traditional' family roles very much the norm here).

I can keep on going into the nitty gritty of each bill, and repayment, and interaction that we have (or have ever had), but I feel for some posters they'll still see the worst and not be happy until I agree that he's a financially (and emotionally) abusive bastard and I have either kicked him out on the street or absconded with the baby.

As I've said previously, life is often more shades of grey than black and white, so I'm the only person who really knows all the facets of our relationship (or maybe I've just made it all up!) ; I know plenty of 'nuclear' 'happy' families where the situation is reversed, and no one is shouting that the SAHM is taking the piss, or she's even applauded for stockpiling her own 'run away fund'. What's female equivalent of a 'cocklodger' or doesn't that exist?

I'll probably take a step back from this thread now, I appreciate all the input and opinions, and have taken them on board (even the outrageous ones).. rest assured that if the naysayers are right and he's about to skip out with the kid and half of my savings, I'll be back to let you know 'I told you so'!

On the off chance that you see this, do you genuinely know lots of nuclear families where there's a SAHM and they have thousands of pounds of debt and need to fund retraining costs in the near future yet are still spunking £1500 a month on fripperies, really? I can well believe you know people in your income bracket whose SAHPs spend that, but the other facts in your situation are a bit less common. And you'd need those for it to be an actual reverse. Which makes me wonder if you're just looking at your colleagues whose partners spend similarly and thinking it's ok in your income bracket and we just don't get it because we're not in that world.

I like the financial post saying he is spending the equivalent of a 50k salary.

On the basis you (OP) have become increasingly defensive of his behaviour, seemingly unconcerned and now dismissive, the only reasonable conclusion is that you earn a much higher salary than you're letting on. You mentioned several times the national average in a post, which made me think your income is around £300k. I think it must be substantially more than that, so at around something like £1m/year I can begin to understand how you can rationalise it, though it is still a risk and you are very vulnerable in the event of a relationship breakdown. He is the child's main carer, so custody, the family home and spousal maintenance to 18 would almost be a certainty.

I'm not sure if you understand how naive you are being, which has nothing to do with gender.

I am 'in that world' (as a SAHM) and don't understand it. It is not normal to spend that amount on fripperies (approx £80 a day?!) when you have debts to pay/training to pay for.

And I do know several people in 'that world.' Mainly through one child's school: eye watering wealth. Yes they spend a lot. But they invest even more, are very asset rich and seemingly run tight ships.

Goofy - I nearly said the same but income hasn't been declared, so we don't know if she's talking £300k or £3million!

Ah well, op. I'd love to know where you are and what you do to earn so much money! Particularly in a patriarchal country where paternity leave is frowned upon and is a sacrifice. And where saving money on insurance leaves one with enough money to spend 1.5k a month on nowt.

I would have thought a high achieving perfectionist would have more respect for themselves than to be effectively paying the father of their child to stay with them and live with them. Sahm generally aren't being bribed to look after their dc. The only parallel I can think of is a trophy wife who marries a man because he is minted and stays because she has access to a lifestyle she couldn't have otherwise. I hope this man is at least kind to you, looks after you and dc well and appreciates everything you do for him.

True Embletoni!
OP if you're taking an annual income of millions I withdraw my previous comment, I'm not in that world!

If OP were talking an annual income of millions, I'd imagine they would be paying the debt off quicker. Either way, he could still halve his spending on snacks and house bits and the money would still be getting put to better use.

Also embletoni on the subject of spousal maintenance, OP says they're not married. Although they're also not in the UK, so the legal stuff people have mentioned may be different there. Judging by what OP writes, I suspect they're east of us not west, but that still leaves us with a lot of countries of course.

What does he do for a job? Get him back to work ASAP for the sake of your finances and sanity.