For dp's wine to not come out of household finances.

[Iamthinking]

I am in the process of rearranging our household finances. It is long overdue. I am setting up a joint account, and we will both keep an individual account each. All bills, savings and family things will come out of the joint account, we will give each of us a monthly allowance of what is left. I am thinking maybe £500 each.

The problem is that he drinks A LOT of wine. For years now he has drunk at least a bottle of wine a night without a break. He doesn't get the cheapest wines, he really enjoys reading, learning and talking about wine and knows a lot on the subject (intellectualising his functional alcoholism, some might say). I am nearly tee total at home, I maybe have a glass per week.

I think he spends between £10-£15 per bottle, so an awful lot per month. And I want to suggest that if he insists on spending so much on it, that it should come out of his spends.
But if we are allotting £500 each for our spending money, that would eat away at most of his, and he is the only earner as I am currently a SAHM. That seems very harsh. But on the other hand, I don't see why I should finance his boozing....

I am being unusual for suggesting this? As it will be a bit of an icky conversation when it happens. I want to have thought it through properly.

Have you actually asked him to cut down on his wine consumption?

That could be a good place to start.

I'm finding it slightly bizarre that your focus is purely on the money op.

I'd be far more concerned about the excessive drinking!

only drinks a bottle of wine a night

Is a bottle of wine a night something you can put 'only' in front of?

Yeah that's a simple 'you can have anything but you can't have everything' conversation. Eg if he wants to spend approx £220 a month ON TOP of a personal fund of £500, what does he propose you as a household don't spend money on? Because money can only be spent once, and if you prioritise booze you are not prioritising something else.

Layout your outgoings. Ask him where the money should come from!

I think the drinking is related but separate from the budget. To me that's problematic drinking and it will be affecting his health. However, he's unlikely to buy that. If he frames it to himself as a 'hobby' then it should come from his personal money.

Our rule is basically if we all benefit it's a joint spend, if it's a personal treat then it's personal fund. Everyone eats food, not everyone drinks wine. Therefore it's personal funds.

Could you suggest that some of the wine goes in the grocery shop, and any extra he wants he pays for out of his 'fun' money.

So a couple of bottles of average supermarket wine get funded from joint account, but anything particularly nice that he wants to try, or extra bottles dont?

DH and I do something similar. I do work, but he earns way, way more than me. I don't drink wine but he does (not as much as your DP) - sometimes I buy some wine out of grocery money, but he if wants more, he will check with me if there is enough money to buy more wine, and if not he will buy out of his own money. The split of finances is only a rough guide - if he has run out and I have spare, I will give him some and vice versa.

at all the people insisting that a bottle of wine a night every night doesn't make you an alcoholic. Yeah, right!

Are you not concerned about his level of drinking OP at all?

Jesus wept, you jacked in full-time work to become dependent on an unmarried partner who's an alcoholic. You have much bigger problems on your hands that splitting spending money.

This.

OP, you need to think about how precarious a situation you are in here.

I have a friend who has this problem - her DP drinks or smokes almost his entire income and they are always in financial trouble.

I think maybe this is one of those situations where you need to back away from making a decision all by yourself, and have an open and non-confrontational conversation with your husband about this where you explore the possibilities together. Perhaps there is a compromise, where you buy a couple of bottles a week out of grocery money, but he finances the rest out of his own cash? Perhaps realising that there are things that he won't be able to buy if he continues to purchase so many bottles will help him to cut down.

I am not sure there is a hard-and-fast rule for spending, though. In some relationships, the couple seem to exist very independently in both social and financial terms, in others every decision is made jointly. It really depends how your relationship works and how close you are.

DH drinks. I don't at the mo.

Beer money comes out of grocery budget. But I might buy a make up, or chocolate. Not necessary. Like his beer. But it's a treat.

However. That isn't the issue here. More than money. His calories, alcohol units per night, his poor liver, and the kids see this is normal to drink a whole bottle per night.

Not good.

And with the money side of things, £10 a night is £3650 a year!

60-70 units of alcohol per week (at a conservative estimate unless he's buying rose) every week, is risky drinking whatever you want to call it...

My husbands drinks bottle of wine a day for about 30 years now. Does not drink beer or hard liquor. I have never seen him drunk, he never has hangovers and he would never drive if he had any amount of alcohol. He is completely healthy runs every day, he just loves wine.

Very judgemental at the SAHM thing. I was made redundant 5 years ago, and am now hoping to go back to work soon, but I decided to take at least a year off (the rest was drift). When I went back to work 3 years before that after ds2, I worked out the cost of childcare monthly after childcare vouchers and a little help from my dad, and asked dp to pay half - he did do the childcare vouchers but is a total spendthrift (not on alcohol though) and was permanently overdrawn. The result was that I was paying most of the childcare out of my salary and didn't have much left. I tried not to think about it until I knew I faced possible/actual redundancy. What would childcare cost OP if she returned to work, relative to what she might earn? Would dp pay his share?

I note that the OP has acknowledged that alcohol is the issue for her, but with small kids I don't think that these budgeting ideas are totally unreasonable - they may be unworkable if her dp doesn't go along with them (which seems quite likely).

Also, I lived with an alcoholic. Finances all went on alcohol. It was so depressing.

Even now I have issues with finances going on alcohol as it feels like you're just 'drinking money' but DH only has a few beers on a fri or sat night at home, and it's his treat, like mine might be make up or something else.

The bottle of wine is not just some £5 plonk, but £15 a day, which is a hell of a lot.

Not good for his health or bank balance OP
But drinking a bottle of wine and night really does not make him an alcoholic functioning or otherwise
Alcoholism is far more complex than just how much you drink Its the effect it has on you

£420 a month on his alcohol habit, that is a lot. £5000 on alcohol a year!!!!!!

Jeez way to make SAHMs feel like shite

OP we work on less money than you but a similar split i.e. We each have an amount of spending money a month. If one of us was drinking to that excess I would expect it to come out of spending money. Although as I say we are working with less money so maybe if there was more to go around and left over afterwards it might be different

I'd feel the same way as you OP. Difficult conversation to have with him though.

Irrespective of the monetary or fairness issues here the 'bottle of wine a night' is not going to end well. He may be perfectly ok at the moment but it will take its toll over the years to come.

OP My father drank a bottle of wine a night for as long as I can remeber, he enjoyed wine clubs and we visited vinyards, he had many books about his hobby. I don't remember him without the wine, he ran sucessful companies, he 'functioned' although he has always been emotionally absent. Slowly drinking edged up as time went on. Fastforward for 25 years. I then had the awful task of trying to get him admitted to hospital once he was in liver failure, bright yellow and bed bound, lying in a room surrounded by empty wine bottles.

Then followed the detox (grown man crying, incontinent, hallucinations, escape attempts on a locked ward). Then partial heart failure, cirrhosis, alcohol induced dementia, infections, acitees, the list could go on. Weeks in hospital, visits, readmissions. I had to move home for 6 months as DM couldn't cope. He had to be washed and dressed, fed, looked after like a todler, all be it a 5'7" violent one. This was a couple of years ago, he is more independent now and not drinking but he's mentally and physically only half there.

I wouldn't wish the above situation on anyone, you OP or your kids in a decades time. I really wouldn't. I think the money here is just the tip of the issue. Maybe I'm way off the mark but your situation just rings so many alarm bells.

*Freyka

My husbands drinks bottle of wine a day for about 30 years now. Does not drink beer or hard liquor. I have never seen him drunk, he never has hangovers and he would never drive if he had any amount of alcohol. He is completely healthy runs every day, he just loves wine.*

You must leave this monster at once 🙄

Of course it is complex, we've all heard of the person who smoked like a chimney and lived until 100, but individual risks increase with consumption.
Useful and interesting information on alcohol consumption and risk from the liver team at Southampton University Hospital Trust
www.drinksafely.soton.ac.uk/How_does_your_drinking_compare.pdf

We do the same in terms of our own spends per month. DH has always earned considerably more than me, but he has always insisted on an even level of spends because he spends more on coffees, magazines, nights out etc because he worked away. He knew I'd end spending all of mine on the kids. He'd seen too many wives in his industry end up resenting never having anything.

This hasn't changed since I became a SAHM.

I think the attitude that the op being a SAHM means she shouldn't have any control over finances because she isn't contributing pretty crap tbh. Maybe she should invoice him for half the cost of a childminder each month instead? That'd be considerably more than £500.

Highly sensible for someone in a relationship with someone with a drink problem to be putting cash into their own account every month imo.