To want to stay home a bit longer..

[crazycatlady5]

Aibu?

I’ve been on maternity since December. I’m due to start working again in January but I’m absolutely dreading it. It’s not like the normal anxieties, I actually really want to be able to look after her at home for longer than her one year of life.

My husband earns a pretty decent salary, not talking triple figures but pretty good. After all his outgoings (rent etc) he is still left around £3/3.5k to play with each month.

We have always split bills and everything down the middle even though I earned half what he did. I never made a fuss about this as I am not a money grabber. Having said that, since I’ve been on maternity, he’s given me around £400 a month as extras.

I really want to approach the subject of staying at home with or daughter but for some reason it sits uncomfortably with me as I have always earned my own money and have never wanted to be a ‘kept woman’ - but my friend rightfully pointed out today, it’s different now. We are married and have a family, we are a team. I am actually quite jealous of those couples of have joint accounts as that is out of the question for us (his parents told him at a young age never to get a joint account with anyone )

Aibu to want to stay off work for a while longer and ask to be looked after?!

Ps. It may sound like he is incredibly tight, he isn’t, he pays for dinners out and gifts and lots of lovely things and has also been entirely responsible for building up a chunk of savings for a mortgage (that we don’t have yet)

No,it’s not strange to have separate accounts.its just not mn norm.thats different

Think Op has gone!

I'd even go so far as to want a pre-nup drawn up to ensure my assets and my future husband's were kept separate. I just can't get my head around feeling entitled to money that someone else has earned, or a partner feeling entitled to my earnings just because we're married. It just doesn't feel right to me but I realise that's not the majority view here

Me neither but it's an unpopular view on MN.

We do share money but either of us feels entitled to the others salary, we simply share the bills.

I'd not support DH if he voluntarily quit work as didn't want to go back, that's not what I signed up for. In sickness or redundancy but not simply because he didn't want to go to work.

But surely if you are a family, a household, then everyone should have the same standard of living. Those of you with separate accounts, what happens if one of you earns much more than the other? Does one of you have less exciting holidays, shabbier clothes and a more curtailed social life? Do you buy your kid separate presents or do you have to work with the budget of the poorer partner? Or do you only choose partners with a similar salary? And what happens if someone loses their job?

Frankly it all sounds massively complicated and mean spirited. You are supposed to love this person and be sharing your life with them. Much easier to have one big pot.

@Oblomov17 what a bizarre assumption. I am none of those things and I am 32! Utterly hilarious (and offensive to people who actually have been through those things) assumptions to make, just because I don’t have a joint account with my husband?! You have fun though.

I only asked. I can’t be the only one, to whom these things occurred. Some of your posts seem a bit strange.
If you aren’t anxious etc, fine.

And none of my questions were related to the fact you don’t have a joint account. That in itself is not a crime. It was everything else you posted that made me ask those things.

If you are planning to buy a house in the next 3 years then wouldn't it make sense to have two incomes going on?

I'm all for staying at home if you can and it works for your relationship, but if you haven't actually bought a house yet, surely you should be thinking about how your family's finances look on a mortgage application?

Can you even get a part time job in your field that doesn't involve a huge commute and makes financial sense?

Staying at home with the baby is lovely, but it's not always the right decision for your family in the long term. Of course you don't have to go back to work on the 1st of January (you don't have a job yet anyway) - you could think more along the lines of Easter or summer time.

I don't think it's strange to have separate accounts.
I do find it strange to have his and her money and both not equally able to access money when they need to.

My account has anything I earn, tc, cb and dh account has his wages.
The business account has earnings of dh.
I manage the lot as it's my job to do this. I know to within a penny of what we have as I only have to look.
With online banking you can transfer money between accounts so easily, you don't really need a joint account.

Surely when you're married it's our money in a joint pot, you share everything, if one person is sick you look after them if one person needs a bit of extra support financially you help them. When you have a baby it's a joint decision, why pay someone when you could look after your own child, don't get me wrong I agree with financial independence, maybe do a course while you're off. Tally up how much child care will cost full time, your partner should contribute to this whether it's you or someone else looking after your child, I think it's about £1000 a month. On top of that shopping, cooking, cleaning, will that be split half and half when you go back to work?

I just can't get my head around feeling entitled to money that someone else has earned, or a partner feeling entitled to my earnings just because we're married

Isn't this what you sign up to when you get married, a partnership.

What's his is his is yours and what's yours is his.
Or in my case what's his is mine and what's mine is mine

partnership doesn’t mean dip into your partner monies,your lil slush fund

That's exactly what partnership meant to us, it's what our marriage meant to.
My dh didn't see it as his money, he earned it to pay bills and support his family.
This included his wife who was at home raising the kids, and providing free services that he would otherwise have to pay for.
Can't claim to be a chauffeur though as I don't drive but I've spent 25 years looking after the home and kids, for what dh appreciates.
He'd never think of considering finances as anything else but equal

I just can't get my head around feeling entitled to money that someone else has earned, or a partner feeling entitled to my earnings just because we're married

I just can’t get my head around letting someone else look after your kid all day while you leave the house to go to work every day. Just cos you’ve had a kid together. I mean it strikes me as entitled that just because you have a kid together you assume the other parents will occasionally look after it

Me too. How is it fair that one partner (which is nearly always the woman), gives up her independent salary and covers 24/7 childcare, and pretty much all the housework, shopping and cooking, and has to go cap-in-hand for money to the other partner who doesn't appear (according to all these MN threads) to be answerable to anyone as to how he spends his income.

Why should one partner have so much more disposable income than the other? There was a thread on here recently (although there have been many over the years) where the bloke was swanning around in a brand-new car whilst his wife couldn't even get her hair cut.

I think there are many women in relationships where it isn't equal financially and they work too.
It must be awful to work, do most of the home responsibilities and have a husband/partner who keeps more money than you.
I can't get my head round this, but each to their own.

Me too. How is it fair that one partner (which is nearly always the woman), gives up her independent salary and covers 24/7 childcare, and pretty much all the housework, shopping and cooking, and has to go cap-in-hand for money to the other partner who doesn't appear (according to all these MN threads) to be answerable to anyone as to how he spends his income.

as you see from this thread - this is the actual aspiration of many.

I find there’s real life,and there is mn life.a reality described that I don’t recognise in rl
Men who can’t work Wmch.successful men who’d crumble if the wife stopped doing chores
Women who haven’t worked in donkeys years and are enriched with dogs,naps,and faffing

The fact he only gives you £400 pcm whilst you are on mat leave yet has over £3000 disposable himself is a red flag to me. Even when you worked he had a lot more disposable income than you yet you have no access to this money as he refuses to have a joint account. Another red flag. He sounds controlling when it comes to money & that could potentially get worse if you give up work.

However if you believe that it could work then he would be saving an absolute fortune on child care whilst you are home. There will be less/no pressure on him to take time off when DC is sick etc.

Lipstick

There are many from Mnet I don't recognise in rl, but they exist, as we are all different.
Personally, I have never been a faffer, and we don't have dogs.
However, I was a sahm for 25 years and have spent the last year working pt.
I am very lucky though because even though dh career has come first I have had a ball. He has always done more than his fair share with everything and extras on top that some people with double incomes pay others to do.

missadasmith
I have no issue with SAHPs. My issue is with anyone who settles for such a disparity in access to money. That does not and should not mean that all women (or men, if "usual" roles are reversed) must go out to earn a salary. It means that those earning should share the spoils, in recognition of all the stuff their partners are doing on the home front.

he would be saving an absolute fortune on child care whilst you are home.
Not if the OP's salary covered the costs. But anyway, they're looking at childcare being done by family, which most likely wouldn't cost much, if anything.

I love the assumption that dual workers mean they pay for everything to be done for them. In real life I know just one person with a cleaner and that's because she is very ill and her DH is working two jobs.

The majority of SAHPs seem to fall in two camps, those that claim tax credits so the government not their partner covers their living costs and the the really high earners who apparently are incapable of functioning without a non working partner.

he would be saving an absolute fortune on child care whilst you are home

Not really as the OPs salary would count towards it too. They lose that in exchange for no child care costs and the lack of recent work experience/ethic likely reduces the chance of employment and current salary in future if the OP ever returns to work.

Yellow

I was talking about plumbing, knocking down walls, building, roof repairs etc not cleaning
Mine does the cleaning too, in between childcare and housework.
Reading these threads does make me realise how lucky we both are to have each other.

If DH and I had insisted on separate finances, it would have been a joke from the start - he probably earned 10 times what I earned. So how would that have worked? "Shall we go on this holiday Parisa? No, sorry, I can't afford to go 50/50 so we'll have to stay home." Or, 14 years later, I'm out with the kids - "Please could I get this coat mum? No, sorry, I've spent my £400 this month, so you'll have to ask dad".
Who lives like that? You can't have different spending power within a family.

You live on your salary, you have joint account for kids items,you pay prorata for holidays
Living within your means on your own salary is something plenty others manage
It’s not insurmountable