DP eats more than me...

[Cassiopi]

Tell me if I'm being unreasonable (honestly, if I'm being a knob I would rather know). DP and I have just moved in together. Not married and only have joint account for groceries/bills etc. Not ready for fully joint account just yet. I put £20 a week towards shopping and he puts £25. I've been looking at receipts recently and £25 of food is purely what he would eat and £20 is for both of us. Basically, he is paying for things like bars, chocolate, things I don't eat such as desserts and cinnamon bagels. All of the money I put in is going towards meat and veg, for both of us. Is it fair that I am footing the bill for both of us whilst his money just goes on whatever he fancies and non staple foods which I consider junk? Surely our joint money should pay for stuff we both eat and he should pay for goodies for himself? AIBU? Just want to see what your opinions are before I have a word with him!

I think you should be splitting all bills proportionately to your take home pay.

The exception might be mortgage payments, where you're tenants in common and both want to end up owning the same amount of the property. (You don't have to do that - you could own 1/3 to 2/3rds or whatever you agree and pay accordingly).

You must be amazing at budgeting to feed two people for £20 a week.

Of course he's likely to eat more - but there's eating bigger portions and filling up on more bread etc, then there are chocolate bars, which I do agree are personal treat food.

So there's your issue. why are you paying 50/50 leaving you with less disposable income?

He earns nearly 1/3 more than you so you add up what it costs to run the home food and bills he pays 2/3 you pay 1/3.

and it SHOULD be about your joint income. why have you moved in with a man you don't see a long term future with?

Hmm I don't think the set up sounds quite right. I use a joint card for general shopping but if I was buying snacks for work or my pregnancy snacks I would use my own card.

When we first moved in, DP would put 1200 in to a joint account and I would put 800. This was rent (London prices), food, bills and any leftover was savings for holidays and things. Then we still had our own money for personal things. It worked for us and we've never scrutinised each other's spending.

You're worried about twenty quid when you're paying 50-50 on everything else even though he earns so much more?

Shouldn;t you be paying less of the bulls in general? Maybe then you wouldn;t worry about the odd twenty pounds....though I can't imagine getting funny about such a thing myself.

My DH earns more than me and we both pay for shopping...whoever goes tends to pay...I think nothing of buying him the things he eats and he the same

@Farmerswife36 I appreciate your advice but I'm on £20k a year and have large outgoings (for numerous reasons) and my other half earns £38k a year but we still pay half for everything other than shopping which I pay £5 less for a week. Some people have to be tight!

If there’s a problem that you’re tight on money because you’re paying half the bills but he earns almost double what you do then you may need to talk to him about reducing your share. Yes you live there so technically you use half of the utilities but it’s a problem if you are left really short but he has loads left to do with what he likes.

I wish I could feed both of us for £45 a week. I really struggle to see how only £20 of that is going on the staples. And struggle even more to see how £25 is being spent on treat items. Maybe you need to agree a meal plan for the week and use it for grocery shopping, then split the cost between you.

Ok I am going to disagree with everyone else. I was actually thinking what they all said until I saw he earns 18k more than you, everything is 50/50 except £5. So on the face of it you sound like the tight one cribbing over a few bars of chocolate but actually it's not you that's tight at all, you have to be frugal as you earn less, he is the tight one, happily filling the trolley with shit, he must be happy out with his full wallet while you are counting the pennies. Nope yanbu when you look at the whole picture

Hi OP, I think this all sounds quite unfair tbh! You should pay a proportion of your salary to bills, 50/50 means he ends up living with a considerable amount more disposable income.

If it’s to the point where you are checking the weekly reciepts etc, I would wonder what would happen if you wanted to go to the cinema or something together. Would you split that down the middle too? What if you couldn’t afford it but he could? Would you need to pay him back for that trip?

Although I don’t agree everything should be joint if you don’t want it to be, it does need to be fair and reflect the personal circumstances of each person. I feel you are being taken for a bit of a ride tbh although that could be because you insisted on going 50/50, that side was not clear from your op.

Oh and to add I think YANBU in this issue either.

Fruit - I bloody well put pregnancy snacks on the joint account. It was definitely a joint effort there

I hate the idea on MN that someone should pay less towards their rent, heat, light etc in early stage relationships just because they earn less then their partner.

Pick rent and bill levels than suit the low earner and split 50/50. If the higher earner wants anything nicer then they pay the excess. However there shouldn’t be an expectation that the low earner gets subbed.

OP - tell him you can’t afford to pay so much for food shopping and you’ve noticed that the actual food is only coming to £20 so you’re adjusting your payment to £10 and he can get his treats separately.

But the problem is that he will be used to a higher standard of living than you, if he spends most of his pay. So to him eating pudding, nice bagels etc will be normal and your idea of normal will seem very frugal and unnecessarily penny-pinching.

He can carry on enjoying a far higher standard of living than you, because his disposable income, after bills etc, will be much higher.

Potential solutions are to live at the standard affordable by the poorer partner (while he amasses large savings - useful as a house deposit for him, or both of you if you end up getting married). Or he can spend his excess on nights out and holidays with his friends (unlikely to lead to future relationship satisfaction). Or, you can work out what you can afford as a couple, as an average of both incomes and pay for everything (rent, bills, groceries) accordingly, proportionally.

YABU.

We split the shopping exactly half way every week. Sometimes I have more stuff in such as sanitary items, coffee pods (he doesn't drink coffee) and skincare and sometimes he has razor blades or a new toothbrush or whatever but it's just split half and half. We keep all out money separate.

On that basis I should only pay 15p towards the milk for the one cup of tea I drink whilst he drinks it from the bottle by the gallon minger

Life's too short to nit pick to that extent... seriously.

What if you went halves on a meal out but his meal was £5 more than yours?!

He also has a huge appetite so will usually have as much as 2 x portion sizes than I will for dinner but I don't make him pay 2 thirds of the shopping either... 😐😐😐

He’s earning double what you’re earning and other than a fiver you’re splitting the bills 50/50.

Stop paying for his junk. Put the shared food on one receipt & split that. He buys his own junk.

Did you choose where you’re living? Is it too expensive?

Have you incurred other costs through choices he has made?

RadioGaGoo

Meh sometimes I do sometimes I don't. Actually everything's on joint at the moment as I lost my personal card. DP has bought me a lot of takeaways recently

I think i'm going to be different to some of the people on here. We have a joint account where we pay the same amount in and all joint bills, shopping, etc comes out of this. However, if there's something that one of us eats and the other doesn't and ends up costing a lot extra, then we'll buy that separately or chuck extra into the account to cover it. It's so we don't start building up resentment, tbh.
And we're 11 years in, it's worked so far.

I'd just go back to buying groceries seperately if it's causing too much of an issue or talk to him about it instead of MN.

Oh and he earns more than I do as well with less outgoings (we each have out own places but he lives at mine) so he is very generous is many other ways but food is split 50 50

You’ll simply get berated for not sharing all monies.On mn Individual accounts signify lack of commitment
Next you’ll be told if you’re serious and or planning to marry you must have joint account
He earns more,he can buy his own food
Do and I buy our own groceries, we eat differently by preference & budgery

I was all ready to say YABU until I read he earns nearly double what you do and you are still splitting the bills 50/50.

Given the big pay variance, OP YANBU and you need to tell him you simply can't afford to match him pound for pound on all the bills.

So I'd be curious to know how the 'moving in together' worked. Did you choose a rental property you could both comfortably afford, with bills taken into account - so determined by what you could afford? Or did you move in with him? He with you?

Why on earth do you split the bills 50/50 when you earn so much less than he does?

That kind of financial plan only works when both people earn roughly the same amount.

Your welcome OP!
I definitely think you need to sort out how you split bills. DH has always earned more than me even before we had kids and he has always paid a bigger share of the bills.
We try to work it so that we both have the same disposable income after bills and then go 50/50 on things like meals out, holidays, days out etc.
I don't think we could ever be one of these couples that has joint finances. We are just too financially independent and like to have our own money to spend as we choose. It has worked fine for us for 10 years.

@lottiegarbanzo he has children so we needed more bedrooms hence why our outgoings are higher.