Sorry as this is quite long and some parts don't seem relevant but I'm trying to avoid drip feeding. I’ve seen a vaguely similar post going round but I’m in the other person’s shoes. I’ve recently come into a significant amount of money from the death of a parent. I’m in my early twenties and this money is more than enough to buy a house.
FWIW, me and my partner have been together for 4 years and I love him so much, like any couple we've had our rough patches, but I trust him more than anyone, he treats me so well and makes me laugh every day. Neither of us are ready for marriage just yet but we talk about it fairly often and we’ve discussed having children and what we’d like our future to look like.
The only thing that’s ever been an issue for us is money. We’re from quite different backgrounds – he left school at 16 and has done mostly manual labour, whereas I went to Uni and graduated a few years ago. As it stands, I already earn more money than him and most likely always will (this is something we’ve both acknowledged). This doesn’t bother me in the slightest; he is hardworking and ambitious and is doing really well in his field.
2 years ago, we started renting a place together, we’ve been lucky that it’s very cheap, but he rarely has any money left by the end of the month and is saving very little, whereas I can afford to be a bit more indulgent and still save a good chunk. Realistically, if we want to buy a house together and put in equal amounts, it’s going to take a good 7-8 years to do that and we’ll be in our thirties by then. I could put down more than him and we could split things fairly e.g. 65/35 to me, but I don’t want to make this kind of financial commitment until marriage.
I feel like the most sensible option is for me to buy a house now, just in my name, and then we could live in it together. Without renting, he could save up enough money for a deposit on a house we could both put our names on and then I could sell the (hypothetical) current house without a chain and keep that money for whatever I want to use it for in the future, which may be our mortgage, children, holidays, nice treats, etc.
It’s just that after seeing another post about ‘hoarding’ your inheritance I don’t know if this counts as being stingy or non-committal? At the end of the day, my inheritance was given to me by a parent who loved me, and I know they would want to me to be careful with it. I want us to be partners and go through the excitement of buying a house together but at the same time I don’t want to fund our entire life together. Nor do I want to hold the money above his head. At least if the house was mine and we were to break up, I wouldn’t suffer financially, and he would have a lump sum of savings that would mean he was okay too –not that I ever want to!