AIBU?
I’ve been with my partner for 8 years (not married). We have two children, 1 and 4. And a mortgage. He is a great dad (and I mean this - much more present, sensitive) and does at least 50% of the housework, if not more.
But, I’m getting increasingly angry and frustrated at our finances and how id like more money for holidays and to save!
I work 30 hours a week in a professional job that earns a £32k salary. He is self-employed in a creative role, and I’m never exactly sure how much he earns a month/year because “it’s not that simple” and it also fluctuates quite a bit… and he needs to keep money in the business for expenses, tax etc so his clear take home income is not that transparent. And it’s difficult for me to challenge big purchases when he says they’re needed for my business.
His parents have always been terrible at managing money and as such he has huge anxiety about talking about money.
When we bought our house i got him to agree to a joint account, and we agreed to work out how much our bills and reasonable other spending would be, and split it in proportion to our earnings. And keep the rest in our own accounts. I agreed to do this on his worst case scenario month. Basically I paid 2/3 and he paid 1/3.
Then he got frustrated that he had v little disposable income, and I agreed (in a v stressful emotional conversation) to splitting it so that we instead have the same amount of disposable income each left. So I now pay more than 2x what he pays - so I pay £1250 a month, and he pays £450.
This is never really enough to pay for incidental stuff though, like Xmas and birthdays and new shoes for the children, new furniture for the house etc so I normally pay for these out of my own leftover money.
I’m getting increasingly frustrated that:
a) I’ve trained to be in a seemingly well-paid job but can’t really afford luxuries or to save anything for a holiday or the future, because he doesn’t earn enough money. Am I unreasonable that I want him to be a better business person and earn more money, even though he’s very good at what he does?
b) that he won’t be really transparent with me about his financial situation - for example, I paid off his overdraft when I came into some money that I later used for our house deposit, and then we went on a uk holiday and he went substantially back into his overdraft on the basis that I’d said it would be nice to go for lunch and other things, without knowing that would be the outcome, because he can’t talk about it because it stresses him out so much. If I’d known we could have changed to cheaper plans.
Does anyone have any advice about how I can help us be more organised and transparent with our finances so we can be more in control - especially with someone who has an anxious history with money? I’m never quite sure if it’s that we don’t have enough money or if it feels out of my control?