Wondering … would you stay with someone who is a brilliant parent but struggles with money?

[Broccolicelery]

Someone who is a brilliant parent to two year old but contributes nothing really in the way of finances.

Open a Monzo account. Work out how much money you have per week and transfer it to the Monzo account weekly. If you don’t have enough money on the Monzo account the spending will have to wait until next week (do grocery shopping early in the week!).

This approach has been brilliant as helping me budget. Spending in Monzo is also categorised so you can see where you could be cutting back.

@ChiefWiggumsBoy
your earnings are approx. 1/3 of his. Therefore, on a very basic level, you should put in approx. 1/3 to the family pot.

NO her earnings are 1/3rd of his. So they are 1/4 of the total so she should put in approx 1/4 of the family pot. (Or pay into the pot in a ratio 1:3)

I do think you need to reframe how you think you are contributing. Financially isn’t the only way you are contributing and you need to consider the childcare you contribute as equally valuable as paid work. Once you have reframed your thinking on this way, then you could start to think about the split of finances, taking into consideration your unpaid work with the children and home. Couples/families/etc have different ways of splitting finances. We used to split ours proportionate to income but this didn’t account for other things we did to contribute to our family. So now we keep the same amount of money each per month for personal
stuff like clothes, hair, mobiles, etc and all the rest of our money goes in a joint account for everything else to do with children/family/house. So that part would be your and your DH’s personal preference, but I really do think you need to appreciate the value in the childrearing and housework you are doing. In my opinion, at least x

Thanks. It is hard because anything I do contribute is so minimal it barely seems worth it. I do think I do a very good job of caring for our child and that’s probably what is important.

@Broccolicelery

No. You'll not have seen me post anything helpful.

This isn't a support group.

What kind of help were you looking for? Your op isn't really clear

But it... is a support group isn't it? Mumsnet?

@Mardyface

You think the aibu board specifically is a support group?

Huh

@Broccolicelery
I'm also parent b! (However, I earn significantly less than you and parent a also significantly less than your other half!)

I contribute half towards the mortgage/CT/energy/water - he pays the rest, we live predominantly on his wages..

If your OH hasn't made any indication of being discontent, I'm not sure I'd suggest changing anything at the moment! :)

You aren't. The reason people are talking about him being abusive is because if he was the one making you feel as though you're being inconsiderate, that would be so out of line/unreasonable that it would be abuse.

Since it's coming from you, you need to give yourself a break!

Imagine a small company of four people: One makes a product, one researches the best and new ways to make the product and feeds this back to the maker, one advertises and sells the product, the fourth person cleans the office, does the accounts, orders and keeps track of materials, makes the tea.

The salesperson is the one bringing all the money in, but they don't take home the largest salary. The money that the salesperson brings in is used to pay for materials, the electricity bill, the advertising costs etc and then whatever is left over is profit, to be divided between the four people as their take home pay.

It would not be fair for the salesperson to take everything, and say well - research person, you need to go online and sell your ideas to bring in some money. Making person, you need to keep some product back and sell it. It's not fair that I am the only one bringing in money here. This would be stupid because the person who is good at sales should be doing all of the selling, it would stretch the other people too thin if they were doing their jobs and also thinking about how directly they could bring money into the company.

A family should be the same IMO. You have two people who directly bring in different amounts of money (perhaps one of them all of it, perhaps just different amounts) but once it's in the family, it's just all one pot. It's used for the family expenses (housing, heating, childcare, food, cars toys clothes, savings etc) and the rest is either divided out between a small amount of pocket money for older children and an amount of spending money for adults, or put into a communal pot for general spending.

If you are having issues budgeting as a family I recommend YNAB, it's not free but it's paid for itself in our family and it's helped me understand DH's wage and everything seems less confusing.