I'm so much poorer than my partner :(

[Jessiejines]

We've been together for 5 years and we moved in together last year and since we've bought a house together, it's really highlighted to me how poor I am compared to him.

Partner earns around £80,000 a year. I earn around £20,000.

Christmas is coming up and I'm stressing about affording presents, whereas he's not bothered. I've asked him whether we can have a limit on how much we spend on each other this year (around £80-100) as I can't afford the usual £300 we spent before buying a house. He said he still wants to spend around that much but it's stressing me out because I'm trying to budget for Christmas but after paying my share of the mortgage and then buying some presents ready for Christmas, I'm finding I'm living paycheck to paycheck.

This time of year always stresses me out. I love Christmas but I hate the expectation of spending loads :(

He's planning about 3 holidays next year and I just can't afford this but he keeps telling me I can. I tell him the average person is would not go on 3 holidays so we don't need to.

I feel I can't save money as everything seems to be about spending money but now we have a mortgage, I can't just throw money about everywhere.

It's all keeping me up at night :(

I think I can guess this one. Will not marry for financial reasons...

@CloudyYellow well exactly. I would seriously swerve any chance of getting pregnant without being married. You can imagine what he’s be like with CMS even now

Totally agree. These sort of creeps are disgusting.

All I have to say is start preparing for your own future with making more money.

Don’t fall into the dependency trap please. Start looking at you’re own earning potential.

Otherwise you will have many many regrets for placing all your trust in this person who sounds like a dick!!

Don’t be that girl like so many women who don’t realise their self worth and just lay down and accept utter crap because they didn’t push themselves to be so much more.

And I’m quite sure you’re a very capable person too.

You have loads of potential.. Don’t let anyone rob you of the life you really want.

Best wishes..

PS.. You probably need to seriously reconsider all of your options here and start focusing on yourself and your own future 👍

The split of your contributions isn't fair. It should be proportionate to your earnings.

Is marriage in your future?

He's not a partner. He's an arse.

Lose him

It's about you living with someone who isn't very nice.

Any future with him will be miserable. I guarantee it.

You are living like flat mates not partners. I only got married recently but we lived together for 7 years or so, all our money was shared, I never considered mine and his. I think you need to discuss what your situation should look like as this isn't making you happy.

OP’s current reality is already miserable!
She needs to ditch him now and start making moves to sever all ties to him ASAP.

I can’t fathom why so many pp are still thinking there should be an inkling of a future marriage in financially and emotionally abusive situations such this. It’s crazy. Our young girls/women need to be educated early against getting involved with men like this.

Should split everything pro rata to income, but that includes ownership of the house. Can't remember the term for it, but there's a set up where you fix the percentage of the house that each person owns.

Leave him, he's tight and mean, and he will never change, he's showing his true colours now. It will only get worse if you have children and you will wish you had left years ago.

Oh fuck off 🤣

Fuck off a) because £20k is 10% of £200k and 5% of £400k, both within budget with combined income of 100k and both can get a very good house throughout much of the country.

And b) fuck off saying £8k isn't a lot of money. Perhaps not to you.

Okaaaaay. Wow.

In much of the country that wouldn't buy you much and I didn't think most banks did 5% deposits anymore? Perhaps I'm wrong about that but that doesn't necessitate someone telling me to "fuck off". 🙄

And within the context of what can be lost in disastrous relationships with jointly owned property then yes, £8k is a lucky escape. And OP should get it back anyway, so a moot point.

No compulsion to share monies, no, but according to Citizens Advice, there is an obligation to support one another financially.. See the section headed Financial Support (Maintenance)

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/family/living-together-marriage-and-civil-partnership/living-together-and-marriage-legal-differences/

@PuzzledObserverNO you’re really wrong you've cited from heading Ending a relationship eg maintenance

Presuming you’ve misread & misundertood rather than wilfully misquote a section to prove a point

@Zone2NorthLondon wow, you seem really exercised about this.

I said what I said originally because I had a vague recollection of having seen something online that the law assumes that spouses will support one another financially. When you questioned me, I went googling - and quoted what I found from CAB. They seemed to be an authoritative source.

You presume rightly that I did not set out to deliberately mislead. Not that I misunderstood, so much as I read selectively and didn’t realise I was quoting from a section about ending a relationship.

And since I can’t remember the context in which I saw the originally statement, I’ll withdraw the statement that the law expects spouses to support one another financially.

It would seem to me to be a weird marriage in which they wouldn’t, though.

There is a total lack of wow. You made an erroneous statement. I pointed it out
You can’t recall where you originally read it because it’s not a legal principle and then you cited a completely different statement
I sniggered at completely exercised , another gaff

@Zone2NorthLondon

Correcting erroneous statements is fine. Could do without the sniggering though. No need for that.

Money is a focal point in many relationship conflicts.

What I see many couples do, is use their income as leverage for their worth. As in, how much money they bring into the relationship equates to their contribution.

This is a HUGE mistake because if someone has less money they take it personally and can attempt to compensate by pushing harder to either make more, or over compensate in other ways.

The cost and consequence here, is resentment and exhaustion. Resentment towards the poorer partner and/or resentment towards the wealthier one.
Resentment is a well known destroyer of relationships.

Instead, do an audit of what other ways you contribute to the relationship. For most women, emotional loading is a skill that perpetually goes undiscovered and undervalued.

The result will be a deepening of self worth, self esteem and a knowing that who you are in the relationship is not just dependant on the numbers on a balance sheet. There is so much more that you contribute and even you might take it for granted.

If you want it, I have a checklist to audit what else you do in the relationship and how it is valued.

Just tell him the limit you will be sticking to for presents as it's all you can afford. Also tell him that should he decide to spend more then that's up to him.

I wouldn't be buying him any presents. Buy one for yourself: a meeting with a very good divorce solicitor.

@bewarethetides why?
A divorce specialist - very good or even a fairly shit one - will tell her that they only do divorces for married couples 🤷🏻‍♀️
OP isn’t married.

No solicitor needed here.

Legally she’s entitled to 50% of the equity in the house that they hold 50/50 as Joint Tenants. That doesn’t even need a solicitor at this stage - and possibly not at all.

The house was only bought a year ago, and OP says nothing to suggest that she has disadvantaged herself financially long term for him - e.g. giving up career options. Short she’s put what some people might think is an unfair amount into the monthly bills, but others would not. And it was OP’s choice.

Legally, she’s entitled to 50% but I personally think after a year of ownership, she should morally stick with the £8K / £12K deposit split. Offer him the option to buy her out of £8K + the proportionate share of the equity growth. If he doesn’t play nice immediately he can lose her kind “moral offer” and the minute she has to get a solicitor involved - 50/50. That might stop him playing silly buggers.

But no divorce needed! They are “partners” - a word which on MN usually describes someone acting nothing like a real partner.

Completely exercised ⬅️it was a funny gaff, I'm sure you’ll agree it merited a snigger

I said really exercised, actually. I don’t understand why you think it was a gaffe, though?

Unless you are not familiar with the use of “exercised” to mean “to trouble or make uneasy”, as Merriam Webster puts it (definition 4). www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/exercised

As a sentence construction it doesn’t work,irrespective of what google tells you
Re-read it without the yea but no but Miriam said it’s utter nonsense,

You need to talk to him. Show him your finances and budget. Explain the jokes about you living off him make you feel very uncomfortable. So either he stops planning holidays or he takes over a large portion of the bills (I would still pay half mortgage) and he pays rest. Any jokes or comments then house goes up for sale. Your a team. If you are to move forward you work together as a team.