Should i ask my partner to cover all the bills instead of us sharing?

[twinklestarin]

My partner works full time and earns around 200-250 per day. I am currently a stay at home mum to our DS who is almost 3 and DD who is 5 months old. I do intend to start work once my youngest is old enough to go nursery. For now i've been doing a private tutoring job from home which i only earn £550 per month. I could earn more but its hard to do more due to juggling the home and children. My partner expects me to contribute a share to all the bills, food shopping and anything related to the kids. By the time i have done all of this i have a very small amount of money left to myself or non at all. Sometimes I would like to buy myself books, or go out with a friend or get my hair done but just dont have much money left. Considering that my partner earns considerably more than i do, would it be fair if i asked him to cover all the bills , and with the money i earn i can use that to cover all expenses related to the kids and myself.

I disagree, this doesn't work out fair if there's a big disparity in income, especially if the bills are high compared to income. The employed partner may well be able to pay 85% of the bills but STILL have way more spending money than the other partner, even if the non-employed partner is working just as hard looking after the children, doing housework etc.

For example - if total income for the month is £2000 but bills come to £1500, the employed partner, if earning/paying out 85% of those, would pay £1275 on bills but would still have £425 a month left to spend on themselves, or around £100/week. But the non-working partner, although "only" paying £225 on bills, would be left with just £75 of spending money for the whole month - less than £20 a week. (Plus if that is the only cash they have, they may well end up spending much of it on kids' activities, in my experience, as a lot of the mums-and-tots type activities want cash...).

So this is really unfair on the non-working parent and will over time make a huge difference to what they can do/have access to compared to their partner, and their ability to build up any savings. If you further increase the proportion of income spent on bills, that personal spending money ends up pretty much disappearing altogether for the non-working parent. (And remember that the working parent is also likely to be topping up their pension at the same time, so also adding to their savings for later life, while the other isn't getting any!)

So I'm with Changingplace - the only really fair way to do it (assuming the work being put in by both partners is reasonably equal, and with two under-3s and a part-time job, I'm sure it is at least equal!), is to pool all income and then get equal spending money each after bills/savings.

You're a family. You pool your money. Anything else is bloody selfish.

Reading all your posts it seems clear that neither of you actually want to be in this relationship. Do both of you, and the kids, a favour and separate, then sort out child support and your own finances. Who knows? In time you may find someone that actually cares for you and makes you happy. You won't find happiness as long as you stay in this situation.

Tell him you are going back to work and present him the childcare bill which will be proportionate to both your earnings.

This.

You are being abused financially and threatened.

You need to contact Women's aid and ask for help.

Tell family and friends the truth about him.

Stop protecting him.

Start planning.

Keep a note of his threats.

Let your GP and Health Visitor know that he is abusive and threatening you.

Stop thinking your relationship can be saved, it can't.

Accept the truth and start to detach while you get organised.

He is not a good man, just another abusive waste of space that thinks you are stuck.

Any hint of aggression from him, call the police.

We are here for you.

He's being thoughtless and tight. You need to get your ducks in line by preparing a budget, of incomes & expenditure. Work out your pro rata shares, based on your very unequal incomes. He earns, conservatively, 4 times as much as you - because most of your work is unpaid home/childcare - so he should pay 4 times the costs. You need to present this as a fully costed document, that he can examine and consider. Include the local childcare costs that are being saved by you being the primary carer, so he has an idea of what you are actually contributing to the family finances - few men appreciate the horrendous costs of nurseries, thinking it's £20 pd! Obviously this is while you are a FT stay at home parent, and will change when you are back at work, but the principal can remain, with a budget that is based on your respective earnings, fairly.

What a greedy grabby Scrooge he is. I bet he squeaks when he walks.

Men used to take pride in providing for their families but somewhere along the way the 50/50 bullshit came along which of course benefits men! Now there is an entire generation of selfish greedy gold-digging men.

Contact the links PP have given you and work towards being free of this oaf.

If you see any payslips/bank accounts around the house, take photographs so that when you go for CM, you have proof of his earnings as his type will lie if they can.

You refused to marry him but then had another baby....what were you thinking?. You are in for a rough ride.

Sharing household costs proportionality will still leave the lower earner with less spending money than the higher earner. I would suggest a different approach. In my view, each partner should have the same discretionary money to spend. I've been by far the main earner throughout our relationship and my wife has now stopped work altogether, mainly for health reasons. I've always made sure to transfer a sufficient amount to her each month so that we have the same personal spending money and any bonuses or windfalls are split 50:50. That's what seems fair to me.

I’ll be earning £550 a month on maternity leave for 10 months and then going part time once our DS is here. Me and my husband are going to look at our joint income and everything will be split fairly so that we both have money to ourselves every month.

I can’t believe your partner is earning £200-250 a day and still expecting you to pay a big share of the bills whilst you’re not even having enough money for a book or a night out once a month?

A couple should be a team, especially financially once children are involved. The stay at home parent is most likely always going to earn less and it is unfair that it means you have 0 money because of it.

I think you need to sit down and look at your joint income and go from there. This sounds very unfair OP!

When I was a SAHM for a few years, my DH paid for everything. All money goes into a joint account and any spending (including any clothes, beauty, outings for me) come out of it.

It’s really bizarre and unfair that he isn’t valuing the time and cost of you undertaking all of the child care and presumably most of the household chores in the day!!!

@billy1966 Great advice.

Just to add you earn less than 10% of the household earnings, yet 'save' the household thousands of £s of cost each month.
Any decent man would be able to do this basic maths and contribute fairly to household.
Your OH doesn't sound like he contributes anything to your partnership - either financially or emotionally.

Don't be responsible for paying for everything for the DC. That tells him they're primarily your responsibility. They're not.
Each pay into a joint pot for all bills proportionate to income. So you each pay x%. Set up a direct debit.

My heart breaks for you, does he realise how much better of you would be financially if you were single? You won't be entitled to certain benefits because of his income, if you were on just your salary you would get them aswell as child maintenance from him which would be 20% of his gross weekly income (before any deductions such as tax, pensions, NI etc).

He is treating you unfairly & I wouldn't dream of allowing someone to treat me like this, for me your either all in or not at all... How can he justify this? And to say you have to sort childcare like wtaf!

I agree with what others have said either pool the money, pay bills and split the remainder or do it persentage wise he earns 10X what you do so he should pay 90% of each of the bills and you pay the remaining 10%.

Exactly...there is no way to force him to do anything he doesn't want to. Why have another baby with someone you can't marry?. If it was just the 3 year old she would be in a much better situation.

this is exactly right!

He is either not a decent man or actively financially abusive... Or very dim...

This is all true, but irrelevant. I'm not attacking the person who posted it because it's really common to focus on why the abusive actions are happening and then, say, it's because he's "dim" which then muddies the waters: if it's not actively deliberate, is it not abuse? If it's not really abuse, then what's OP's problem?

It doesn't matter a joy why he's being abusive. He is and the end result to OP (or the victim in any other case) is exactly the same: psychological, physical and/or emotional damage plus the resulting damage that has/is rippling out into the rest of her life and opportunities. That's what's important. He can toddle off to therapy or some men's help network to figure out why he's doing it (of course he won't though).

It is not for OP or any other victim to try and understand the perpetrator's underlying motivations. It's up to her to focus on herself.

I can see that you have had lots of advice and have a good perspective on things now. Could you ask him why he thinks that you should bear the full financial, emotional and physical costs and responsibilities of having had children that you made together? and why he thinks that you should be responsible for all the housework and cooking, especially for him? Get him to find out the cost of childcare and calculate what that would have been for the years that you have looked after your first child and the months that you have looked after your second child.

If he expects you to cover the costs of childcare out of your earnings and continue to contribute to the household expenses, I am not sure where you have to go from there....

It sounds like he is already contributing much more than you and it’s only fair that you pay your fair share.

However, it should be proportional to your income.
It’s not fair that he has loads of spare cash and you have none when you both have children.

Why not both put a percentage e.g. 70% of your income into a joint account and pay all the bills, child costs and shared costs from it.

Then you’ll both have some spare money to spend in your own accounts.

Was it a joint decision for you to become a SAHM?
If he thinks you should be working then it maybe why he isn’t paying more.

My husband refused to go back to the marriage counsellor after she suggested this! He said that it should be in proportion to the number of days we work. As he worked very hard to get to the position he is in and earning the salary he earns. If I hadn't done the same that was my lookout. That made me feel like shit. The reason I hadn't progressed so much in my career was because we had two kids. There was two lots of maternity leave and I was ill as a result of the kids, so that affected my career too. As did the fact that I do all drop-offs and pick-ups and I have time off when the children are ill and to attend any events that are going on at school. It's not like I've had an equal opportunity to earn the same.

My advice OP would be to consider carefully if you want to be with this man. It sounds like financial abuse to me and this can lead on to other types of abuse. At least in my experience. Your well being and that of the kids is most important here. Good luck getting it sorted OP.

I think you missed this gem from OP:

He does state that he wants me to work but he also tells me to sort out childcare myself as he thinks its too expensive for him to cover

Jesus H Christ, you ARE contributing already. How do women get themselves to the point where they consider the labour they do as having no value. Imagine how much your partner would have to fork out in childcare and other costs if you went under a bus tomorrow, OP. He is absolutely taking the piss. I'd definitely send him a bill for all my labour, just to drive the point home that in a family with kids, income is SHARED income - his earnings belong to both of you.

Ffs go and get a job

Tell him he can sort childcare as they are his dc

@Slv199 are you still with your 'D'H?

What a bat shit way of looking at household income and expenditure - genuinely how does he think his 'logic' is fair?