My partner and I have been together for 10 years and when I met him he was making pennies as a mechanic and was in bad debt and his credit was terrible. I helped him pay off his debt and helped raise his credit by disputing multiple things on his credit report and putting him on my credit card as authorized user. I did all the legwork on all of this. Also I co-signed a car loan for him so he could get a good interest rate. (The car was for us and our kids). We bought a really cheap house and lived there for 4 years. He got a new job where he makes more than triple what he was making before. I don’t make much money I could barely afford to pay half the expenses of our cheap house. But I did it. We had two kids and I changed my job from an employee at a company to having my own business so I could have a flexible schedule so I could take care of the kids doctors appointments, pick up and drop off, etc. His job does not have a flexible schedule and he works 50+ hours a week so he can’t do any of the kids duties. With my new job I make significantly less than what I was making before but still paid half of the house’s expenses.
We decided to move to a new house and he wanted a very expensive house since he started making way more money. I said I didn’t feel comfortable getting a more expensive house because I wanted to still be able to pay half the expenses but i knew I wouldn’t be able to afford anything more than what I was currently paying. I didn’t want to hold him back by getting another cheap house when he really wanted an expensive house and he could now afford it. And there were periods where I didn’t pay anything like when I was on maternity leave and a few other couple month periods where I just wasn’t making enough money at my job. When I was on maternity leave he complained that I was putting too much pressure on him to pay all the bills.
So we sold our cheap house and bought the new expensive house. We spent $25,000 on the down payment of new house and we made $85,000 in profit of old house. I assumed when he got the deposit of the profit of old house that he would transfer me half of it. We have separate accounts. He did not. I mentioned it very casually one day and he said it was safer in his account and I always have access to his account. He wanted it there for “us”. I let it go.
Currently I pay around 1/3 of the home expenses. I am really struggling with money. I am constantly overdrawn on my account and just barely get by with what I’m making. He consistently has $80,000 in his bank account when I usually have around $100. He earns more money than his expenses so his bank account usually continues to go up because he doesn’t spend much money.
I have a little bit of credit card debt and I mentioned the idea of him co-signing a personal loan for me to pay it off since his income is so high, it would give me a great interest rate. When he doesn’t want to do something he gets quiet and says, “we can look into it” but I know he really means no. In the past I asked him to give me “owner access” to our cell phone plan so I could buy a new phone and he pretended like he didn’t know how. Then later when I complained about it he admitted he didn’t want to because he didn’t want me spending too much money and making the bill go up.
I feel like since he makes significantly more money than me and I am basically the sole caretaker of our two kids that he should be throwing money at me. I think he should’ve offered to pay off my credit card debt. I also think he should give me a little bit of money regularly so I can get by a little easier than I have been. I think if our roles were reversed I would happily give him the money to pay off his credit cards because it’s pennies compared to what he has in his bank account. I may be in the wrong because it’s not his fault that I make significantly less than him and not his fault I have credit card debt. Maybe I should figure out how to get a higher paying job.