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Original poster

To be fucking livid - DH, lost money

479 replies

Jamtartforme · 02/08/2023 23:42

We’re skint, in the red every month. 2 kids, mortgage has gone up horrifically, nursery fees, COL, I’m sure many of you will know what it’s like.

DH isn’t lazy, he pulls his weight around the house but only when it comes to ‘obvious’ tasks. Such as washing up, or walking the dog. If its a task you can’t ‘see’ or doesn’t need to be done as part of routine - for example, arranging a birthday party or applying for school - it won’t even register. I do 95% of the mental load stuff, minimum.

This has caused a few rows between us, his point being I don’t let him do anything because when he does do it he fucks it up. But every time I do he just messes it up - he forgets medical appointments, fills in forms wrong, or relies on me to spoon feed him instructions to such an extent that I may as well do whatever it is myself.

Fine, I said, you can deal with the tax free childcare account for nursery. All good.

Fast forward to this evening and I discover that not one fucking payment has been made from the tax free account since last year. He’s been making the payments from our account and just assuming the deduction was being made because he had given the nursery our tax free code. He couldn’t be bothered to look into it all properly and work out how to use the account, even less actually work out how much we should be paying with the deduction, and now we have lost 2 fucking grand in the last year that we really, really do not have.

How angry would you be? I’m livid and can hardly look at him.

OP posts:
Toohotto · 04/08/2023 07:06

@CSIblonde You sound lovely.People can't help their intellectual capabilities or their intelligence. Surely the op knew how bright he was or wasn't by the time they had children?
Yes people can be lazy, but equally people might not have the intelligence to cross t's & dot the i's. If financial admin is not one of his strong points then why trust him with such am important task for the sake of sharing the mental load equally.
Are you all absolutely brilliant at doing EVERYTHING? As a pp said being married/in a long term partnership is about playing to your own individual strengths, that's how you how you make it work. Not sharing each task equally even if you're no good at something. As long as he's pulling his weight with other things then it frees op's time to deal with things he can't do.
We can't all be good at everything. In our house I do all the admin stuff & dh does more practical stuff. He probably does mire than me physically to be fair. It's worked for us for 36 years

Mydietstartstomorrow · 04/08/2023 14:14

Jamtartforme · 03/08/2023 19:40

Because nursery fees have gone up, her hours have changed and we were also incorporating the 30 free hours so overall I didn’t have a precise figure in my head. I trusted him to make sure it was correct, more fool me.

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Well I’m sorry but then you’re not really on it either are you!? You have no clue how much you are paying or should be paying for nursery costs, can see the payment going out every month, never queried it, yet you blame someone you have openly admitted is not good with these kinda things! Blame should be equally distributed here and you should climb down off of that rather high horse you are on

mandlerparr · 04/08/2023 17:57

So he regularly fucks shit up and gaslights you into thinking it is your fault. Then you gave him perfect trust in a very simple thing and he couldn't even do that.
Thankfully he gave you his savings, but is that the end of it? Or is it going to lead to a future of him complaining about how he doesn't have any fun money? Basically making you still pay in the form of unrest in the home.

glowfrog · 04/08/2023 17:59

Apologies if I'm missing the point and it's already been pointed out - but if you are likely to incur further childcare costs such as afterschool care and holiday clubs, you can still use the childcare credits?

mandlerparr · 04/08/2023 18:00

Mydietstartstomorrow · 04/08/2023 14:14

Well I’m sorry but then you’re not really on it either are you!? You have no clue how much you are paying or should be paying for nursery costs, can see the payment going out every month, never queried it, yet you blame someone you have openly admitted is not good with these kinda things! Blame should be equally distributed here and you should climb down off of that rather high horse you are on

Show quote history

and this is why men get away with this shit. She handed one single bill over to him. His only thing to do, once a month. And he couldnt' do it. Her only mistake was having trust in him to do it. And that is also his fault, because if you are grown enough to have a child, home, job, etc, then you should be grown enough to pay a bill correctly especially when it has been explained to you, set up for you, everything done for you except just making sure you use the correct fucking account.

DappledThings · 04/08/2023 18:01

glowfrog · 04/08/2023 17:59

Apologies if I'm missing the point and it's already been pointed out - but if you are likely to incur further childcare costs such as afterschool care and holiday clubs, you can still use the childcare credits?

It's not credits. It's the childcare top-up account. It's a different scheme.

glowfrog · 04/08/2023 18:09

@DappledThings doh! Thanks for clarifying.

Miajk · 04/08/2023 18:27

Jamtartforme · 03/08/2023 08:51

I hope she doesn’t end up on the ‘cockroach cafe’ thread…

thank you everyone for your responses, it seems I’m not BU to have gone a little batshit over this.

No, it’s not refundable. It’s a use-it-or-lose-it scheme. Had he sorted it correctly we would’ve had around £150 per month off our nursery bill. This is pretty much our entire food bill. I’m going to ask how he intends to make this up to the family finances. I don’t feel a slap on the wrist (metaphorically speaking) is enough this time, I need to make him realise that if he doesn’t do something right the hard work of untangling it will fall to him. I won’t be picking up the pieces.

He isn’t lazy, the chores in the house are divided 50:50 and if (for example) I want a night or weekend away he looks after the kids without hesitating. I would say we spend the same amount of time looking after them and doing things around the house each. We both work FT

But it’s the mental load that he just does not ever seem to think of. How to you make someone think of something they haven’t thought of, ie ‘DC starts school next year, better check when the application needs to be in’ ‘it’s DC’s birthday in a few months. Better start thinking about their party’?

I don’t want to constantly be reminding as that defeats the entire point. It’s exhausting. Last week I asked him to take baby DS for his jabs, he kept asking me the time and date of the appointment then fucking missed it!!!

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Honestly I wouldn't get wound up over the mental load. I'm crap with admin so my partner does it all (I'm a woman).

I do more of something else instead. Stop splitting chores 50/50 and give him more of the other stuff to makeup for you taking the lead on admin.

WhoNeedsToSleepAnyway · 04/08/2023 18:28

This is my life... exactly mine! The mental load is overwhelming! I asked my friends in jest if I died to makes sure the kids were ok the other week. My regular joke is that the kids would be wearing babygros if it was iny husbands hands. I don't have any answers but can sympathize

CantFindMyMarbles · 04/08/2023 18:38

I think you’re being unreasonable. Surely you’re aware of what the amount should be and the amount wasn’t correct. Just as much your responsibility

Grrrrdarling · 04/08/2023 18:46

TomatoSandwiches · 03/08/2023 00:04

Most adults are capable of looking up how to complete a task, there are guidelines/instructions on the GOV.co.uk website for the majority of forms/processes.

Who spoon feeds you the information you need to know? Or do you, like most people take the initiative to find out yourself because you aren't an 8yr old.

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Spot on. If I am unsure about anything I ask someone or Google.

Georgyporky · 04/08/2023 18:50

People have different skills.
DH has a brain the size of a planet (and is suitably rewarded by his employer), but could not organise the best deal for e.g. house insurance, utilities providers, etc

I can, & therefore do household organisation

Winnipeg23 · 04/08/2023 19:38

You know he's incompetent with tasks and gave him one that wud have serious financial consequences if he got it wrong. Why would you do that? Doesn't make sense to me. Give him a time consuming but unimportant task off Ur list if you don't trust him.
He's at fault but u knew better- so you at fault too. Just clock it up to experience and stop being angry over it.

Missingpop · 04/08/2023 19:51

Sorry but it’s hard work isn’t it having arsewipe your husband; he’s little more than a toddler when it comes to doing something constructive, I gave up years ago, I stopped fighting the long fight; I just do it myself it’s so much easier & less stressful

Iwant2stayanon · 04/08/2023 20:02

I would be fuming, there is no excuse, he is lazy and stupid.

Annemaria · 04/08/2023 20:18

It’s called strategic incompetence. Fail enough times and someone else will take over your responsibilities.

DVL · 04/08/2023 20:27

Feel your pain, I didn’t even know about tax free childcare so have been paying normally for 2 years. Found out about it now she’s 3 and eligible for 30 hours 😂 also could have sent her to a school nursery down the road which is literally half the price and accept children from 2 years old. Might be worth looking into that if you have any in the area?

Houseofpainjumparound · 04/08/2023 20:43

Op if your nursery is like mine the monthly payment changes.
I created a spreadsheet where I can plug in the number of each day my dc will attend for the month (2 Tuesdays, 4 Thursdays etc) it then calculates that by the daily charge for food, adds it all together giving me the total invoice payment, i then work out 20% and then work out the amount i can pay in monthly over the year without needing to change my standing order payment in and my account always has a buffer in case of extras/fee increases.

I also paid in an additional month, so I can make my payment but still be in the green in the account as im always a month ahead. This also means If one month is much higher I can still make a regular payment in and not worry about not having enough funds.

If you do end up with way to much in the account you can withdraw amounts and it takes off the 20% top up.

The good thing is this account can then follow into school so any credit can then be used to pay for after school clubs etc. I've also found extra curricular activities that accept the gov childcare payments.

Honestly I don't trust my dh with the financial stuff like this as I pay for it from my wages so its easier.... the mortgage is down to him... he will do docs and dentist and puts the appointments in his diary.... I will often share it with him via my phone and we have a family hand written calendar in the kitchen.

OneAtATime · 04/08/2023 20:44

OP he sounds like a proper PITA

in his slight defence the system is shit. The quarterly top up cut off isn’t clear. You do have to claim the hours and faff about paying money in etc but it is worth it in the context of most people’s finances so he should have done the reading/work on this one.

Jumbojade · 04/08/2023 20:50

Jamtartforme · 03/08/2023 12:28

this is also correct.

just to confirm: I set the account up, and trusted him to make the payments from it monthly.

he instead sent the payments direct from our joint account, subverting the tax free one and therefore paying 20% more than we needed to be.

because I set the account up I used my own mobile number,I was texted yesterday to ask confirm details on it, hence going back in and looking at the payments. To see there weren’t any.

Show quote history

How did you not notice that the money was coming out of the joint account? If hundreds of pounds were going out of the joint account every month, to pay nursery, surely you should have noticed it. You said that you went back into the tax free account, to look at the payments and there weren’t any. Does this mean the money was building up in that account?

DappledThings · 04/08/2023 21:08

Jumbojade · 04/08/2023 20:50

How did you not notice that the money was coming out of the joint account? If hundreds of pounds were going out of the joint account every month, to pay nursery, surely you should have noticed it. You said that you went back into the tax free account, to look at the payments and there weren’t any. Does this mean the money was building up in that account?

Show quote history

Because money would be going out of the account anyway. Except it was meant to go to the childcare account and from there to nursery, but it was going to nursery direct. What was coming out of the joint account should have been 80% of the monthly bill rather than the 100% that actually was but easy to miss that when the amount changes every month.

No money was building up in the childcare account because no money was being sent to it.

goodpancake · 04/08/2023 21:20

Do you think he’s actually unintelligent?
my husband can also be completely incapable of what appears to me to be simple tasks. Sometimes I think he is completely stupid. Stuff that would take half an hour of research to sort out.
he’s paid twice for our house insurance this month. One of the very very few house tasks that I leave to him. £400 came out of our account because he didn’t cancel the renewal.
I also get angry when his mistakes cost us money (at least we’ll get it back this time). And I find it hard not to think he’s an idiot.
the other thing is how much he goes on about it when he’s taken something on for himself and I have to praise him like a child. And he doesn’t even realise the 10 thousand things that I do every single week.
I think that thinking your DH is not very clever is really toxic for your relationship so I try hard to just accept that he just isn’t as thoughtful as me!! The mental load is absolutely overwhelming though.

MrsCooper84 · 04/08/2023 21:42

Ladyj84 · 03/08/2023 01:36

I bet the poor guy messes up cause your constantly critical probably doesn't know what to do for the best. Tbh totally different angle your disrespect for your hubby the way you talk about him etc it's horrible. I could never imagine talking of anyone like you do and especially not my hubby yes he messes up occasionally but so what he ain't perfect and neither am I. But I would never ever talk about him they way you are. If your so unhappy leave the poor guy so he can find some kindness somewherelse

This.

Jack80 · 04/08/2023 23:34

I think you both need to sit down and you show him how to do certain life admin things.

Here4thechocs · 04/08/2023 23:38

Not me reading this and wondering if we married the same man.
Seriously, I do EVERY of those things you listed. He has no clue what child tax free anything is. I’m happy to do it all but to complain when I ask for your half of the bills for the children’s activities ? Nothing gets to me more.

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