To be fucking livid - DH, lost money

[Jamtartforme]

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.

YANBU to be angry.
In my relationship though, we play to our strengths rather than divide everyhing out 50:50. This means I do more day to day life admin and all health related admin but he does our annual tax returns and deals with the utility companies (both things that fill me with incomprehending rage). I haven't lifted a finger in the garden for 15 years, he's never cleaned a car. Works for us.

I get this. I have a chronic illness that will only worsen over time. My DH stuglles to question or challenge authority, especially medics. He cares but he’s very passive. My DD takes after me - polite but persistent and questioning. The minute she turned 18 I gave her my LPA for health & welfare.

He did do it on purpose, though. When the nursery invoice came in each month, he had the choice to (a) log into the tax-free childcare account (which admittedly is irritating and Byzantine, but millions of us still manage to navigate it every month), check the amount in there and transfer more in if needed, then adjust the payment out to the nursery to match the invoice, or (b) pay nursery directly from the joint account. He chose (b), every month. You can’t accidentally set up a payment or accidentally ignore the instruction from OP to manage the tax-free childcare account.

There’s nothing to suggest he’s gutted, either – he’s done a cover-up hand wave at the OP to make up some excuse about how you can have tax free and 30 hours, which is incorrect.

All of life involves big sums of money: mortgage, childcare, bills, food shop, pensions, savings. Is OP to take care of all of it and all forms and birthday parties and to-do lists and become the house manager and her DH is some sort of errand boy? Because that’s a shitty way to live for her and would be a relationship-ender for me.

*can’t have tax free and 30 hours, which is incorrect. FFS autocorrect

It sounds like what he's done is claimed the free hours, but not put any money into the tax free childcare account - just paid it out of current account. You only get the tax back if you keep topping up your account, link the childcare setting to your account, and pay from there. You need to remember to top it up each month before you owe the nursery fees.
Tbf I doubt he's the only person who's made this mistake, abd the free hours are worth mote, so after least he got that bit right. But with the COL crisis, very stressful for OP.

I don't understand why you would ask him to do that if you know it isn't his strength. DH is a really hard worker. He's diligent with housework, pulls his weight. However, he's quite dyslexic and finds 'life admin' really challenging. He can do his work admin because it's procedural and he can work his way through it. So although people like to say 'if they can do their work, they can do it at home' I don't think it's necessarily true.

I deal with all the paperwork in our home because it's my strength. I'm very happy for him to deal with bins and the dishwasher, washing, etc.

From his reaction when your queried the costs before and his reaction when you found out I'd hazard a guess he knew 100% that he wasn't doing it right he just couldn't be asked.

It's weaponised incompetence.

Small point: managing the tax free account properly doesn't make any difference to the bill, it would mean paying the bill out of an account that's been topped up 20% by government rather than out of taxed income. Perhaps this confusion added to your row?

In RL, I'm the incompetent one who does stupid shit and my DH is the "mental load" person. Although to give me a bit of kudos, if DH gives me a list of tasks I usually get through them on my own. When we had to apply for schools or really important stuff we did it together so that we agreed on what was put on the form and ensured it was done correctly. Tax stuff, I can do on my own. It's only because I work stupid hours and he doesn't that it's worked out this way. However, I am terrible at getting a good deal when needing to invest a larger amount of money like to refurbish a room or buy a new fridge freezer, or buying a new laptop for DD.

@WholeHog I agree with you about the whole thing about the government making things too complex. I bring up two small children as a single parent and have a decent, demanding job. My children never went to nursery so when I had to sort out tax free childcare on holiday clubs, I found it quite complicated!

Agree with the pp who said if the roles were reversed, readers would have much more sympathy with a female who did this.

Personally I think people make mistakes, just let it go.

Could you maybe explain the situation to the nursery and ask them to refund you so that you can repay them via the TFCA? Would obviously involve a lot of trust on their part but you may be able to get back the money you’ve lost.

That's a rather harsh interpretation. He gave the nursery the code and thought that was his job done. The code is so the nursery can identify the payment from your tax free childcare account - doesn't actually get you the tax back, unfortunately.

As you can see from this thread, he's not the only one who doesn't understand how this works!

I am so sorry. Personally I do all important things myself so I know they are done correctly. Not sure a by it's so difficult for men even though they excel at work.

Oh, fuck off. I handle the childcare accounts for my children perfectly capably thanks very much. It was an off the cuff suggestion, don’t be so bloody sanctimonious.

Many years ago now I realised my DH wasn’t any good with anything relating to finance, he just didn’t want to know and it never interested him, everything fell to me. Here we are now in our 60’s, he has no clue where our money is. I tell him a rough figure every month and I do him a simple print out showing our accounts. To be fair, I’ve always liked it this way.

Would drive me mad!
If it is linked to your phone do you not get updates when the account is used?
This is after my childcare days we just paid from the bank account.

What does he do for a living, how does he function at work? This would massively give me the ick, particularly as he refuses to own his mistake. When you've lost all respect for your partner, and they're now just an unattractive liability, what do you do? If he were my DH he'd need to show willing to do better, really demonstrate that he'd learned from this and make massive efforts to be more organised and a competent functioning adult. If he couldn't do that, I don't think I could stick around. I have no desire for an extra child who will never grow up.

But why should she have to do that? Do you think someone sat her down and spoon fed her how to do it? Or do you think that as an adult she did her homework and worked out how to do it herself?

I hate how low the bar is set for men on here, with the view that they can't possibly be expected to do anything unless it is 'taught' to them first. Men are perfectly capable of engaging their brain like a woman is

My ex was this type. I left him. Once he understood I was never going back, I heard through the grapevine that he got himself a cleaner (!)

When I was explaining to him how I had lost all desire for him because I felt more like his mum than anything else, he told me he ‘didn’t understand why I was complaining about things that any self respecting woman would do.’

At that point, I wished him well and headed off into the sunset. I’m now with the love of my life, we have one DS and a baby on the way and it’s a different world. I’m just so much happier. And he’s the one handling the childcare payments (from the correct account).

OP, I think you need to ask yourself where you go from here. It seems like this is about more than this one incident, which I agree is very irritating. If you don’t fancy or respect your H, and I can understand why, eventually your relationship will corrode from the inside out. He needs to start helping you (properly!). If he doesn’t, I don’t see how you stand much chance of being happy. Life is too short.

Oh no my DH is very similar to this and would probably do the same. In all fairness the tax free childcare/30 hours can be tricky to manage and it's something I know my. DH couldn't handle and I look after it myself. We both tend to stick to the tasks we handle well and leave it at that.

That being said I can definitely understand OPs frustrations.

I was a bit rude, but the fact is, she can't claim back the money for periods that have already finished - use it or lose it. I wasn't being sanctimonious, just pointing out the amount of confusion there seems to be around how this works, tbf to OP's dh.

I was also going to suggest paying the nursery out of TFC and backdating as far as you could, asking for a cash refund for the quarter. Might need to sort cashflow short term though.
Pop I don't understand the issue with asking to do this? Could you elaborate as it may stop PPs like me suggesting it

can't believe I'm reading shit like this - it's running a household and paying bills not brain surgery

Bet at work he can't pick off the challenging tasks and just do basic ones while the boss smiles on happy cos he's just cost the business a serious amount of money due to either incompetence and not giving a feck to try properly/ not listening

OP this is you shouldering the mental load - it's unacceptable and he needs to recognise this damaging behaviour pattern

Cross posted!
She might be ok for the quarter though with a sympathetic nursery finance manager. I remember when I switched to tfc in 2019 as my bills were £1800 a month and the £2k quarterly top up didn't cover it for the one not entitled to 30 hours but did for the older one. I'm a chartered accountant and even I found it a lot of admin!