My partner keeps trying to pay for things for me and having me pay him back to 'save on interest'

[boysmama1]

Bit of a long one ... but this is the back story.

1. I have a credit card (£1K limit) that is currently maxed out. This is from a business trip to the US 18 months ago, I have been paying it back but I have also recently come back from mat leave so I have a couple months of missed payments (I know now great for the credit score, but I am still in the good section)
2. My boyfriend while 'tidying' found a missing payment letter - the only way he would have found this would have been by going through my things (I keep a folder under my bedside drawers with any important documents/letters). He must have looked here to have found the letter and even open it to read it.

By doing point A - I feel violated and I don't even want to see/speak to him because he's gone through my personal items. To me, this doesn't impact him in the slightest. I am paying it off - I can afford pay more off now that I am back to work full time after maternity leave (my minimum payments were only £40/month) and my credit score is still 'good'.

Financials are a really personal thing to me and I feel super judged for having one. He made the comment of 'do you know how many credit cards I have?... None'

He now wants to give me the money to pay the card off in full to 'save on interest' and then I pay him back. I can afford the £40/month payment - and like I said, now I am back full time I can even afford to pay off more than that.
But this isn't the first time an instance like the above has happened ... Last year I had an extra £500 that I wasn't expecting from my last paycheck before maternity leave, so I put it into out joint account to contribite towards our bills while I was on mat leave. Instead of leaving it, he took that money to 'pay himself back' because he decided that to save £40, he would pay my car insurance in full. It came to like £500 - and something I could have afforded to pay monthly while I wasn't working.

I just feel like he wants everything paid in full all the time - when financially we are trying to save money instead of spending it and sometimes paying monthly is easier instead of depleating our saving accounts and then trying to get that back again - it turns it into a vicious circle of never having any savings because he's constantly using it to pay things off in full.

Am I being unreasonable in my feelings? Or should I have told him about the credit card / continue to let him pay everything in full? I just hate the idea of owing him money all the time because he's rather make the payment NOW instead of letting me have a payment plan and pay it off myself. I feel like I am being treated like a child who isn't allowed a financial responsibility.

I think there is a real problem here. How did he justify leaving himself with multiples of your disposable income when you were on maternity leave?
Why did he spend your safety net £500 you’d set aside for ML without checking with you?
Are the bills split proportionately to income and do you both have the same disposable income each month?
Is it just your financial situation where he doesn’t respect your privacy and boundaries?

They both pay 50:50 but he earns more. OP earns £2000, him £3000 so that’s not even split fairly. I don’t think OP has said how much the bills actually are though.

The bills are remarkably low if the OP'S 400 pounds covered half during her maternity leave. So my guess is that they split proportionally.

The OP says herself that her boyfriend sold the £16k car so that he could get a cheaper one, so even he knows he didn't need a car that expensive. I was going on that. And to me, £16k would buy a lot of car. To me, that's 'flash' because it's more than you need. I know it's not like spending 80 grand or whatever on some over-engineered German thing, but it's still a lot of money.

My car isn't a large family car but you asked if I'd bought a car recently, and I have. I'm in a rural area. Farmers and farm workers like 2nd hand cars and upgrade quite frequently, so there tends to be a better than average market. Added to which, ULEZ changes recently meant that if you were outside an ULEZ zone, there were quite a few bargains to be had. Plus I shopped around and was savvy.

It’s hard to say but OP does say they both paid half their salaries to the joint account, so that’s £1000 from OP and £1500 from the BF prior to Mat leave. It’s not clear what that combined £2500 goes on, though OP does say the BF often takes ‘surplus’ out when he feels like it when OP thinks it would be useful to use for unexpected bills etc.

Even if it isn't secured against repossession, it's always secured in that you have a sellable asset if you need it as the only way of repaying.

Borrowing money against a holiday has no asset you get to keep.

It really is different.

Id be very surprised if they don’t need to buy a car in the 16k region shortly, especially if they go on to have another kid.

In the 15-16k price range you are looking at a brand new Kia picanto (a really small car not at all suitable for a family) a base model new Dacia Sandero or a 2019ish Renault/Honda/Mazda. Hardly flash cars. If you wanted an even mildly flash car like a vw Tiguan, you’d be looking at an 8 year old car with 70k on the clock.

We are nowhere near a ULEZ zone either. There is only one ULEZ zone and it’s many hundreds of miles from us, so most definitely not a factor in car prices.

So many commenters saying op pays 50% of bills.

No, she and her bf each pay 50% of their income towards bills.

That's not op paying 50% of bills.

Eg op earns 1k, pays 500.
Bf earns 2k, pays 1000.

In this example, op is paying 33% of the bills.

So many people are getting confused on this...

Finances should be ironed out prior to moving in together, and then be an open discussion at any point thereafter so that both in the couple are in agreement - however that looks.

Once you add dc into the mix, things get tricky (wage drop, hours etc) and if you haven't had an agreeable scenario beforehand, it's even harder to discuss a new setup once baby arrives.

IMO, once you live together, financial decisions should be discussed and agreed as your financial stories are joined with regard to the credit score agencies. So, essentially, you're both as bad as each other and need to discuss and agree more. He shouldn't just be taking out loans on cars because he wants to and you really should be discussing missed payments etc as both of these have an effect on each of you

Ultimately, it doesn't matter to anyone else how you split your finances compared with how anyone else does it but you do need to find a way you both agree with. For example, him leaving you with £200 a month on mat pay, while you're home raising his child is very mean. DH would have given me his last penny if I'd needed it on mat leave, still would to be fair.

This isn’t clear though because we don’t actually know exactly how much the bills are. OP says that there’s often ‘surplus’ that the BF then takes back out or spends on takeaways, which she feels should go towards unexpected bills etc.

@Notmyuser

You can get plenty of suitable cars for less than £16k

It’s just people are obsessed with status cars.

My household income is significantly more than OP’s, I have two children and our 2008 Honda CRV cost £6k two years ago. It’s not given me any trouble and I don’t anticipate needing to replace it for at least 5 years.

No one needs a brand new car.

I am currently on track in paying off the full amount and even making over payments.

If by "paying off the full amount" you mean you're paying the monthly minimum payment, all you'll be paying is interest. You need to cut up the card and seriously start attacking that debt. And never miss another payment because it totally screws your credit score.

So a bit of a misnomer to say it was as a result of a business trip. It was personal expenditure which is fine but was all the same just spending on a credit card. Possibly required spending possibly frivolous. Doesn't really matter it was your choice.

Yes the snooping is bad. But as you are on maternity leave and I assume he is the father and you are living together as a family unit I suspect he may well be concerned that your stance is on the financially irresponsible end of the spectrum (running up credit card bills, missed payments, happy to pay interest which can be avoided by him subbing you) and he is the other end (prefers to spend money he actually has, pays in full when he can). Add in a new baby and you earning less whilst on maternity leave and already missing credit card payments I can see why he may be stressing about payments.

Financially at least I would say you are incompatible. This may or may not continue to cause issues in maintaining a relationship going forward. I suspect this may be the first time where its come to light now a baby is in the mix and you are having to function financially more as a family rather than 2 individuals. His suggestions do seem sensible but I suspect the snooping part (which isn't pleasant) is what is perhaps holding you back from seeing that.

Used car costs have skyrocketed recently - i don’t personally have a car so I am by no means obsessed with status, a bus pass carries zero status 😂 we are currently car hunting and our car is worth more now than it was a year ago despite us doing 30k miles on it.

An important thing to consider is that some people don’t have a choice other than to go to the mainstream garages because they need to pay a car on finance as they don’t have £6k in savings to buy a car in cash. We only traded our old car in because we didn’t have £1k for a new clutch but we could afford monthly car payments if we financed a car. We needed the car immediately and didn’t have time to save for it either.

I have a strong suspicion that whem he takes the extra money from the joint account that isn't spent it is going into savings so that it isn't frittered away and will ne available for emergency bills like a new boiler or roof etc. His outlook on finances suggests that he would worry OP would spend and he is a saver.

Especially his, right? It's the Mumsnet way.

She’s already said he uses it for takeaways. She suggests leaving it for unexpected bills, which would suggest the opposite.

He makes an additional £1K on me. He increased his contribution from £1K to £1,400. Any 'left over money' on the joint card was his for the taking as he was now contributing more to the household.

I never touched the finances on the joint card, it didn't make financial sense to me when we would have £200 left over monthly, which we could save or use towards unexpected bills coming up.

Even when we moved in together, I always said that we should a little bit extra onto the joint account for 'just in case of unexpected bills' and then he'd always spend it (take aways) or take it back, even when I would say that's a bad idea when we have our own disposable income that we can use for that.

That does not suggest he is the cautious one. He has more disposable income than he pays into the joint account and yet he's still using it to buy takeaways etc. While the op was on maternity leave she had less than £300 left and he had £1.6k. That seriously looks like financial abuse to me

Did you miss the bit you quoted where she said she makes overpayments?

Yes, but OP seems to think anything above the minimum is an "overpayment".

Well, technically it is, though we don’t know the exact amount it’s got to be more than the minimum payment.

Surely an overpayment on a credit card would be more than the actual balance?

For Clarity:

1. I took out a credit card with £1K limit on it. I spent maybe £400/500 on it while on a business trip. Hotel, Flights & Food were paid for by the company for the duration I was there for work. I stayed an extra 2 days where I did sightseeing etc because I had never been to the US
2. I was paying this off while working full time before going on maternity leave (paying more than minimum payments), here my money was drastically reduced but I still wanted to contribute to the household bills as best I could. I work in a job that still allowed me to receive my bonus' (6-monthly) - in total this was 2x £500, the first being at half way in my mat leave and the second being just before I returned to work. The second was actually given to my DP to cover my half of the will we had written after our son was born.
3. While on mat leave, I did on a couple of occasions use my CC for unexpected purchases - this was after using my savings. This also did include presents at Christmas time. Shortly after this I returned to work full time - where I can now pay more than minimum back i.e I have a savings plan to try and save £500 of my disposible income (which after reading my suggestions will skip for 2 months and pay off the CC in full)

Please note you only receive SMP for 39 weeks. I returned to work when this payment finished. Baring in mind this is roughly £692 every weeks, and upon my return to work we also had the addition of nursery fees to calculate into our budget. I.e I had additional costs when I returned to work such as travel costs & nursery fees (I take my own lunch in before anyone asks)

Our joint account is where we put in 50% of our monthly take-home pay to cover all our household bills & nursery fees. Prior to nursery fees there was always surplus. Before living together, I suggested that we save this money for things like paying council tax in full yearly, or have for any other unexpected costs. Yet it was always a 'lets have a takeaway tonight' - and these add up. I've always been concerned for money and always make sure it's something we can afford. If my partner is telling me 'yes, we can afford this' and he's never given me any reason to think otherwise why wouldn't I believe him?

The missed payments were because I didn't physically have the £40 in my account. Maybe I should have told him about the CC but I knew the judgement I would have received from him - the same judgement that many of you are giving me. I was never 'living beyond my means' when I didn't have money to sometimes even catch the bus to visit my parents or having to skip lunch because I didn't have food in my fridge. I also know my partner, who would tell me if I needed to borrow to just ask for it but then a month later I'd get asked 'how much money do you owe me?'

There is more to this story than my original post lets on, and there is more to the story than him just trying to clear my debts. I don't think I'm being unreasonable in not accepting his money - I am now back earning enough to clear my own debts, start building my savings back up and even get a new phone - that he is constantly trying to get me to agree to let him purchase/pay for me. He, and it seems many of you also agree, thought it was okay for him to go through my things. He claims he was just doing some tidying, but for to have found this missed payment later (from *October) he would have physically had to have been going through my things to locate, suggests to me that it is way more than just tidying up. This isn't the first time this has happened, as his brother has also gone through my belongs while we were away for a weekend.

The money was paid prior to Christmas as the card get frozen once a payment has been missed.

Irrespective of anything else please close your joint account
really seriously close it
he is controlling and joint accounts lead to so many other issues
CLOSE joint account now

OP has said the split is 50/50 also the same during statutory maternity pay.