Paying 50:50 when I work part time

[HolyCow83]

Votes please on whether you consider this fair. I work part time and have 2 days a week where I look after our 2 year old and pick the 4 year old up from school, take to swimming lessons et . Other 3 days I work from home. My husband works from home 5 days a week. We split doing cooking/kids bedtimes for to me doing 4 nights and him doing 3 nights a week. I do kids laundry and grocery ordering. We split the household costs to me paying 3/8 and him paying 5/8 as we got paid roughly the same (per day). Last year he lost his job and spent several months looking for work in the hours he would have otherwise been working. He kept his contributions the same, claimed some job seekers and eventually got some projects as self employed. The projects have been very slow to pay him and he’s running out of savings. I’ve offered now to pay 50:50 of our costs as I’m probably making more than him despite being part time. But I’m doing 2 days of childcare that he is not. Do you think it is fair? (Ps yes I know we are married and our finances are technically combined but we have our own accounts with money that we choose how to spend it eg on clothes, presents or holidays or seeing friends. Also I did suggest he drops to a 4 day week and we both do that but he’s not interested)

You made him pay 5/8 of your bills when he didn't have a job?

just pool the finances. sorted. Sounds all so transactional otherwise.

I didn’t make him. He was being picky about the work he was looking for and he continued to pay.

If you’re earning more, you should flex accordingly. And if he’s trying to catch up from being unemployed, you should also flex accordingly.

Sounds like you need to have a discussion about what % he can afford now, and go from there.

It doesn’t have to be set in stone. Set a % for the next 60 or 90 days, then re-assess contribution %s at that time.

I think in this scenario, it is fair. It sounds like a temporary storm. When things are on a more even keel, return to contributing in proportion to income.

I don’t include ‘in kind’ contribution here BTW. I’m a teacher and do all the school holiday childcare as that seems logical. I do, however, expect DH to have no issue with me paying for the odd day of holiday club as respite (especially in the 6 week holidays!) without grumbling. So, I think your ‘2 days childcare’ is neither here nor there.

We keep separate accounts but we pay into the joint account so we both keep the same personal spending money, for example if we combined make 4000 a month and bills are 3000 we both get to keep 500 in our personal accounts. We work it out monthly and put in whatever we earned over the 500 we get to keep, that could be me paying in 2.5k and my husband paying in 500 but we each get the same spending money. Don't know if that would work for you?

If he is unemployed why are you paying for childcare? Can you move to full time and he does 3 days childcare and 2 days looking for work?

So is he working now or just looking for work?

if you are earning more then you should contribute more, regardless of whether you are part time or full time.

Also, you are not providing "childcare" for 2 days? wtf kind of attitude is that?

I wouldn't have separate finances in this situation at all myself.

It sounds like you do a reasonably equal share of work in total with him doing more of the money-earning work and you doing more of the family-supporting work. Even if you don't choose to pool finances the general principle should be that you each end up with equal budget for fun stuff that's just for you. (There have been threads on mn where there's technically equal residue but for some reason mum's share has to cover a lot of stuff for the kids and pop a bit aside for savings etc and dad's share can 100% be spent on his hobby).

If you don't want to do it that way the other possibly fair way would be to charge him for 50% of a fair professional wage for all the work you do for the family over and above the work he puts in - not just childcare and housework but all the emotional labour of managing to keep all the plates spinning. (50% because half of that work is your responsibility and half is his). A decent professional wage being about £20ph so he pays you £10ph for the days you don't earn money with your work plus more for any imbalance in the amount of family related work you each do outside of standard employment hours. then you could each pay 50:50 with your income thus adjusted. However this wouldn't be very fair if he is earning more like £50ph for his work, so the equal-residue model is better.

This all sounds too formal and quite frankly rediculous. It's all being made far more complicated than it needs to be. You mention you know that your finances are one etc, however you're not acting like that at all, far from it. You even want to split childcare 50/50 so that everything is even? Do you also work from a rota where you did a little bit more one week so he owes you more time the following week? It doesn't work like that.
Simple solution: Combine all wages - Do a Microsoft excel spreadsheet with monthly outgoings (bills etc) - then whatever is left becomes spending money for you both (transferring part of wages to either you or him to make the amount equal) so neither of you have more money than the other, you have the same and you still keep your separate bank accounts.

In this situation he should be stepping up with the childcare and you with the finances. But if he doesnt start doing more with the kids, then I wouldnt be offering to pay more.

That is so horribly complicated for a married couple! Assuming you don't have any stepchildren to factor in, can't you simplify things?

I get that you want to have your own spending money, so why not have a joint account where all income and bills go together, plus a standing order of an equal amount per month which goes to each of your personal accounts. You can spend/save that as you each see fit.

Then you won't be seeing each other as cash cows / feeling taken advantage of. You will actually be behaving like you're married instead...

The setup wouldn’t work for me. If however you are going to do it this way, no, I do not think 50:50 is fair. You have reduced your income to provide child care. That is only sustainable if he makes up the difference.

We contribute based on income; not on who works more. I find it a weird idea that you think he should pay more because you do more childcare.

When you are a family you pool your resources together and share.

Our money, not his and hers.

I suppose I don't really believe in separate finances for a married couple with children. Only maybe if one of the pair has a proven track record of being utterly terrible with money.

I am someone who keeps her finances separate, but this is wildly transactional.

He currently isn’t earning. So you need a new plan.

Short term: how much money has he got? You need to fund the difference for now.

Long term: can he find another job? The freelance work doesn’t sound like it’s bringing in enough to cover your bills. Is there realistic prospect of him finding work in that sector / more money freelancing / trying something new?

The childcare, domestic split stuff isn’t really relevant in the answer to this question.

The risk is here is IMO he (and so you as a family) end up in debt or his mental health suffers.

If I were in your situation I think I’d say everything shared and no ‘personal
spending’ behind the minimum until he found work again.

There’s a point in job hunting where you have to take anything, or at least something.

We don’t as there’s no need to. We both put in £x to cover monthly costs, then have our own money to do as we please with.

I don’t want to have to have an opinion on him deciding to invest in cryptocurrency, go on a stag do, buy an expensive coat. And vice-versa!

It sounds reasonable for you to pay more right now as you are earning more than dh. In the future, your dh may earn more than he ever has, or you may become the higher earner as you increase your hours when the children get older. Finances change, and altering contributions to fit in with what is happening at the time makes sense.

Just decide whether you're a team or not. A team wouldn't be picky about who is doing what, as long as it worked.

Just curious how would you define taking sole care of the children for 13hr shifts? Involving school drop off and pick up, and taking the 4 year old to swimming lessons whilst watching the 2 year old? have you tried doing this for a full day, if not have a go and get back to me on how you would define the day.

He is currently working, just the pay is for small projects and with delays to getting paid so very hard to work out his actual income as it isn’t regular

I'd call it being a parent??

And yes I've tried it.

Exactly this. And also, he has a big birthday coming up for which I’m arranging a party with his friends and will be considerable cost on my part but which is not his business how i am spending my money. I also feel a slight annoyance that it doesn’t matter how hard I try and get rewarded at work, because of his situation I have to stop my personal spending and any luxuries (this has been going on a year now) and all my extra “earnings” mean nothing. Particularly given that had the situation been the other way round I would have put all my energy into finding a job as soon as I even got a hint that the company was folding and that is not what he has done at all. He held on for months with savings just evaporating looking for the perfect next move. Sure, we need to be a team, but it feels like I’m doing all the work here. Sorry for the rant.

Op, I think you will find most of us have parented our own child(ren) for a 13hr day involved clubs, drop offs, etc!😀