Im married but we’ve never had a joint account. We have three primary aged dc and I stopped working for a few years whilst they were all tiny. I’m back now - 30 hours - and my take home is around £1600. It’s not a highly paid job, unfortunately. I also do all the pick ups and drop offs and facilitate clubs. I do all the cooking and housework etc too.
DH earns around £190k and has a car allowance / fuel / phone also paid for. We don’t have a mortgage. I appreciate he pays a lot of tax on this. He has about £70k in savings and a large pension. I have about £1k in savings a nothing much to speak of pension wise.
DH gives me another £400 a month so I have £2k total. From this I pay for the dc hobbies which is nearly £400, I pay for their clothes, Christmas gifts, birthday gifts. I pay for half the food shopping - approx £350 a month. I pay for my own car, phone etc. My car is on finance because my other car broke down and I couldn’t afford to flat out replace it so I pay that as well as the fuel, insurance etc. I pay the council tax. After those things I’m left with about £800 a month maybe? I also pay for quite a few days out with the kids. Oh and for wrap around three nights a week which is another £80 a month.
The last few months I’ve been trying to save between £150 and £200 a month to try and build up a bit of cash in case of emergencies / if my car needed repair / if I needed a dentist etc.
I mentioned this to DH and he said ‘I didn’t realise you could afford to save, I’ll have to stop giving you so much money,’ and then laughed.
It has upset me because I feel quite vulnerable with nothing and also I’ve always felt very much the poor partner in the relationship.
AIBU to think it’s ok for me to save a bit? I am looking for a better job before anyone says but it’s hard to fit around the kids and then I’m paying a lot of childcare.