Stay at home parent looking forward to retirement

[Equalitystreets]

One partner is and has always been the sole breadwinner.

Other is a stay at home parent who as the children have gotten older has gradually had more free time during the day.

They always share the household chores equally.

When the children go to University, the stay at home parent has said they will be retiring and ‘they can’t wait’.

The partner with the job has at least another 15 years of work to do (and all their retirement funding will come from this partner’s investments, or investments set up in the stay at home parent’s name that were set up and funded by the working partner).

Is the stay at home partner being reasonable to declare their job is completed when the children are 18, even if the other partner has another 15 years of work to do?

I’m not sure the difference ‘retiring’ will make when they already don’t work, and don’t seem to do much in the house. How will retirement look any different? Were you expecting them to go back to work? Or maintain what they do now (which sounds like very little). They sound very lazy by the way.

As I’ve said before, your specific set-up sounds fantastic! It’s helpful to both parents have more options like WFH/flexible hours, etc.

My DH actually does have flexibility after school. He can leave his school at 4-4.30pm on occasion and now takes our DS (6) to his football training 1-2 times a week ran by a friend’s Dad, because it starts at 5.30pm. The 3 Dads have their own Watsapp group and sort it all out. That is lovely for them and a positive thing.

However, others who are married to super high earners/those married to those in more inflexible jobs genuinely do not have much support during the week, they have more financial support of course, but do a lot even with school-aged children, so it is important posters don’t make blanket statements about SAHPs basically having nothing to do once their children are at school. It is untrue and minimises people’s efforts.

In my opinion that's a joke and stay at home parent should go back to work, there's no fairness in that at all.

All the stay at home parents I’ve known, have gone back to work at least P/T, when kids have gone to secondary school, not waited until university! Is this a wind up?! SAHP in your set up has got it made!! And should be doing more like 75/25 of the chores, not 50/50, in my opinion.

How old is SAHP? Do they ideally need to be bringing home some money now, to help financially, to add to their retirement fund?

Is said ‘retirement’ imminent? And what do they plan to do all day then? If money is totally not the issue, then they should be at least doing some volunteer work, and you should ‘retire’ from all household chores, until your own official retirement from work.

It's specified in the opening post

I'm still confused what sahp is retiring from. You can't retire from something you aren't doing.

Working partner needs to tell non-working partner they are looking forward to retiring from doing household chores and just to working full time. They should also be putting investments moving forward in their own name and consider moving other investments to joint names.

Oh are you saying she's pig shit thick, has no autonomy and cannot make any decisions for herself?

Fair enough, i don't know her so will take your word for that.

And nah, nobody EVER expects to be a sahm for life 😅That's genuinely hilarious. She'll be fine, she can just get a job like everybody else.

People like me who were stay at home mums don't tend to want to punish stay at home mums either. But we do understand the difference between being a lazy cow and leeching off someone for the rest of your life and being a stay at home mum 😅

Sounds like you have a cunt lodger. If they think their work is done after the children turn 18 then maybe you should agree with them and kick them out.

Minimum wage at 12.21 per hour, 37 hours a week is approx 22 K a year, over 15 years about 330 K that's just totted up on minimum wage. That could be enough for you to retire early too, or a camper van to enjoy retirement adventures, or travel money or just extra security money.

The partner needs to get a job…. Should have done some years ago.

So you are the working partner and you are clearly not happy about the current situation, that means you have to discuss it with your partner.

What would you actually like to happen? Your partner get a PT job so you can go PT? Not get a job, but do all of the housework? Get a FT job and share the housework?

As it stands, you working FT and doing half the housework is a piss take if your partner is at home.

Correct. It is actually just that simple.

Not if the OP has been happy with the situation up until this point.

Fuck that!

Time to go get a job, or accept the much less comfortable lifestyle that comes from both retiring around the same time (I suspect that won't happen!)

Your voting is confusing.
Does YANBU refer to you, or to the stay at home partner?

SAHP needs to be doing all of the domestic and life admin chores so that the working partner can continue to work if that is that model that has worked for you financially. if you have one high earner and the sahp has not worked for many years then there may be little point in them getting a minimum pay job for the sake of it but there is a lot they can be doing to help the working partner and also voluntary work to benefit others

It depends what the person retiring intends to do with their time. My partner 'retired' from their nicely paid but incredibly boring office job once the kids were through university. They now do what they always wanted to do for a career, it doesn't pay as much but they're a whole lot happier. We were fortunate that I earned enough to give a buffer zone while my partner got up and running.
I think @Equalitystreets you must be the partner who is out at work, earning to facilitate the stay at home partner. You sound fed up with the idea that stay at home partner is planning to be a person of leisure soon. Time to have a conversation and find out exactly what those plans are, and you maybe need to think hard about whether you want to keep funding their lifestyle. Better to separate than to live every day with resentment which will eventually make you unhappy etc.

On the face of it the SAHP looks unreasonable but

OP do you have a ‘big’ job and do you expect to not contribute 50% to household chores if your other half goes back to work.
Realistically how much would your OH earn now and would they even get a job.

SAHP is a freeloader. They need to get a job and make their own retirement pot. What do they do all day when children are at school ?!

This is why so many sole earners end up leaving. Ridiculous attitude.

We are in your position op, and although I do work in some capacity still, we are mainly living from dh’s salary and will until he retires. I could stop working altogether.

The issue your dp has is how on earth do they enter the work place now after so long? Are they realistically going to get any job? What would you expect them to do?

Are you prepared to do half of all of the household jobs, cooking and life admin 50/50 from now on - and your full time job as well? Assuming your dp successfully finds a job? You won’t have the same quality of life or rest because you will be doing at least 50%. Sharing the parenting/collecting dc etc. Your life is likely to change drastically. So please factor that in.

Secondly university aged children are still living at home for half the year. Although they should be mostly independent, I am assuming they still need some input, and the work load will naturally increase when they are home. Of course they help at home, but overall it will be more effort, food, organisation, cleaning and being there for dc.

You said you wished you had spoken about it earlier. It is a little late but maybe a chat can take place now? Your starting point needs to be all the things you are prepared to do to support the extra income - and then what do might realistically dp for work and what they are interested in.

He stated in his posts he is not happy with things currently. Didn't you read them?

"Both partners have been relatively happy with the arrangement whilst the children were younger. Some resentment has started to build more recently as the children have become older." In now starting to have those discussions, I’ve been a bit blindsided by the ‘well my job is done and I’m retiring’ comments."

Obviously, nobody reasonable would expect to force their partner to fund their unemployment for 15 years. Clearly, he should have made it obvious to her that she couldn't just sit on her arse after the kids grew up, but equally nobody fair or rational would believe that.

It sounds like he expected her to behave decently and rationally and she thought she could sit on her arse forever. Now they are actually talking about it, he is upset by the notion of her being unemployed while he continues to work for the next 15 years.

Regardless of any expectation by the ex sahm who now expects to have her unemployment funded, he doesn't have to do it. Nobody has to be anybody else's wallet and workhorse.

So, even if this was a genuine mistake and not calculated on her part, she's just going to have to get a job like everybody else does.

No, he wants her to earn money now that she is unemployed, so she will just have to get a job I guess.

Any wage is better than being a leech and will contribute to their future when they finally retire in 15 years.

I had friends where DH was SAHP and his W didn’t think he’d ever get a job. When youngest was 13/14 he got a job as a TA (admittedly hardly racking it in and resulting they have to take holidays in line with school now even though their kids are at Uni). I think it’s really helped their relationship feel more equal and he’s now building up a small pension