For wanting my partner to pay more of the mortgage?

[AnyPomegranate]

My fiancé makes about £90k pa plus bonus. I used to earn extremely well as a lawyer but decided to career change as I loathed the work and long hours. I now earn £35k with good future earning potential. We live in London and pay about £3000 pm for mortgage/bills which we split mostly 50/50 (see below).

Currently I'm about £200 short per month. I'm doing my best to increase my income and reduce expenses, but ultimately £35k doesn't go far in London so I'm finding it a little stressful. Part of the problem is that my partner isn't making it easy to budget - he insists on staying in London (I want to move) and because he earns well he wants to regularly eat out, go on holidays, buy what he wants in the food shop etc. It feels silly to say that I'm finding it hard financially on a household income of £125k, but obviously the vast majority of that money is my partner's and not mine.

I was reading online that some couples split bills as a proportion of their income, rather than 50/50. So today I asked him if he would mind paying a little bit more of the mortgage so that I have enough to break even, just temporarily until I'm able to get a promotion. He told me no, it was my decision to take a pay cut. He also pointed out (reasonably) that the bills have gone up so he's already paying about £200 more than me as it is (the bills come out of his account so I wasn't aware).

I can see his point of view so I'm not sure if what I'm asking is cheeky or reasonable. Please be gentle, I'm aware that I'm in a privileged position compared to a lot of people.

Of course you're not being unreasonable.

It doesn't sound like you're compatible though and please don't have children with him. He's all over the decision you made on your income but ignoring the conditions he's setting on your life also with determining where you live etc. It's not really just about money, he's not supportive. It gives me the absolute fear that you're going to end up tied to someone like that.

Well she said she has more earning potential however let's say she goes ahead and gets a 90k job next week, how is it fair to pay 50% of the costs when earning 35k and at 90k? They're supposed to be a partnership, if she's being cheeky by earning less yet paying proportionately more than he is, then why isn't he being cheeky by paying less proportionately of their joint basic costs? I'm not talking about luxury items btw, he should buy whatever else he wants with what's left over of HIS money, but they've decided to be partners and have bought an asset together, so he needs to get in the mindset of a partner.
OPs partner sounds like one of those guys who would suddenly "get it" if OP overtook his earnings, suddenly 50/50 wouldn't be so fair I imagine

People are referring to it as ‘chilling out’ because the OP has specifically said she took the lower paid job because it is less stress and much shorter hours - so yes, chilling out.

There is nothing wrong with that, I’ve made similar choices in life myself but I’m not sure why you want to pretend it’s not her motive when she had explicitly told us it is.

Interested to know @AnyPomegranate when you were run ragged working nights and weekends was your partner doing more 50% or more of the housework and cooking and cleaning etc? Or mental load? 🤔

You’re being unreasonable so you shouldn’t expect him to effectively subsidise you - presumably you and him jointly own the house, so you should have thought much harder when deciding to quit your former job to work a job that pays less than the UK median. It’s you that needs to cut your cloth, not him.

Attitudes to money are usually entrenched and hard to shift so I really don’t think this relationship will carry on much longer. I would be looking to sell up but I get that would leave you in a financially precarious position unless there’s a huge amount of equity.

Because if they are partners then he could stand to be a bit more supportive instead of expecting her to whip herself daily for trying to be happier in her career?

There isn’t much mental load in a relationship without children.

There absolutely is and this is just quite a naive (and rude) thing to say unless your personal experience was having no life before children.

It is not chilling out for goodness sake. Working 9-5 in a job with good progression is not chilling out. It OP is chilling out then so is her partner, he’s just earning more for his chilling out because he’s been doing this particular type of chilling out for longer than she’s been doing hers.

I genuinely despair of all the people claiming OP made the “choice” to have an easier life. I assume none of you have ever experienced or witnessed close up what burnout actually does to a person. I have. You don’t ever recover from it. Not properly.

In the short term, you need to prioritise the shared bills. That will mean saying no to expensive dinners/trips/evenings out, and probably separate food shops. I can see why he feels it's unfair when he wasn't on board with you changing careers.

However, long term it seems very unlikely that your relationship will survive when you don't have shared values. He doesn't support you and you don't have the same priorities as he does.

Yes this should have been a conversation BEFORE you gave up your well paid job! It’s not his fault you are in the situation you are in. You are clearly NOT a team…move on

If your post is accurate : "So today I asked him if he would mind paying a little bit more of the mortgage so that I have enough to break even, just temporarily until I'm able to get a promotion. He told me no, it was my decision to take a pay cut. He also pointed out (reasonably) that the bills have gone up so he's already paying about £200 more than me as it is (the bills come out of his account so I wasn't aware)." ... Then it's not so bad that his initial reaction is not, yes darling, whatever you want darling, his instinct is, huh? I'm already paying more... Now you talk again, when you've had time to process. You definitely should have a joint account for bills and mortgage that you both pay into and you are both responsible for - you should have been aware that the bills were increasing, that's on both of you that you weren't. You should talk through how you are both feeling, what your hopes and plans are, if you're going to have kids how you envisage that working both time-wise and financially. Then go away again and process. Then come back to the conversation. See this as the opportunity that it is is, to know NOW whether you really do both see yourselves as a team, united against the crap that life is going to throw at you (illness, redundancy, etc.). Take this seriously, both of you.

He's a selfish arse. I can't imagine living as a couple with somebody and not sharing everything. It's like a business relationship. Just move out of London on your own.

Of course it’s unfair for one half of a “partnership” to decide, without agreement with their partner, to quit their job and insist their partner cover them! Of course that’s unfair!

You can imagine all you like but I imagine OP would’ve mentioned it if that were true because she would’ve been earning a lot more than him when she was an NQ at a top firm - that pays £150,000-£200,000! I bet OP was very happy with him paying 50/50 when she was earning twice as much at him!

If she were on maternity or reduced her hours to be a housewife or was doing childcare then I’d agree with you. In reality, she quit her job and has chosen to do one that is easier and less stressful. He didn’t agree with that decision, he’s already subsidising her and she’s demanding more subsidy. She knew, at the point that she chose to quit, that he wasn’t prepared to be the sole breadwinner and wouldn’t financially support her. That is perfectly fair of him - in an unmarried relationship, where she didn’t pay more when she was earning more, and where there’s no children.

If OP were a man, she’d have been absolutely obliterated on this thread.

I really don’t understand couples who split their finances this way - there’s always going to be one person who’s worse off, and if you have kids/take maternity, that’s likely to be you!

DH and I have both of our salaries paid into a joint account. All bills come out of there, we work out how much we want to save and move that into a savings account, then we put an equal amount of “pocket money” into our individual personal accounts. Always equal, even though he earns 3 times what I do. I couldn’t be in a relationship where I’m fretting about buying a cup of coffee while he’s splashing the cash - it wouldn’t feel like a loving, mutually respectful relationship.

I think you're right in that I have to just start saying no to going out etc. I did bring up the food shop with him and he essentially said, 'My penny pinching days are over, I earn £90k and if I want to chuck something I want in the trolley then I should be able to'. I don't really know what the solution is apart from separate food shops.

Yeah I think when he says this, you need to say “that’s great, but I dont earn £90k, so you’ll have to pay for this.”
And yes, he wants all these fancy expensive meals out so you’ll just need to start saying “sorry I can’t afford to go there, can we go to xyz instead?” Or just say you can’t go out full stop. It’s like he’s not quite getting it yet, but if you put your foot down more like this, he might start seeing sense.

There really shouldn't be unless someone is playing martyr. Two presumably young adults living in a flat together would have equal shared responsibility in it's upkeep. What mental load are you imaginging in this situation?

Before you took the new job with the pay cut did you talk about finances and did he agree to step up and cover the short fall? I'm not saying he's right you're wrong but I can't imagine taking a significant pay cut without first discussing the implications and how they were to be resolved.
If you just decided to change jobs with no discussion then you're being unreasonable.

Sorry you're being massively unreasonable. You chose to reduce your income after signing the mortgage contract and agreeing to 50/50.

35 grand a year is peanuts for someone with legal knowledge and qualifications you could very easily be earning a lot more in London without having the insane pressure of a magic circle firm.

3 grand mortgage is ridiculous even for London. You could move somewhere slightly cheaper within London or look to get a better paying job.

It sounds like they did have that conversation. He made clear his position and OP did it anyway. Now she’s getting swathes of sympathy because he’s still not happy about something he wasn’t happy about then and isn’t happy about subsidising OP more than he already is!

To be fair, I don’t find there is a huge mental load in my relationship with children.

Maybe if you have lots of children, or they have SEN or something. But neither DH or I spend much time on life admin. I am always baffled by people on here who say it is a full time job. Cleaning yes, childcare yes, renewing car insurance etc definitely not.

My experience of "the mental load" before children was that I didn't realise it was a thing.
My bills were all on direct debits, if I wanted to go out I checked my diary to see if I was doing anything else that day, and if I wasn't I went. I guess maybe there was a bit of effort involved in ad-hoc things like sorting insurances. Maybe an hour a week on average would have covered it?

Actually, OP has said that all the bills come out of her partner's account and she doesn't even know how much they are, so sounds like he may well be picking up more of these things anyway.

See,the thing is life isn’t black and white like a lot of you guys seem to think. Often it really is different shades of grey. When my DH and I met we earned the same. I was bullied and miserable in a profession I had studied long and hard for. After a few years we took a very late gap year. The sale of his house funded it. At the end of that year after discussion I resigned. When we returned home he moved into my house and I eventually managed to get a P/T job. He got promoted and so we had to move area completely. I wasn’t that keen but supported him and the sale of my house with an enormous amount of equity funded OUR house in the new area. Fast forward past two redundancies (his) and several house moves for his job leaving me to find new P/T work wherever we ended up and with a number of years living apart during the week until house moves could be sorted out and here we are. He is now in a very senior position and I only have a small private pension as I had to retire on health grounds. He is where he is because I supported him when it was needed and vice versa. Life, health and situations ebb and flow over time and in a true partnership you each contribute what you can when you can because you are just that - partners. If you are not able to grasp this then sadly I think you are in for a fair amount of unhappiness along the way.

If he loves her and doesn’t want her to be miserable then that wouldn’t be an issue. She isn’t jobless she’s retraining with potential for a higher income in future. And many female lawyers leave the profession after having children, particularly if their spouses are working in a similarly demanding profession. She’s actually saved their relationship from that difficulty in future.

He also has given no room for compromise- I.e. moving to a cheaper area - £3k is a lot for a couple, even in London. The only option she has given her is be financially comfortable and miserable or be poor.

He’s not a life partner and if I was OP, I would be rethinking the relationship.

I voted you are unreasonable not because I think it's ridiculous for a couple to share expenses, but because you made this massive life change without agreeing ahead of time how it would look. It must have been obvious at the time that your lifestyle would have to change if you made this huge financial change and you should have had the discussion then. Either you should agree to pool your finances or agree on a way to split them - sounds like you both just assumed it would just carry on in some undefined way which is unreasonable of you both.