Maternity leave-how did you sort bills with partner?

[walkingismedicine]

How did everyone sort mortgage/rent and bills while on maternity leave?

Did you continue to share bills as you did before maternity leave so you used your savings but DP didn’t, did your DP pay more than they did before leave and you less, did you both equally use your savings?

UABU- each party continued to pay the same as before maternity leave
UANBU- DP paid more

Why are so many couples treating each other like flat mates these days.

This. So many posts lately about not sharing inheritance. We share everything in our family….apart from maybe a secret chocolate stash for emergencies.

This!

It sounds like he wants you to use your savings. I’d ask him is he not your partner? But he wants to just be paying the same while you are at home to care for the baby like nothing has changed? Does he want to leave work when baby is 3 months and use his savings to pay for the privilege of looking after his own baby? Tell him if he fucked off into the sunset and you were a single mum then you’d use your savings as needed, but while you have a partner you expect both of you to try and pay for normal family costs from incomings and yours is less because HE
HAS A BABY NOW AND YOURE LOOKING AFTER IT so he has to pay more.

They continued to be paid out of our joint bank account. Obviously there was less money going into it so we both had less to spend during that time.

We share our money and have done since just before we were married, and so on maternity we just had a bit less of our joint money than we did when I was working.

We were always joint accounts so it wasn't an issue. Works fine as long as neither abuse it. Major purchases were discussed. We each took a small amount of cash for coffee, sweets etc. I think once the children came along his 'allowance' tended to go on treats for the girls. Neither of us were big spenders.

Yes!!!! I don't understand it. So many of our married friends have endless rows about money (despite both being high earners) because they spend so much energy trying to split everything.

It was a joint choice to have a baby, to live together. So no you shouldn’t be digging into your savings when you’re on maternity leave. Total ick for your DP if he allows this.

We are married but. Both our incomes go into 1 account, all the bills food shop, mortgage, joint savings come out of that account. We both take the same amount of money a month for our own current accounts to spend on clothes, going out, meals out with friends etc.
Whatever is left in that account we spend on our child or date nights etc

Please don’t allow yourself to financially ruin yourself or lose your savings whilst your DP is swanning around living his life like he was before…. Absolutely no

Same - all income including maternity pay/allowance paid in the joint account, equal pocket money paid out each month to individual accounts.
If my husband demanded 50:50 while on maternity, I would have gone home to my mom's. I cannot imagine why would any woman agree to that.

We continued as we did before.
All income into one pot. Each spend whatever we want / need (we have around £500 each for all spending on fuel, transport, food, etc. but if we run out we put some more in). All bills come out the single pot.

We are not big spenders individually so we don't really pay much attention to who spends how much.

We also consider all savings joint, even if in individual accounts. Each month I add up everything in all our accounts to see where we are.

I found we actually saved more money when on mat leave, despite the lower income as our lifestyle changed with not going out as much. But once mat leave ended, back to old spending with meals and days out ramping up.

My husband will be paying all the bills and expenses when I’m on Mat leave, as he does now because I’m a student. But, if I was earning it wouldn’t make a difference - our wages and savings etc all go into the same pot bar a couple of hundred quid of fun money each.

I don’t understand paying separately for a joint home and baby.

I would expect him not to be a damned miser and pay more. He isn't the one carrying the baby, he should be looking after you.
If he can't do that he isn't ready for the responsibility of being a father.

All these people saying a DH should just support a woman on mat leave - most people are two-income households these days. A man cannot just magic up more money for the household just because the woman is not earning. I think BOTH parties should be involved in planning for and saving for a mat leave, as much as possible, ahead of a baby's arrival. And if a woman does need to dip into her savings to cover the cost of leave, the father should also be dipping into his, to reduce the burden.

Same here.
We both generally earn similar amounts but I did obviously earn a lot less during maternity leave and when I was part time for several years. It never occurred to us that I shouldn’t continue using our money in the same way as before. Having said that, I am generally sensible with money so it was never the case that I was going to be buy designer clothes and spending it on expensive hobbies.

Oh I'm not surprised, this exact same thing comes up on MN regularly! Add to that my first husband was a complete cunt like this too! Fortunately, my second husband, and father of my children is wonderful!

He gave me a credit card to use that he paid and my mat pay went on full livery for my horse.

What did we do?
Nothing changed.
All wages/ earnings go into joint account. The mortgage was the priority to be be paid, then food, bills and savings.
This way has served us well for 35 years.
Over the years I have had low paid jobs, extremely well paid job and now considering a job that's 50% less than my current salary.
Dh has been unemployed, sick, and for the last 27 years self employed and after a few lean years, now very successful and making plenty of money. Neither of us have begrudged the other a penny!

The point I'm making is that financially we both had each other's back and didn't nit pick about how much someone should pay because life will give you curve balls you won't expect.
Are you partners or not?

Well said @notacooldad

Thanks all, really helpful. It’s an eye opener to hear how many of you have DP’s who can easily pick up the extra cash needed.

It’s my DH (not sure why I said DP!) and this will be our second child so second mat leave. Last time I picked up all the shortfall other than a little in the last 3 months unpaid period when DH paid what he would have paid for childcare had I gone back to work and I paid less that amount. I used up savings and had a well timed unexpected bonus. DH wasn’t earning much at that point but it did build up a lot of resentment in me to be honest! So not doing that again (plus can’t afford to this time and there will definitely be no bonus sadly!).

So having read all your approaches I figured out my cash coming in for the periods of Mat pay and bills and outgoings (being very tight), had a good chat with DH and we have agreed to split the shortfall between us somehow-hopefully savings and being tight but if desperate a small loan. Massive relief to get it agreed! Hopefully no resentment this time.

thanks again everyone. I have some enhanced Mat pay but most of it will be SMP-SMP really is the pits!

I’ve read your upset but blimey, did he think it was only you having this baby?

Of course any hit to savings/ shortfall in money needs to be met by you both jointly. It’s a joint baby!

Thanks all, really helpful. It’s an eye opener to hear how many of you have DP’s who can easily pick up the extra cash needed.

This is a really odd comment. Do the two of you not financially plan at all for babies or realise that babies are the responsibility of both parents?

No, he couldn't easily pick up the extra cash needed, we BOTH had to curb our spending and budget carefully which included saving as much as we could during my pregnancies.

Thanks all, really helpful. It’s an eye opener to hear how many of you have DP’s who can easily pick up the extra cash needed.

That’s not what most people are saying - they are saying it’s always a joint effort so you both have less and have to balance things.

It almost sounds like you’re saying there isn’t enough money if you’re not working, and if that’s the case, then savings WILL need to cover but that should be joint savings.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t easy for DH to pick up the cash needed. But obviously it was something we’d talked about and planned for before deciding to have children. We cut our outgoings as much as we could, both saved into joint ‘mat leave’ savings in advance and basically cut our cloth. It didn’t occur to either of us that it would just be on me to fund it, with it being a joint baby!