If you’re a SAHM how much do you budget each month for yourself

[Lorcal]

For things like clothes, skincare, make up, beauty appointments, gym membership etc.

I somewhat unexpectedly got involved with a man (widower, no kids) and there is a significant age gap. 20 years. we have been together for two years. Im 31.

In my head I was in absolutely no rush to have children. But my partner is very much interested. We are very seriously discussing marriage and children.

Im just very nervous. I’m well educated and have done decently with my career. As such I have a very carefree lifestyle when it comes to spending. I can definitely treat myself to nice skincare, the odd facial, nail appointments etc. I think it would be hard to roll that completely back.

My partner is a successful business owner (vet practice) and is comfortable. But nothing stratospheric.

I’m doing the maths and I’m just really not sure. I assumed I would be a SAHM for a little while when/if I had kids. But I also assumed I’d have 3 or 4 more years of savings under my belt before that point.

Bf has thrown around a few figures and I’m just really unsure what is reasonable.

Im definitely not high maintenance but I like to go out and I like to look after myself.

The idea of being given a budget is just so icky. What if I want a treatment one day? Will I have to ask my partner for permission? It’s so yuck. But I wouldn’t want to send my children to nursery when they are very young. So I see no other option than being given a budget.

partner would also prefer the SAHM option. I’m not against it per se just some aspects seem far from ideal.

There’s no way to answer this as surely the starting point is what’s actually manageable on just his salary. Remember though that you’ll have many, many years of working ahead of you after he’s finished working so it’s going to flip round at some point. When you have children at university he’s going to be retirement age so you’ll need a great job then. Is your career something you can drop and pick back up like that? By the time you have two kids and take several years off, he’ll be hitting 60 so what is sustainable at that point?

I have always worked full time but neither of us are wealthy so we still need to keep an eye on things. We work together on it though and neither of us have expensive hobbies or treatments or anything like that.

I wouldn’t quit your job in an age gap situation like this as you’ll need to stay as self sufficient as possible.

In a healthy relationship where one partner stays home to care, they don’t get ‘given’ a budget - they agree one. Finances have to become a shared deal, no sense of ‘his money’ and your ‘pin money’ because otherwise he would make more of the decisions and that would not be a partnership.

i council you to talk about this a LOT before agreeing to marry or have children with this man. Make sure you’re not disadvantaged by him being older and also having the income. Bringing up children is a massive contribution and too many women see it as lesser or get persuaded they are being ‘gifted’ something.

Just to caution you slightly. Autism is a big risk in an older dad so just bear that in mind. I will say older dad doesn't mean that he won't have no energy etc as some suggest.

Why would you need a budget? I'm not a sahm but when I was pregnant with DD we opened a joint account and all money went in there and we were both trusted to spend appropriately and aware of how much bills were and when they came out. The only way this doesn't work is if one of you is terrible with money or controlling.

And on the asking permission for a facial thing, bear in mind it gets a lot harder to just'pop out for a facial' on a whim when you literally have a child you're looking after. I don't need to ask permission from DH but we do need to coordinate who is looking after DD if one of us has plans.

When you have children with someone you are a family and a unit. All money should be pooled together as a family. Why should you have to budget and suffer just because you’re the parent who has to carry and birth the child?

It’s all relative isn’t it? Dh transfers £1K a week to me and I pay for food/subscriptions/dc’s pocket money/mobile phones etc (about £500) out of that. And the rest is for me - but we can easily afford it.

I wouldn’t start discussing budgets and stuff until you know what you’ll actually need to spend. Kids are expensive!

Only do this if your dh to be is an extremely generous man and isn’t likely to make you beg for every extra penny. You can always go back to work if it doesn’t work out.

I wouldn’t want to give up work in your situation. There is already a power imbalance with him being so much older and a higher earner. Can you work pt in your industry?

If you were widowed or your marriage broke down, you would be incredibly vulnerable and struggle to rebuild your life.

Please do consider this in addition to a monthly budget as his age is more likely to impact your life than a set monthly budget.

Does he have previous children? If so how would inheritance be split? What about life insurance, would you be the beneficiary?
What about your pension, really important that you use these years to keep investing so you have growth.
He won't have the same energy for children that you have, are you ok to take on most of the childcare, which will reduce your free time?
Also consider how you will feel when you meet mum groups and your partner is the oldest dad so doesn't relate as well.

I don't think it would work as a SAHP unless you had shared finances. Otherwise he can spend what he wants while you have your little budget. It is not even so much about the money as the imbalance in your roles - no longer equals.

But another issue about you giving up work is his age. He might be looking at retiring in 10 years and certainly 15 years. Will your family have enough income then if you take 4 years out of work per child? If you had two children, you might only just be going back to work as he is looking at retirement.

At the same time, he's not getting any younger, and I think I would rather have a child with a 51 year old than wait 4 years to build my savings pot and have a child with a 55 year old.

It's good you are thinking about this as there are some tricky decisions to make.

I'm not a SAHM. I have one friend who is and after bills her partner gives her half of his take home pay. I agree an allowance is weird, if he wants you to be a SAHM he should put his money where his mouth is and split it equally.

I am with you. It s horrible feeling and I have been a stay at home mum for a long time, or at least primary carer as I was freelancing and my husband works long hours.

luckily he never made me feel this way. My husband fir a long time had barealy any spending money enough to cover food for lunch / coffees, a few suits during the year and taking his team out (civil service so he covered the drinks).
but at the same time I had £600 to cover me just me. He knew how isolating it was to be at home so he wanted me out and about and feel good about myself.

it s all about having a conversation. To this day it still the same, it s always us first or his family. So I treat him now that I am making decent money.

talk to each other and you both need to be reasonable in your expectations.

when DH was SAHD, he simply had full access to all the money, no budget. I would have felt funny giving him an allowance.

Add up what you're spending now and see whether its approx £500 and you'll know if that's realistic or whether it differs from your current spending. And remember dependents reduce your income! You're effectively going from a two person income with overheads for two people to a single income with overheads for at least three. You'll both have to make some lifestyle changes and likely cut back.

If you get £500/month, he should too and anything else should be shared. Important not to see it as "his" money and that you are a team/family.

Be careful about stopping work entirely. Its hard to start again after 4 (? Birth to school) years off and your partner will likely want to retire when you still have dependents to support so you need to pay attention to your own income and prospects too.

Agree
Dial this right back @Lorcal
You feel uncomfortable about this
Listen to this!

" He's lovely "
They all are until they have you exactly where they want you
Do not give up your career, he is 20 years older than you and you could find yourself being the main earner, carer and child raiser here.
How would you do all this?
Absolutely not for me

Why doesn't he stay at home and you keep working? Then you would feel less awkward about spending from the family pot

£500 is more than do able.
what tou need to do is take everything you spend on divide by 12 or 52 (if some stuffs are every 6 weeks etc) and from then turn it to your monthly budget then you ll know if £500 covers it.

but you do need to understand that there is trade off to everything. You seem very young and so far you ve only been looking after yourself. Being a stay at home is either a luxury (your case, my case) or a necessity (you dont earn enough to cover childcare) so be reasonable in your expectations.
unless he is happy to cover for all your expenses to the level you have now, you re gonna to lower your expectations, manage your budget better (everyone has a budget especially the uber rich thats why they remain rich) or go back to work and use childcare.

thts your only options I am afraid

No wonder you've got the ick - why would he give you a budget?

If you're married all finances should be shared (and that includes costs for the children), so after bills etc you both have equal amounts of spending money for yourselves.

I think your feelings of discomfort are because you know you’re not ready to have children. I would personally think long, long and hard about committing to a man who is 20 years your senior at such a young age. You’ll be supporting him in retirement when he’s 65 and you have another 20+ years of work ahead of you.

It depends, is he looking at possible costs (ie I’ll need to set aside about £500) to see if it’s possible for you to stay at home or is it a hard budget you’d be expected to stick to? Having children does set a grenade off in your finances, I don’t spend anywhere near what I used to on myself because life and priorities change. In saying that, all money is family money - I buy what I can afford, sometimes that’s more than others but when I was at home I didn’t need to ask permission but all big purchases were joint discussions.

Also remember inflation, £500 might look ok now, but less so in a couple of years time. Ideally you want to have equal access to family finances and agree together what you can afford after monthly expenses and savings. There’s no “my money/your money” in marriage.

Maybe I’m old fashioned but why is your partner suggesting figures for a budget? Shouldn’t everything be joint, full access to both of you?. If you're going to get married you’ll be life partners in an equal relationship, and that includes equal access to money. As I said, maybe that’s old fashioned?

I haven't read the full thread, I’m not fully a SAHM, I left my job to freelance 2 ish days a week but I’m in the first few months so we’re mostly living off one income. Before that I was very part time and we also mostly lived off one income during my maternity leaves because SMP is rubbish.

There is no my money and his money. All money goes into the joint account. At the start of the month, bills, childcare costs, car maintenance, savings and food budget all get transferred out to different pots.

What’s left in the main current account is our disposable income for the next month. We both think about what we spend and what’s coming up so we don’t run out.

Tbh with a 2 and a 4 year old I don’t have time to spend much on myself. I’m not really interested in booking a facial, I don’t really need any new clothes etc.

If I spend money it’s on days out, kids activities, coffees or drinks out with friends, birthday presents, books, hair cuts, household shopping, lunches, school activities, trips with friends.

I don’t have a gym membership because I don’t really need one, I spend half my time running after toddlers and picking them up, the eldest is 20kg 😂 When I was rebuilding my fitness after birth we had a running buggy and that worked well because you don’t need childcare to do it.

When the children are older we’d like to get a family membership to somewhere with a pool but we need to wait until they’re older and the ratios allow me to take them both on my own during the week.

I know you were after more of an actual budget for yourself but I thought it would be useful to set out a bit more how our life with young kids can be like. I don’t really treat the money any differently than I would my own because all financial decisions are now made for the good of the family. We also bought a house that needs a lot doing to it so we’re always saving money for that.

Hen parties are probably the biggest only on me expense, I’d probably go up to about £300 on one of those, much more than that is too close 5 days in centre parcs for my kids so I wouldn’t want to spend that only on myself.

If you want to spend more time with your children I’d really recommend going very part time, it gives you more options than full SAHM. Working 2.5 days a week worked well for me before I went freelance.

I don't have a rough idea tbh, especially if you add up all the things which are paid for once or a few times a year and then averaged to a monthly amount. Different things are paid for out of different accounts and on different credit cards and it's hard to get a quick overview.
But we always have a surplus amount of income every month, and money we can pull out of savings/investments for the odd big expense, so I don't worry about it being too much.

If you have a baby with this man, he will only be able to work if you stay at home. Ergo his income is dependent on you, not the other way round.

You need to both acknowledge this and share the money equally. With baby things budgeted for separately, not your responsibility.

If he does not accept this, either he stays at home with the baby, or you don’t have kids with him.

Have you thought about the scenario where you get married, have a child, give up your career and he then controls the purse strings? Honestly, I’d be very wary of committing to a man who’s 20 years older than me, never been married and has no kids. Especially now he suddenly wants them.
By all means live with him, marry him and even have children with him. But don’t give up your career to be beholden financially to him.

I was a SAHM but a little different as i still had some of my own money saved to fall back on .

I stopped having all the treatments other than an occasional haircut to be brutally honest . I was much more interested in doing stuff with the DC . Getting annual passes to local attractions and going to groups with them and NCT friends

Being a parent does change you - I would look at the essentials and work from there .

Talk about it openly too , new relationships and new babies are a tough combination as you get to know one another so the more openly you talk the better.