AIBU for thinking my financial situation isn't sustainable and I'm heading for an almighty fall and mental health crisis

[TheHotRock98]

Hello,

I'm afraid I used chat GPT to help write this. I was asking it what I should do and asked it to convert to an AIBU query. This was inspired also by a thread by another MNer a couple of days ago. It frightened me as our situations were a little similar, though she sounds a much better/ more together person than me...

I'm 39 and my partner is 54. We've been together several years, live together in his home (he owns it but still has some to pay), and have a three-year-old together. He also has a 14-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.

We're not married.

I'm really struggling financially and it's affecting both my physical and mental health. I feel like I'm constantly on the verge of panic.

My finances are:

• £173 into my overdraft (my limit is £200).
• Around £2,042 on a credit card.
• A loan with about £2,000 left to repay.

I work three days a week and my take-home pay is £1,500 a month.

Our three-year-old goes to nursery for two of the days I work, and my dad looks after him on the third day. I'm with my child on the other two weekdays.

My partner earns around £93,000 a year. He also owns a property abroad which he rents out. I believe the rental income is around €900 a month (I think that's right )

As far as I know, he has savings in both pounds and euros. I think the euro savings are around €70,000 (sorry I don't know if I heard him correctly at the time but it really sounded like he was saying this, could have been €17,000 I suppose, and this was a while ago anyway), although I don't know the exact figure and I have no idea how much he has in his UK savings. He says both have taken a significant hit because he was made redundant previously and that he's trying to build them back up. He's now back in full-time employment and has passed probation.

He pays the mortgage (it's his house), child maintenance of around £600 a month for his older child, plus additional costs for her (school holidays, school trips, etc.).

He also has therapy five times a week at around £95 a session. From what I understand, his therapist takes around two months' holiday each year, so he pays for roughly 10 months of therapy annually.

I don't pay towards the mortgage, but I do pay for childcare for our three-year-old (currently £130 a month, but it's due to increase by around another £200 a month soon).

I also pay for a lot of our toddler's day-to-day costs - clothes, toys, days out, little treats like cake or ice cream, and I buy some of the groceries, although not all. Also things like presents for other children when we go to their birthday parties.

On top of that I have my own regular expenses:

• contact lenses
• dental appointments and hygienist appointments
• tampons
• toiletries (deodorant, moisturiser, SPF, face wash, body lotion etc.)
• vitamin supplements
• dry cleaning for work clothes
• haircuts and hair colouring because I have a lot of grey hair and work in a professional environment.
• I do also but and wear make up, and not drug store either I'm afraid I do like the department store stuff (I know thats bad given my financial situation and living beyond my means etc. )

I suspect I might have ADHD (so as yet undiagnosed) and I'm aware I'm not naturally good with money. I'm sure that's contributed to some of my debt, so I'm not pretending I've managed everything perfectly.

Recently we've also had unexpected household costs. We had a plumbing issue affecting the flat which cost me £190 to sort out(I thought it was important, he thinks otherwise and the call out was unnecessary ), and our oven broke and had to be replaced, costing him around £500.

Before payday this month he told me he only had around £1,600 left in his current account because of various expenses. He says he's trying to rebuild his savings after the redundancy, so I appreciate he has financial commitments and isn't sitting on endless disposable income.

At the same time, I'm in debt, living in my overdraft and feeling like I'm sinking while trying to cover childcare, my own costs and many of our child's day-to-day expenses.

What I'm struggling with is whether this is simply how it has to be because we're not married, or whether it's reasonable to expect someone earning around £93,000 a year to contribute more towards the costs of the child we have together when I'm earning £1,500 a month and ending up in debt.

Can he reasonably say that my debts are my responsibility and refuse to help financially? Or should we be sharing the costs of raising our child in a way that reflects our very different incomes?

I'm genuinely asking because I don't know if my judgement is being clouded by stress. I feel like I'm spiralling and I can't carry on like this, but equally I don't want to be unfair to him if I'm expecting something unreasonable. I had a health scare recently and thankfully all came back clear and fine - but reading the summary of my consultation with the Dr she said I seemed stressed and tearful though I didn't cry. I don't even remember that, I had my toddler with me so I was listening to what she was saying while caring for him.

Also.i.paynfot the cleaner to come once a week (68 pounds) but I do.all laundry and ironing of clothes and bedding. He does 85% of cooking, but I do the clean up afterwards....

If you've got this far thank you. I don't know how I've fallen so far, when I started maternity leave I had around £8000 in the bank...

Are you actively encouraging someone to live a life on tax payers' money?

This is terrible advice. How much are rent and bills in London? Surely she won’t be left with £1200 fun money every month on UC.

Sure, If she wants to leave, the safety net is there as it should be. But pretending it will be a walk in the park financially is delusional.

Is she?
She lives in SW London and her housing is fully paid for as are her bills and most of her food. That’s worth a huge amount in monetary terms.

She’s 20 years younger but she is not young. 37 ish is more than old enough to make an informed choice about who you have a baby with.

If this were me I’d be saving as much of my salary as possible. Use the situation to your advantage. What I wouldn’t be doing is spending it on dry cleaning, expensive hair and make up, and a cleaner.

The whole situation sounds mad and almost certainly your relationship won’t last. So get some savings behind you quickly.

Any therapist willing to see him 5 times a week is a charlatan. You have therapy with gaps so you can process what youve explored and you need time and sleep to do that. It'll be less beneficial than once a fortnight.

Also wheres the time for all this therapy? Thats like another work day in sessions and travel to them?

And before payday he had more money in his account than you do once youre paid?

Is there any reason you arent married?

He spends nearly £500 A WEEK on therapy???

I would use Turn2us rather that chatGPT as it told me once it just made up UC rates. 🤣🙄

I have therapy twice a month at £45 a time and it's great. I need time in-between sessions to a) process and b) have life happen to bring more experiences/ examples/ musings to the next session.

Are you sure its a therapist he's seeing OP?

She didn't have to go part time. She's chosen to go part time. Presumably if this guy is earning so much money, she is living in a very lovely home, rent free with no utilities to pay whilst not working as much as most and wasting money on unnecessary things such as dry cleaning. If she was a man, she'd be known as a cocklodger.

This financial situation is bonkers but not as bonkers as taking (presumably clean) clothes out of your closet and getting them dry-cleaned to “freshen them up” 🤯

It seems you don’t have a stake in the house, either? Your dp is carefully making sure you don’t pay anything into that, while covering everything else…. You need to have a talk with him about fairness and how much he’d be paying got your child off you were separated!

But in the meantime, I’d cut down… do you own cleaning, invest in a mooncup or washable sanitary towels, and for goodness sake buy cheap toiletries! And dye your own hair.

Champagne lifestyle on a lemonade budget! Cleaners and dry cleaning when you’re in debt. Partner sounds bonkers, therapy five times a week my arse.

Stop the unnecessary dry cleaning and just air your clothes before wearing. Spray Febreze on them if necessary. Nothing else needed.

Sounds like you possess too many clothes too. If the wardrobes are too full then declutter to create more space. You can also open the wardrobe doors for an hour or so now and again to help.

I’m most struck by the lack of communication. There are lots of possible answers but fundamentally you need to be having ongoing conversations with him. It’s easy to think you have things sorted financially but then the reality of huge nursery bills etc kicks in. I can imagine in the sorts of circles you might be moving in in SW London with a partner on almost 6 figures means that everyone around you is spending like water, going on what sounds like amazing holidays, in the hairdresser every month, children’s parties with entertainers and caterers… In reality those people will have 2 six figure salaries and quite likely two credit cards and the bank of Mummy and Daddy as well, plus there will be people who aren’t spending like that but they aren’t as noticeable.

Things are more flexible than you make them sound. Disaster won’t ensue if you start using Aldi face creams and bog standard makeup (we had an excellent tinted moisturiser thread the other day, the top three were £50, £30 and £6 - you really could buy the £6 one, nothing bad will happen).

But fundamentally I agree with you, you shouldn’t be struggling this much. It’s going to take compromise and give/take but none of that will happen without a conversation.

Uoure not earning enough to justify the dry cleaning or anything other than high street for make up (Rimmel etc are better than you think!!) and definitely not the hair op, or a cleaner- come on, you know this! You need to up hours and talk to him. Ye are supposed to be a team!!

I agree too about cheaper toiletries. Aveeno body cream is better than Elemis for example. Moisturises skin really well.

'Hoodwinked'? She's the female equivalent of a cocklodger. She knows exactly what she's doing and is now using mumsnet to find more ways to screw him over further.

She's fooling people on here by crying because she's paying for all the childcare costs but he's paying for all the house related costs. If they did things differently and put all costs together than split them into equal shares, she'd be paying a hell of a lot more than she is now.

Relationship problems aside with 1.5k coming in a very limit expenses you could easily pay off your debt in a couple of months if you wanted to.

Not sure why people are being so harsh. It's fine to get hair and beauty done and to have a cleaner. I don't have any of those things, so what.

Your issue here is that you feel you need to tighten your belt and you're living in your overdraft, and he feels like he can save. Assuming you both have non-negotiables (him it's his analysis, you it's your hair), I think you should sit down and make a list of your outgoings. This might also give you a fuller picture of where his money is going. You also need to have a sensible conversation about retirement - as his saving could be him trying to clear a way to be able to do that and you will have to accept, nearly 20 years his junior, that you'll carry on working. You don't need to frame any of this as 'where's the money?' instead you could talk about financial 3 year plans, 5 year plans and 10 year plans.

It’s fine to get anything if you can afford it. Op is stressing because she is in a small overdraft and people are pointing out, not unreasonably, that these things are luxuries.

I don’t have them and I earn far more than OP as I have to pay my mortgage & bills etc.

This is honestly such an insane take.
OP has almost no costs, he pays for basically all of their needs and wants other than a very small childcare bill. OP has the majority of her income free to spend as she wants.

Hoodwinked doesn’t even come into it.

If she spaffed 8k while off on maternity leave while her partner covered the bills that’s really her own issue. She’s clearly got huge spending problems which vastly outstrip any income she has ever earned.

.
It’s simple, either increase your income e.g go full time /start a side hustle etc and / or reduce your expenses . £68 a week for cleaner when you only work part time and say he does all the cooking and you don’t pay toward rent or mortgage is daft. Wear clothes that don't need dry cleaning , touch up your own roots for the greys . You have the power to change your situation but you need to take action for yourself

I know it’s a side issue, but the 1300- 1700 figure is a maximum possible payment before earnings are taken into account. The OP would also be entitled to payment towards her housing costs but the rates paid are very low in comparison to market rents. The reality would be a move to cheaper area and topping up the rent from her benefits. Do’able but a hard life.

It's too late for the OP sadly but why oh why do we keep having threads where women fall into relationships and have children before seemingly giving any thought to the quality and nature of their relationship with their partner.

What we can and should do is to do more to educate girls to think about and act on these things before getting pregnant.

In fact I'd like doctors/midwives etc to hand out some sort of pro forma "relationship contract" covering the basics at their first appointment and encourage each mother to be and her partner to fill it in so these things have at least been discussed at the outset.

You might be better off on own financially and for your well-being 🤔

I definitely agree that building healthy relationships ought to be discussed at school - for boys and girls.