Husband's overtime pay - what's a fair split?

[Debatingthings]

My husband has been working overtime lately. Mostly late evening call outs.

He works 5 days a week and is usually out of the house from 8am-6pm ish. I work 3 days a week and am usually out of the house from 8:30am to 5pm.

I do nursery pick ups and drop offs on those days. I do most of the work getting our toddler ready in the mornings all weekdays. I also look after her on my two days off and do the majority of cleaning, cooking, laundry, food shopping, admin, and DIY in the house. He does garden maintenance.

When he does these call outs, he often misses the bedtime and/or sleeps in late the next day.

I have a professional job but dropped down to 3 days to care for our child, which I love and value, but ultimately have made career and financial sacrifices for this, which he has not had to make.

Our standard take home pay is roughly similar but he does usually bring home some extra money by way of end-of-day overtime each month, so his pay cheque is higher.

These late night call outs are new.

Out money is generally split equally i.e. everything paid into joint account then we have the same amount of personal spends each month.

What is a fair split of this late night call out overtime money? He has suggested 70/30. I don't want to be grabby but I feel he can only earn this extra money because I facilitate it. I sort of feel it should be 50/50, but... AIBU?

YABU = 70/30 or less
YANBU = 50/50

I’m puzzled about whether he’s your life partner or the hired help.

Oh come on, I didn't mean it like that, I was just responding to a pop and pointing out that while yes, I might be asleep while he's out on the call out, I then get up with DC in the morning while he sleeps

In what way?

You already split everything in half bearing in mind you work less hours. Relationships aren’t supposed to be transactional. I think the overtime is fully his.

I didn't say it was a transactional relationship, or that we keep track of every pound spent.

It was a question specifically about some extra income and whether it's fair for all or most of that to be kept for him to spend on his own wishes as he sees fit, or whether a split is fair.

Ultimately we will of course discuss and agree, once we know the amount in question, I was just curious as to people's thoughts. There's a range of responses here, so it's not clear cut.

Also, your take on my framing of working part time is interesting to me. As I've said above, I love and value my time with DC so I do appreciate it's a benefit to me. But good to understand the opposite view, possibly partly felt by him

I do 3 and dh does 4 days to
reduce our childcare bill. I earn more. I do some weekends/bank holidays for extra money as well
paid. Dh has to do the looking after for these to enable me to do them.

I consider it the ‘spendsy’ money. We use it for little luxuries round the house to free up both our time. Like a deep clean, a gardener here and there and then chuck the rest at extra holidays/nights away!
getting a nice weekend away makes the sacrifice seem more worth it. We could still do
this without it but it just seems more special.

Are you planning to return to full time work once the kids are older, OP? I think this is an important factor that is often overlooked.

If he's still working FT in his mid 50s with another two decades to go and you're doing morning yoga classes and haven't worked FT in 20 years and don't ever plan to again....well, that kinda puts a few difficult years into context.

I work fewer paid hours, I wouldn't agree that I put in less work to our household

Yes, I imagine so. I'm certainly not doing any morning yoga classes now and don't imagine I would have time to do so (although can't deny it sounds appealing!)

But yes, I expect I will be upping to 4 days once DC starts school and returning full time in a few years

No I get that. It just all seems very transactional and tit for tat, for me.

My husband and I put everything into our joint account. The bills all come out of the joint account. We put some into savings and the rest in the JA we just spend as we go. We don’t keep track of who spends what and we don’t moan when one of us spends more than the other in one particular month. We’ll discuss bigger spends. Most of it goes on the kids anyway.

I just find this whole division of money down to how you’re going to split an overtime payment, strange and a bit grim to be honest.

Fair enough. Perhaps the issue is more how we budget for personal spends, but I like not having every spend visible on a joint statement - not that either of us are spending on anything weird, I just like the autonomy

Fair enough. I don’t really care that my husband sees my list of Amazon transactions on the online banking, he doesn’t ask any questions 🤐

I’m not meaning to criticise, my friends have a similar set up to you and they squabble about money and “what’s fair” all the time. I think it all comes out on the wash over time anyway. But my husband and I are very much on the same page about spending etc. I can see that it might be more difficult if one of you is a mad spender and the other prefers to save/penny pinch etc.

Haven't taken anything as criticism, I'm interested in different takes on the situation and very possibly I'm being petty! Appreciate your thoughts

We take an equal amount of personal spends regardless of who puts the most into the account.

Given you are financially comfortable - where you referenced above having lots in joint savings and investments- and earn similarly basic salary. Whats the need to split overtime to the £? Surely as a married couple it all evens out anyway?
Can you tell him to not do overtime as it bothers you that much? Is it a choice - in some jobs it’s on a rota to be on call.

Matyr syndrome.

If everything is split 50/50 I don’t see why overtime should be any different. He can only do the overtime cos you’re around to be childcare.

I’m confused - you’re married with children - isn’t what his is yours and yours is his?

This. If you usually just pay all money into the joint account, regardless of how many hours of paid work you do, why is this any different? It's all just money for the family pot. If you decide that you're a bit more flush one month than usual, due to overtime, or any other reason, then you surely just agree to have a bit more for personal spends that month, in equal measure.

I really don't understand married couples with children who seem to have to divide up each penny, trying to work out who has put in the most effort. Unless one partner is a complete over spender, or is very lazy, you are both bringing something to the team, whether financial or unpaid work, and it all tends to work out fairly evenly in the end.

I'm so glad my DH and I don't run our finances like this. My DH recently took some of his private pension, and instead of him considering whether to retire, he told me that I should cut back on my work hours if I wanted to. It was very considerate, and I didn't, but he was more than happy for me to. Instead of trying to work out how much extra he should spend on himself each month,

It sounds like you're paying the same as him (overtime excluded) despite only working 3 days to his 5?

If that's the case, he's pretty daft trying to keep more of his overtime for himself. If he wants to start dividing things unequally, then I'd certainly be reviewing why you provide 50% of the joint money (overtime excluded) while also providing 2 extra non working days for childcare/housework.

Either it's 50/50 or it's not. As the lower earner he's daft to start trying to make it 70/30. If he insists, id be looking at increasing my hours, and telling him he is now responsible for 50% of all childcare and housework, while you benefit from your extra earnings.

I have no issue with him doing it, and he wants to do it to have more personal spending money. As I said elsewhere we tend to try not to spend too much on that compared to saving etc.

This all sounds very transactional, plus you say you have sacrificed your career but actually reading further you love spending time with your child so it's not really a hardship.

In our house all money is shared but neither of us are big earners (or big spenders, as we can't afford to be).

If you are going to base it all on finances though maybe consider going back to work yourself and then you can both split the cost of a nanny.

Not really - both things can be true at once. I do benefit from the reduced hours in terms of irreplaceable time with DC when young. It also undeniably has long term effects on my career, earning potential, pension etc

Thanks all for your responses, some really interesting takes that have given me a lot to think about.

I voted YANBU, but I think if it wasn’t agreed that you went part time, the I am more on the fence here.