My husband wants me to pay more towards the bills…

[ZiggyNiko]

I’d really appreciate some outside perspective because I’m starting to feel like I’m being unreasonable, but I’m not sure.
My husband earns around £4,000 a month and I earn around £1,500. I only work 3 days a week because our youngest isn’t at nursery yet, so increasing my hours isn’t really an option at the moment.
We don’t have a mortgage, but my husband wants me to take over the council tax and electricity, which come to around £500 a month combined.
I already pay approximately £500 a month for groceries, as well as paying for our two children’s activities, days out, clothes, and various other expenses for them.
When we go on holiday, say a £4,000 holiday, I’ll usually contribute around £1,000. Even that is difficult for me on my income.
My husband says he runs out of money every month, but the problem is that I have no idea where his money is going. He doesn’t seem willing to sit down and go through the finances with me and explain what he’s spending it on.
What really bothers me is that he somehow has the money for an annual £1,000 golf trip, while telling me that he doesn’t have enough money and that I should take on more household bills.
I’m not saying he shouldn’t have hobbies or spend money on himself. But given the huge difference in our incomes, and the fact that I’m working reduced hours partly because of childcare, I feel like our finances should be looked at as a household rather than simply splitting bills.
Am I being unreasonable for thinking he should be contributing significantly more to the household expenses?

I just think he has another woman. That’s where is it going, on dates and hotels for her

Read @TheOnlyWayIsIlford 's post at 17.38, just before yours - it is an utterly brilliant suggestion.

Or gambling, that's the quickest way to get through money. I think it's easier to go undetected, dates and hotels are harder to hide than just logging on to an online casino.

I’m not sure when he would even be doing that. He works from home three days a week and spends two days in central London, so I’m guessing he could be sneaking out during his lunch breaks on those two days. Recently, there have also suddenly been more late meetings. He normally finishes work at 5, but lately he’s had meetings from 5:30 to 6:30, apparently because of US time. I don’t know for sure what’s going on, but I just have this feeling that something isn’t right.

I think the money is just a symptom of much bigger problems. Do you actually want to be with him?

I would tell him that’s fine, but will be getting childcare to work more which he will also need to contribute towards. He’s receiving the benefit of your labour which he is undervaluing or simply not considering. Stop doing anything for him. If he wants 50/50 then he can do things for himself like laundry, cooking and 50/50 split of communal cleaning.

Part of me wants to believe that, deep down, there’s still the man I fell in love with nearly 20 years ago. But then I think about all the behaviour since we’ve had the kids, and I start to feel like maybe I would actually be better off on my own.

later evenings seems a bit fishy to me.

you need to tell him that if you don’t see the finances before you go on holiday then you aren’t going. Call his bluff

Yeah but 2 years of no sex makes me think that it could be more than gambling

I’m so sorry, but this is abusive behaviour and needs to be called out as such. You’re together, living as one, both incomes are household income and should be treated as such, not his and hers.

It's hard but you sound very unhappy, maybe finding out about the money will make you feel better about ending it but being that unhappy is enough. I hope you can sort it out one way or another.

Nursery fees are a joint cost. Perhaps he should pay you for the hours you look after child.

When I asked him if he doesn’t need sex, he said he just doesn’t think about it. I find that really hard to believe. Everyone needs some kind of release from time to time. It hurts me to admit that I think he might be cheating. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself because I was scared that, if it were true, I’d have to break up our family for the sake of our kids.

the day he wanted to go 50/50 with someone who earns substantially less than him he showed his trie colours. He’s financially exploited you, he pressured you into having kids then demanded you take the majority of the load to care for them and pay for them and he belittles you for not earning enough. What exactly in this POS is there to love. He’s unlovable.

Your standards are so low they are in hell OP. Get a grip of yourself, if your daughter told you this was the set up in her home what would you think

It could but people get their kicks in many and various ways. The real thing is the relationship seems deeply unhappy, trust has certainly gone on the OPs part.

Oh my God. And you accepted that? And reduced your hours? What's he going to say next, that he doesn't like the school uniforms so you will have to pay for it. I'm sorry, but I think he's got it very cushty and is a controlling arsehole.

That power is why he pushed you so hard into having a second child - so that he could maintain his power over you.

He obviously didn't want a second child because he loves being a hands-on dad, because he clearly doesn't love it.

OP you have trusted your husband and drifted into quite a passive role as your world has been dominated by children, child care, running the home, and working - for years.

But he pushed you too far when he demanded you use the freed-up nursery money to pay more big monthly bills.

That made you stop and really think about your and his financial situation.

You are realising that everything is not as it seems...

Don't beat yourself up for not questioning things sooner. But do it now, before you go away - don't give him time to paper over any cracks.

How is he running out of money on 4000 a month with no mortgage 🤯 have less than that and £1275 mortgage

So he pays for all ‘his’ stuff including vape, but can’t contribute to anything to do with his children?

Interesting.

You're married - you should be working as one team. Here's what my husband and I do:
Our wages are paid into our individual accounts.
We have a spreadsheet of individual/joint expenses and income, and every month, we sit down to look at the spreadsheet.
We calculate how much all fixed expenses are (from mortgage to personal things like gym membership) and how much is left over. We split the leftover evenly as our guilt free discretionary spending and that amount stays in our personal accounts. The rest goes to the joint account to cover all the bills. This way, although we earn different amounts, we put different amounts into the joint proportional to our incomes, so we both have the same amount of fun money to use.
Works for us 😊

To be honest I totally disagree that it’s automatically abuse because he’s asking her to pay a greater share of the bills. I do think £1000 is unreasonable considering your income is £1600 but equally it is stressful being the primary earner.

Prior to splitting with my ex, he used to pay £800 per month towards bills. His salary was about £1800. My salary at the time was £2800 per month and I used to pay £1800 for household bills. If we went out for dinner or for a day out with the kids I had to pay for it. Holidays were also paid for in full by me. I found it really stressful that such a large proportion of my income was needed for our household bills. It was a lot of pressure knowing that if I lost my job we would all be totally screwed.

My ex used to complain constantly that I was abusing him financially and that £800 was way too much to pay for bills. Since you don’t even know how much your household bills add up to, how do you know your partner is being unreasonable? He’s probably paying a fortune every month if you’re only paying £500. I don’t know many adults who can pay all their bills for £500 these days. For context our household bills used to be £2600 per month. For a family of 4, including childcare costs for one child in nursery.

Go onto the land registry website and pull the deeds for your house (only costs about £7.00) Then you will see if there are any charges against your house. If you have no mortgage there should be no charges. He may have lent money against your home without you knowing, as if you are not on the deeds you will not need to sign for a new mortgage. I would check this immediately.

You’re married.

why have you not got a joint account for all bills, where wages go in?

that was all bills are paid and then whatever is left over is split evenly between the two of you.

if your husband is not being honest about his finances then you need to know what he’s spending his money on.

£5500 is PLENTY to live on over a month. We get £3.5k a month and just about survive.

something’s off and I would be questioning him and organising a joint account,

Others have probably highlighted this @ZiggyNiko but

To split shared expenses equitably between a £4,000 salary and a £1,500 salary, the standard proportional split is 72.7% and 27.3%.

When you do the spreadsheet include all expenses, household, insurance, car tax, nursery fees etc. + (remember to inc birthdays for both families, Christmas, things for the children etc..)

If your total joint monthly bills come to £2,000
Higher Earner pays: £2,000 x 72.73% = £ 1 454.60
Lower Earner pays: £2,000 x 27.27% = £ 545.40

I can't believe this guy!! He needs to start pulling his weight!!