Should she earn more??

[blueeeapples]

Appreciate your thoughts on this situation. Both mid 40s, together nearly 20 years, 2 DCs (late teens). Mid 40s, mortgage paid off (3-bed semi), with joint savings of £18k.

Me: Salary: £65k, savings / investments: £137k & pension: £125k

DW: Salary: £12k, savings: £16k & pension: £10k

DW wasn't working while DCs were in primary school. Now they are in in secondary & college, re -entered workforce 2 years ago, working part time earning approx £200 p/w. I think it's DW should work more than the average 8-10 hours she does each week, especially as our pensions aren't great.

DW thinks we're in a good financial situation, and doesn't want to increase hours, especially as we have a large amount of savings.

Am I being unreasonable?

Marriages break down and people die.

My DH has an amazing pension and I have a certainly decent one. In the event of death we each get 50% of each others pensions.

Paying a financial adviser for this amount of money you have is a waste unless you really do not have the wherewithal to understand finances as a couple or just don’t want to research it.

What you need to contemplate is how much you want to support your children and when you want to retire and what that retirement could look like.

There has been a status quo for years but in 3 years or so it may just be the two of you.

We both worked FT and had two children and tough commutes. This mental load that people bang on about. My MIL is someone who gets swamped by just thinking about things and choices. The mental load is very variable for individuals.

These days with direct debits, auto renewals or reminders, online shopping and quotes. schools being able to be emailed, dinners paid online. It really shouldn’t be that hard.

When I was young to get travel insurance you had to go in to an insurance broker, physically and booking a holiday meant actually having to go to a travel agent. You can do that crap sat on a bus now.

@blueeeapples the questions about whether you will take on more around the home are valid. Yes teens are easier and can make their own breakfast. But we recently had a role switch situation where I’ve moved from PT to FT and DH is at home looking for a job. He announced he would take on loads more. I’m finding it painful that he’s just not seeing what needs to be done… the things like descaling the kettle and shower head, ordering toilet roll, dog food, keeping an eye on kids travel card balances and topping them up. It’s not hard but it’s a lot of stuff. It’s not just doing the school run and cooking a couple of dinners a week. I wonder if she’s worried that if she goes back to work more you won’t really have a fair split because you won’t see those things and step up. You need to reassure her that you will. Maybe start doing some of it now? ETA also the blooming laundry. He’ll just stick everything in together in the morning, forget about it all day and then remember later in the day and chuck everything in the dryer. So I’m watching out clothes slowly get ruined. But I refuse to criticise.

I don’t know, apparently according to a PP the amount of parcels delivered or meter readings are massive considerations for someone to get away with working 1.5 days per week.

I think the logic behind it is purely mathematical. With her working 3 days and him 5, the fair split would be 60/40.

However in reality we all know it’s really not that bad. DP works 3 days and I work 5 and he fully admits he has plenty of time for himself in those 2 days - he catches up with cleaning, laundry and some shopping, a couple hours of volunteering and then he has time for himself. He doesn’t spend those 2 days back to back doing household work.

You could have paid £2880 into a SIPP & received the free tax money per year for a pension for your DW when she was not working.

It would be worth approx 40k + now

Hmmm, I think a big issue here is that you have had an uninterrupted career and now earn a decent wage in a job you feel confident in. She has had years out and is basically starting from scratch pretty much. What job is she doing? I have a friend who was a sahm for over a decade - on the insistence of her dh. Her current job is very physical and tiring because she has had to start a career from scratch.

This is exactly how I had to lay it out to DH at one point.

I told him about medical appointments and house repairs he hadn’t even been aware had happened because I just did them, and asked if he would be able to take time off work to do those in the future?

I asked if he would be happy to only have one lie-in at the weekend so I could have one too, and how many days a week would he get up at night for DD2?

I asked if he would like to start using a shared calendar so he could check with me before making social plans for himself in case he is needed

I suggested he cancel his plans to play sport with friends at the weekend so that he could do some shopping / housework instead, and visit his parents who won’t have seen anyone all week if I am working

etc etc etc

It might all seem petty and trivial, but I don’t think any working parent has a clue how much the SAHP does, and how much easier everyone’s life is a result.

Sometimes it is not that hard.
It depends on how self-sufficient your DC are, what state of health your aged parents are in, whether you have pets, and how genuinely willing and able your DH is to bother with things like sorting out the online shopping each week or emailing the school.
Because if you are both sitting on the sofa of an evening and one of you is emailing the school then doing the online shop while the other is doom scrolling social media, that is not a fair distribution, no matter how 'easy' the person doing those tasks finds it.

I think that's part of the issue. I'm more about long term planning and risk management, while DW focuses more on here and now. I admit i probably worry too much, but I think there's a risk we won't have particularly comfortable retirement, or I'll be forced to work well past my sell by date.

Have you explained to her how much both your pensions will approximately be with each year if you retire at 60, 65, 67 etc?

It was a joint decision to be a SAHP after DC2, as it was exhausting for both of us. The initial intention was to go back part time after DCs were both in primary, but that didn't pan out as expected, so we extended it to secondary school..money was tight(ish) on one salary, but hot easier when mortgage got paid off and finished paying off student loan.

Initially she was reluctant to head back into employment, appreciate this can be scary when re-entering workforce, but after alot of discussions she started doing a few hours. Now into her second year, I think she should increase hours, not to FT, but maybe 2.5 - 3 days p/w. This is largely for financial reasons, as my salary basically covers everything, incl. 1 holiday abroad (don't go every year), but then leaves me with no additional savings. The more she works, the way can squirrel away.

Thank you, that's really helpful. I hadn't fully costed any of this, particularly around losing CB. Think we really need to map this out fully, and consider the range of options.

I think FT for both of us wouldn't work, so maybe DW doing 3 days a week, and me picking up 40% of things mentioned above.

What does she do with the 3.5/4 remaining days of the week?

“DW had professional qualifications, so could just pick that up”

Not if she didn’t continue with CPD over the years when she wasn’t working/continue paid membership to professional body if applicable.

DW does practically all cooking, washing, hoovering, holidays and most of DCs appointments. She's also much better at putting together things like flat packs. I maintain kitchen & bathroom (my ODC), ironing, kids activities (clubs, tuition, drop off etc), weekly shopping, and admin (there isn't much)

The things is, most parents work nowadays and do not have the benefit of a SAHP so they fully understand having to undertake some of these tasks and also manage a job in addition. Obviously, it is much harder but most people manage, especially once the DC are older, as the OP's are.

In fairness to you, it sounds as if you have DC with significant SEN/ill health if you are still needing to get up in the night and attend a lot of medical appointments. That doesn't apply to most people. House repairs would only be occasional for most people. It may well be the case that people like your DH, who have had a SAHP for decades, genuinely don't know how much a SAHP does that makes his life easier. On the flip side, it would be fair to say, that a long term SAHP has very little idea of the stress and responsibility of their working partner. I've seen a good example of this recently with a colleague of mine who is getting divorced from his wife. She apparently doesn't think she can possibly fit in a job of any sort, despite having two, healthy teenagers and he doesn't seem to think he can manage to look after their DC much because he has a busy job. I think they are both very spoiled and not used to multi tasking!

Personal spending money hasn't been huge until recently as we were running household on one moderate income, and my £65k salary is just most recent number, which has been gradually increasing.

Being potentially forced to work longer than you like is why you need to protect yourself. Make sure that you don't suffer financially because your partner is choosing not to contribute. I'm not sure how you do that without divorce sadly.

If that is the crux why don't you both see an independent financial advisor? I presume she is reasonable enough to attend and take advice?

I think house deposits may be out of the question now, but certainly university. Set up JISAs which should have £12k at maturity and DC1 has child trust fund with £4k..so will need to add some for DC2 to equalise.

Agree, especially given our pension pots. But they are currently accessible, which is part of issue. But I'll run a few different projections and use that as basis for further discussion.

lol yeah course it is Thats why more women are choosing not to have children cos its so easy 🙄

It was pretty obvious that when women were told we could have it all what they really meant was they wanted us to DO it all. Its one of the reasons im child free by choice.

That’s because nowadays more often than not both parents work FT. Plus being a SAHP is an enormous vulnerable position to put yourself in and many women aren’t up to that anymore.

But none of these points mean that it’s harder to be a SAHP than to be a FT worker.