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?

Thank you, that's helpful. We don't spend all of our income, probably save £1.5 p/m (excluding annual holiday abroad). But this is only is past 2 years while DW working.

Before that we maybe saved £400-500 (excluding holiday).

I was a stay at home mum for a long time too, and my youngest is a lot younger than yours, and looking at your figures, yes, I'd be concerned and feel she should be earning more.

I'm not able to work full time but I do work part-time and I also have a passive income so I do earn a lot more than your DW. I will say it is quite hard at the moment to find suitable part-time work but if she can just double her hours where she works now, that would be great.

I'm a bit uneasy that she thinks you earn enough to enable her not to work more when your youngest is 15yrs old. Realistically, you both only have around 20yrs of working life left, so that's really not that long to build up a better retirement pot.

£65K salary isn't that much these days when it's supporting a whole household, and yes, if you were to lose your job you'd be screwed, so she really does need to start working more.

That's my primary concern. Think I'll land at £600k on pension pot IF I manage to stay in same role, growth projection stay same and work until 67.

Agree, it's £12k a year tax free, and has meant we now have a larger buffer each month.

This is the crux of it, I think. She doesn't like her job. I think if you both decide that you want to have more income, and the both is key, that she might need to find a job she does like. I know on Mumsnet sometimes a person's worth can be considered equal to their salary, but that hopefully isn't true in your house is it, OP?

Your job has presumably been pretty constant while she raised your children, with promotions and seniority along the way, enabled by her doing the childcare. Being at home with children and then rejoining the workforce can be tricky.

This definitely sounds like it should be a much bigger conversation around your hopes and dreams for the future rather than just requiring her to bring home more cash based on pension projections. I'm not sure the line you are taking is going to be good for your marriage even if you manage to increase your savings.

I am in the opposite situation to your DW in that I love my job, but it is part time, equivalent to 3 days a week. DD is 14. I could work full time but I would need to give up my job to do that. I'm not ruling it out in the future but just now, we're okay with that. If my DH sat me down with a pension statement and suggested I wasn't pulling my weight, I wouldn't feel loved and I think there would be some repercussions in our marriage. Once she is finished with school, I will reassess. I figure I've come this far, what's a couple more years?

I think wanting to save more for the future is good generally but you are seeing this in a slightly one dimensional fiscal way, and there might be a bit more to it. I think it could be a misstep to 'compel' her to work more so she isn't'failing to contribute'. You don't want her thinking you don't value her current contribution to your lives as a family. I'm sure you do. I think some careful and compassionate conversations might get you further.

I always think that when men come onto MN to complain about their wives not earning enough or contributing enough are looking for responses as a 'gotcha' that they can beat their wives over the head with.

I am not sure the OP is truly understanding what having a functional adult at home supporting the family while he stries forward with his career, and his career progression goals and his predicted hefty pension actually means. It means he hasn't had to take a step back, losing experience and confidence.

I'm not saying his wife should not re-think her current arrangement, just that he seems to be largely paying lip service to what hers has been over decades.

You don’t earn enough to provide for 2 people in retirement. She stayed at home to raise your shared children, so some of that money you have accrued either in your pension or savings is money that came at her expense. It may be family money now but she has not had the chance to put it in her own name. You should do something about that.

But no I do not think it is acceptable to work only 1 day a week when your partner works full time. I also don’t think it is appropriate to volunteer your time for free while your partner works full time to support you.

IMHO yes DW could perhaps work more hours.

But equally you should enable her to equate your pensions more, i.e. it would be ideal if all her wages went in to her pension and your wages pay all the bills.

Surely you want to eventually retire on a more equal footing, if nothing else to maximise your pension pots tax efficiency.

Are you happy that you will have worked for nearly 50 years, building your £1million+ whilst your wife is faffing around at home watching daytime TV and doing her hobbies. Fuck that! I'd be getting my ducks lined up and and of that relationship faster than a house is auctioned on Homes under the Hammer. Like another poster said, I just couldn't respect someone in those circumstances and certainly wouldn't fund their lifestyle.

Think there is no point looking backwards but you both need to sit down and plan the future. If she doesn’t like her current job she needs to move on, you also need to help facilitate this by picking up housework and child duties now to give her headspace to action this. You really have had it easy for a long time (hence now you ask her to go back full time now the hard graft is done 🙄) and it’s time to step up for her like she did for you.

Urm he has let her do that, they even spoke about it and used her probably as a personal assistant/cleaner for years.

Thanks for your considered post. I guess you're right I am thinking of this one dimensionally..I have more an analytical personality where things appear to be black and white. She has already moved from not wanting to work to working part time.

I think she's struggling with "we have nearly £200k in the bank and we're both working!" I think if none of this money was accessibile, such as in our pension pots, she may view the situation differently.

Then move some of it into each of your pension pots, get the tax uplift and leave it to grow. DW can put the equivalent of her entire salary into it.

I know this is more relevant to defined benefit pensions but have you worked out the impact on pensions when one of you dies?

Often pension provision as a couple can look on track/ be comfortable but the reality is when one of you dies you automatically lose their state pension. That’s a drop of £12.5k. If your pension is subject to IHT then suddenly your DW could be not as comfortably off as she might think.

Wouldn’t it be better to be paying more into pensions instead of savings?

Hes already doing 30% despite his wife only working about 1-1.5 days a week. How much more headspace does she need?
You talk about hard graft being done but the kids have been in school for years while she was unemployed. She had 30 hours a week for 40 weeks of the year for years and she wont have spent all of that doing chores.

I would want to do a walk and talk, chatting as you walk side by side, rather than confrontational across a table for example.
Chat about you both making a joint plan for the next 20 years, now that you have 20 years under your belts.
Maybe you both want to retire earlier at 60 for example - so you can travel while you are fit.
Encourage your wife to check online her NI contributions and predicted state pension, look at missing and qualifying years and decide a joint strategy.
You could see it that both have 20 years to concentrate on your pensions and savings, or say 15 years if you want to plan earlier retirement.

(I can’t imagine only working for 10 hours a week, but that’s just me).

That's grand that you're 'pretty hands on' Is your wife pretty hands on too or is she just parenting the children?

IME men often overestimate how much they do at home.

She sounds lazy as hell to me.

Kids are no longer young.

Either you are a team or not.
The arrangement might have made sense when kids were younger but I doubt you agreed to bankroll her for the rest of her life.

Err this. I’m also querying the splits and how magnanimous it is going from him doing slightly more, with her significantly upping her hours at work

These kind of posts always remind me why lm so glad l declined to go part time or give up work when we have children. So my husband hasn’t got used to me being the default parent and absolving himself of most of the house stuff. My pension is also in excellent shape. The real kicker is when the children grow up and husband “decides” she needs to slot right back into her career and be full time again. Even if she’s 10 or 15 more years behind him and her industry might have changed lots. You can’t have it both ways but many men seem to want to

The replies on this thread are astonishing, making out the OP hardly doing anything whilst his wife working 10 hours a week with nearly grown children.

It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, though, OP, plenty of people work part-time, or one works, the other doesn't, or one sets up a business and one works a steady job, as long as the two people involved agree to the distribution of tasks and the lifestyle they want to lead.

I think it makes a big difference how happy you are with your job, how much you are going to want to stay in it, not retire early, and whether both of you are signed up to the same vision of the next decade or so once the children start moving off to being pretty independent.

That's all about discussion and sharing and ideas and negotiation, there isn't one set amount of work one 'should' do, one family might love having someone at home more to have a higher standard of home life right now (I work long hours and eat ready meals), another might worry about pensions. Start some conversations without blame and see where it takes you, dinner out is good too.

Your wife has an inaccurate understanding of what constitutes 'enough savings' IMO. And also not enough awareness of risks such as your reduced salary/redundancy; ill health etc. Why not go to a financial adviser together. Ask them to do a full life plan which is where you provide all info about current and likely future earnings, savings etc and it shows your income levels until death. You can do multiple scenarios, e.g. ask them to show you what things look like based on current salaries, and then one based on DW bring in equivalent of 3 day a week salary for X years. Seeing the impact of that on both yours and her pensions and savings should make the financial impact of her decision about work quite clear. Doesn't mean she has to go to work more but as a minimum she'd realise and have to accept the inpact on your shared income and quality of life in retirement.

If you want her to work more hours, you need to take on 50% of the house, family, domestic load. Not a man's idea of 50%. An actual 50%. Take on 100% responsibility for 1/2 the house. Living room OR kitchen. Every day. Day in, day out. 50% of the cooking. 50% of the school runs/club responsibilities. You do all the family laundry and she cleans all the bathrooms. Book all doctors appointments/vaccination appointments for the kids. And she can manage dental appointments.

As it happens, I do think she's being lazy. And stupid. If your marriage breaks down, she'll be fucked. She'd get 1/2 the house and savings of course. But she's not earning enough.

But if you want her to do more, you need to PROVE you're going to do equal shares at home. Because most of the women on here either are or have been married. And we all know that 95% of men do not do equal shares of the domestic load.

So pull your finger out. Cook dinner. Clean up the kitchen. Put a load of washing on. And then sit her down and give her your perspective.

Definitely not, 'pick up a bit more'. Do a LOT more. Because we all know how much work doing it all is.

Housework, cooking & kids all adds up to about 30 hours a week. So get going with your 15 hours. On top of full-time work.

His children are late-teens! How much childcare can they possibly need? What is this crazy amount of housework that takes many days a week? I'm clearly missing something as I don't do it, more like about 2 hours a week cleaning, a bit of doing the kitchen each evening and that's it.

There's nothing to suggest the OP has been remiss on this front, everyone is projecting their own issues about taking the load onto him. I'm a lone parent though so the idea of having another whole adult in the house doing some cleaning and working less than two days a week is odd anyway, I expect my children to put more in than that!