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?

I mean, if you were getting a cleaner for a house with two late-teen kids, you wouldn't employ them 15 hours a week, would you?

I don’t think yabu by wanting to review the situation, however, the starting point would be to arrange some undisturbed time to discuss the current arrangements.

What was the agreement prior to/after having children? What type of experience and qualifications does your wife have? Are there many opportunities to for your wife to increase her hours? Will she need to retrain or update her skills? How many children and how independent are they? How confident does your wife feel about herself and her skills? Does she have any concerns i.e no longer having time for herself, health, peri menopause etc and what can you do to offer support or reassurance. There are so many factors to consider.

The employment market post 2023 has become increasingly more challenging for people who have been in continuous employment, much less those who have had a break. Your wife will undoubtedly be used to certain routines which she has established over the years and need some time to re-adjust.

Your wife’s time as a sahm has given you the freedom to build your career and she may now be in a position where she simply does not know what she wants to do next. Parenting can knock the wind out of your sails and it goes by so fast. One day you’re fully depended upon and the next they are all grown up before you’ve had the chance to think.

how much stuff do you do around the house? Maybe Shiv’s not confident that anything would get done if she worked full time? Would you be sharing all household duties 50 50? Including the mental load, cleaning, washing, food shopping etc?

I'd be a bit nervous tbh...

Your pensions combined are pretty awful... a new kitchen (of you needed it ... is about 50k thats 25% of your savings gone in a flash)

I do think she should be earning a bit more perhaps she can look at other types of work.
A lot women retrain as various things (electricians, life coach, sleep consultants, home organisers) etc. Later in life
Its flexible and work thats reasonably well paid on an hourly basis.

She may lack confidence having been out of the workplace for so long now.

I agree - I must be a complete slattern! SAHM to younger children fault enough. Late teens is taking the piss, especially as her partner is unhappy with the arrangement.

Right? I’m not sure why anyone is defending working 1.5 days while you have teenagers with no additional needs. No wonder she does 70% of chores, she has plenty of time for it. I’d be surprised if she didn’t.

If I were OP it would probably start getting under my skin too. @blueeeapples what if you wanted to cut down your hours?

I think she needs to earn/work more but id like to know who does the life admin? Chores are one thing and you can get by on a few hours a week but carrying the mental load for the family is demanding. Whoever does it (ideally shared) you need to allocate time. It's not just who sorts out the insurances and holidays but all the little things - who books the dental appointments, notices you are out of and replaces sellotape/lightbulbs/whatever, remembers birthdays and organises cards and gifts, ensures you have family days out organised, gets your shoes re-heeled and takes the dog to the vet....... You get my drift.

Haven't even considered this.

Most of it's in an ISA, so essentially does the same this, apart from 20% tax rebate.

@blueeeapples especially as our pensions aren't great.

But keep in mind also that pension money required for a couple is a lot lower than for a single person. The single tax is a very real thing.

exactly this, she has missed so much of her career for the family. It’s not that easy just to slot into a full
time well paid job as people seem to think. She will never get to your earning level now! It’s kind of abuse and really think men should contribute to the wife’s pension whilst she is stuck to certain routines so the family can function.

She's not lazy, works extremely hard, just not very financially astute...similar to the way I was when opted out of company pension in 20s. We've had multiple conversations about long term financial planning, supporting DCs through uni, etc. She just struggles with this aspect.

The agreement was going back to work once DCs entered school full time. As time went on, it didn't make sense / work when DCs were in primary, so we revised to secondary.

To all of the commenters on here saying 'nowhere near 30 hours a week' time how long every meal you make takes. How long you spend on laundry. How long on cleaning. School runs. Stuff for the kids.

I'm a single mum and I'm pretty strict about DC cleaning/tidying behind themselves. But I estimate I do around 20 hours a week of stuff and that isn't all of it. I leave a lot of the upstairs because I can because other than me and the kids, no one goes up there.

When I was married (bigger house and a husband) it absolutely was a lot more. And that was with him doing a bit.

A cleaner doesn't change the beds. Doesn't do the dishwasher daily. Doesn't do the laundry. Doesn't cook the meals. Doesn't shop for groceries. Doesn't book doctors / dentist appointment. Doesn't pick up the daily household mess. Cleaners literally come in and clean. Even in my small household, I could really do with a cleaner for maybe 2 hours twice a week (I wish!).

You don't say what your job is or what your wife does. Is your job secure? Are you self employed? People can be made redundant, forced to give up their job with ill health etc in their 50s.Your situation could change overnight. (I presume you don't have a sickness policy which would give you an income if you're long term ill? If employed would your company give you and/or your wife, children, an income?)

It's good your children will have some money at 18 but it is not nearly enough to fund higher education so you may find that the money you thought you would add to your pensions goes to them.

Often people take a lump sum out of their pension fund at retirement currently say £40k, leaving you with say £85k to purchase an income as you are at the moment. Say barely £3k a year. If you are forced to take it before your state pension age you may not be able to live as things stand. Annuity rates will be lower the younger you are, lower again if you need to put your wife on the annuity ( which you would have to surely as things stand.)*

*This is why some men don't put their wives on the annuity, leaving their wives in penury if their husband predeceases them.Your wife is in a very vulnerable situation. Would your company eg give her and the children a decent income if you died?

Your priority is to save as much as you can in your and you wife's pension funds.
She needs to earn, preferably full time, as a matter of urgency

Have you run the numbers through a pension calculator like moneyhelper.org.uk or talked to a financial advisor?
It sounds like you need to be discussing some real life numbers. Run the calculator with lots of different scenarios.
For example, if you carry on as you are now and both retire at 65 how much will that give you to live on per month in retirement?
if you wanted to retire earlier?
if she earned more and built a bigger pension pot.
if you got ill and had to retire early what would your pension be, do you have any disability insurance etc etc.

And then have some conversations about what you want to do on retirement and will the numbers cover it. Do you want the option to pay for a holiday with your kids and their families from time to time. Realistically what do you think it takes to run a house and a car annually. Etc etc.

She might say she wants to be able to travel and you can point out that $500 a month won’t cut it (obviously from your numbers it will be more that this but just giving an example). Or maybe you will both decide it does look enough for a quiet life and having her home more now is worth the trade off.

Good luck
(And yes, to answer your question I think she should work more over the next decade at leader. This is a peak earning time to give better retirement options. ).

Fair points about the lazy and stupid. I went back to work full time with 2 children under 1 year old (It was twins) so the thought of working 10 hours a week with such grown up children makes me chuckle. It was hard and we only had paid for childcare, rather than family help

But it’s a more nuanced discussion than he wants her to go back to work. His life needs to change, it sounds like it didn’t change as much as maybe it should have done when he started having children. It’s only fair she gets more balance, if she starts working more

You might only get a cleaner for two or three hours, but it's the invisible work that sucks time and energy and goes unappreciated because it is, well, invisible. Sending aunty Jo a birthday card, rustling up an extra dinner for your dc's school friend who comes over, noticing dc have holes in their pants and replacing them, cooking daily, shopping weekly, meal planning, laundry, replacing the milk, sorting Christmas presents, booking haircuts/dentist/doctor for dc, liaising with school, chivvying re homework, researching unis, giving lifts, booking household repairs, getting good deals on insurances/energy costs. This list is just off the top of my head and is not exhaustive (just exhausting).

Surely in this case “mine “ and “hers “‘is irrelevant. You’re married so it’s all the same pot anyway. You can want her to work more hours and earn more money but ultimately the money you state as being yours is part of a marital pot and belongs to you both. Collectively you are in a reasonable financial position.

Mmmmmmmm that pension in the mid-40s isn’t just down to 12 years out of the workforce though……..there’s been what 10-15 years in the workforce, surely? I’m not sure how much you can really pretend there’s been a massive ‘career’ sacrifice when it sounds much more like someone who wasn’t very invested in career (that’s fine) or supporting herself (not fine) in the decade
prior to quitting work and in the few years since returning.

Sounds much more like someone who didn’t particularly like working and still doesn’t. It’s not a big deal, but it’s not a cause for martyrdom either.

I also laughed out loud at the poster who asked if she’s ’flat out running the home’. We must have very very different ideas of what that involves.

None of that means she has to work more - every couple decides how they split the joint parental responsibilities of direct care and financial support of the children they chose to create - but let’s not pretend this is a hard
working driven person who had a thriving career she loved but chose to cut it short to support her husband to ‘make strides’ in his own career. That’s just a nonsensical fantasy.

I agree. I think he envisages her going to full-time and him maybe doing the washing up at times. Cooking the occasional meal.

If he really wants to do what he can do to encourage it, he needs to share the domestic load. Not add an extra 5% to what he estimates as 30% (but what his wife would probably say is 10%).

I've always worked because I didn't want to be in a financially precarious situation the way my mother was. But between work and home, it has meant I'm on the go until about 9pm daily. I'm pretty sure the OP isn't prepared for that aspect of a fulltime working wife, as in HIM being busy around the house for hours after he gets home from work.

People can be made redundant, forced to give up their job with ill health etc in their 50s.Your situation could change overnight.

This is so true. For DH it was neural issues, for my brother it was a heart attack, for a friend it was a stroke that left him unable to speak. All early 50s at the time.

I’m married with 1 child and work full time and still have no idea what this mythical ‘life admin’ is, and why is takes so long?!

Booking a dentist appointment takes minutes. What are others doing that takes so much time?!

See I do not get this . My savings are my husbands savings as are my pensions , it’s our money now and when we retire . He earns 3 x less than me and I do not care because the alternative would mean him working a lot longer hours and us seeing g him less . I’m in no way annoyed he earns less . Maybe I’m not as greedy as you , as long as we can have a comfy home and 2 holidays a year I’m fine

Two parents working full time manage to do all this though.

I’m with you on this. Me and DH have both worked full time since DD was 9 months old, house gets cleaned mornings/evenings/weekend, appts get booked for weekends or school holidays and generally done online so take minutes if that to do, food gets cooked fresh using the slow cooker or quick and easy cook foods like stir fry, shopping gets done online or evenings/weekends, washing machine is on a timer so it finishes at the same time I wake up then gets transferred to the line or tumble dryer and it’s done before we leave for school/work. DD is 12 yo now and helps out with chores and cooking.