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?

Your children are in high school there's zero need for her to work so little when your income isn't great, like you say she needs to up her pension and I'm sure you'd love to drop a day too if she picked up the slack.

We juggle both working full-time in professional jobs and 3 primary aged children, it works just fine, we both do our share and work around our children. High school aged children don't need the same level of parental input or supervision so you could quite easily both work full-time, I imagine she just doesn't want to as she's had it so easy for 10 plus years. All this nonsense people are posting about her "carrying everything household" aka going for lunch and lazing about the house more like!

Please note that I’m not saying that you can’t or that others don’t do this. I too have worked through DCs teen years. I’m saying two things.

One, that parenting and running a household is work and takes time, energy and commitment to do this well. The fact that so many women have to do so as single parents on top of working outside the home does not take away from that fact.

Personally I think women have endured a huge miscarriage of justice by now carrying the expectation of the bulk of unpaid and undervalued household and parenting work, yet are also expected to work full time as well and are characterised as ‘lazy’ if not doing both. Women and children are suffering because of the pressure.

Two, that just because some women and some children are fine with their mother working full time (and yes of course there are benefits), this does not mean that all women or all teenage children are fine. Please can we stop with universalising the personal.

OP, would you genuinely be happy doing 50% of the housework / family admin / driving the kids around? Are they now self sufficient?

Have you truly considered the impact on her confidence being out of the workforce may have?

DW had professional qualifications, so could just pick that up, but agree that she doesn't particularly enjoy it, so maybe a change of scene is warranted.

Have you really spent £50k on a kitchen refurb? Our last one cost £15k.

I enjoy my job, and would want DW to do so too. She was really career driven before DCs, but appreciate that was a while back.

I probably wouldn't mind her not working at all if I earnt say £110k, and she did took on say 85% of household tasks. I just worry that our situation is fragile(ish)

It strikes me that you are universalising the personal in this post. The pp is correct that you can support teenagers and work. They are not mutually exclusive at all!
I think it's fair to say that, in general, there are more demands on women nowadays compared to a generation or two back, when less women worked and only had the expectation of running the household and raising children. Having said that, you can't make an absolute direct comparison as there are services available now that were not back in the 70s/80s which make it somewhat easier to organise a much busier life, with two working parents or even a single parent household.
Of course there are some women in the situation you describe, who are expected to 'do it all' and suffer as a result. I don't think that is the majority though. In real life, the majority of households seem to have a reasonably fair balance, with most men nowadays taking a far more active role in raising their children and household tasks.
In this specific situation, there doesn't appear to be a reason why this woman cannot work and contribute more. There may be hurdles and, of course, discussions are needed but you can't generalise and state that many women are crumbling under the pressure of doing everything when this is clearly not the case here.

It could well be fragile. Who knows what is around the corner wrt the economy/your job/your health. If you were to earn £110k, you would be paying a lot more tax too btw!
If she is barely working, and has 4 days off, she really should be doing all the household tasks, unless she physically can't manage. I struggle to understand why a non working partner, who is fully supported in a financial sense, would not fully support their working parter at home. It seems very selfish, all else being equal.

So i assume you were happy with her not working while the kids were in primary school as less drudgework/housework/childcare pick up drop off etc for you. And typically now they are older and all that is not needed as much you want her to up her hours So predictable

It seems we have a 'cool husband' here. A 'cool husband' ' is not like other men and he really supports women and their rights. Lol.

Nothing OP has said makes him a 'first class cunt'. Stop trying so hard to win the approval of the women on here by insulting other men. It's patronising, not feminist.

Thanks you. You've raised some key points, some of which I've tried to address as I understand my DW is especially vulnerable if anything happens to me.

Being a little vauge with job roles on purpose, we both work in roles that require professional qualifications. My role is secure as it can be, same company for number of years, but have been made redundant in past.

Company provides life insurance 4x as a benefit, but and several months leaves on LT sickness, but not indefinitely.

In reality, it's all family money, but early in relationship are decided to have joint savings pot and individual pots as DW way is WAY more generous than me (e.g.£500 wedding gifts etc).

Thank you, your post is really helpful. I think I'm increasingly coming round to idea that we need to do some research, some projections and long term financial planning before have an honest nuanced conversation.

I think before that I need to understand what my red lines are..this'll probably be most difficult bit, as I'm quite a black & white type of person.

This was just in reference to me opting out of pension in early 20s

Your assumptions just show your personal prejudice. Being a SAHM/P with two children at primary school is very easy compared to working full time.
We don't know whether it was a joint decision for the DW to not work for so many years or not. If it was, it is more than reasonable to reassess decisions over the course of a long marriage, depending on the needs of all parties. It is also natural to consider pensions more as you get older and to also think about the possibility of ill health.
Some posters on MN are just anti men and would not make such comments as this and others if the sexes were reversed.

Agree, i don't know if I'll want to be working into late 60s, but we may not have that option, and certainly want to have option of supporting DCs.

I agree with the pp. It would be far better to work as a team to both take responsibility for work, looking at pension projections, the costs of possible further education for your DC, etc.
I get the impression that your DW is just sitting back and assuming that you will sort all these issues out alone and carry on working into your late 60s to support her, rather than behaving as half of the team in your marriage. This seems selfish and lazy too, unless there are other problems in the background that you haven't mentioned.

I'm not talking about me! And I agree she needs to work more but if she does carry this mental and practical load it should be accounted for.

The man isn't digging holes you know lol

How is that relevant? Do you think that the only exhausting job in the world is being a groundsman?

If she picked up more hours would you be happy doing 50% of the cooking, meal planning and food shopping? Would you be able to contribute to things like school runs (if applicable), do 50% of the washing and cleaning. Do you have pets? Dogs that need walking. Do DCs need running about to clubs? Are you able to contribute to that also? Are you involved in reading the emails from schools and responding to them? If you can do half then YANBU then it might be worth broaching the subject with her and sharing practical thoughts around how household labour will be split if she’s out of the house 9-5.

Having the money in a ISA not the same as the pension pot as the pension is taken out pre tax. What about the 40% tax threshold?

Putting £1,250 in you pension pot each month save you getting taxed at 40%.

In addition, are you being tax efficient with your salary? Paying enough into pension to ensure you are back into the 20% bracket?

What does your DW personal spends go on or was spent on?

LOVE the way you never address how you're going to step up to 50% your share of the domestic load when she returns to full-time work.

Clearly you thought at one point that you should be a 1-income household - because the alternative was to do more nursery pickups yourself (and a hundred other things that kids require). So you agreed that the financial side of things would be your contribution to the team, but now you seem to be going back on that because you haven’t done your part and saved enough for her retirement too as you’ve been busy hoarding it into your own pension at the expense of hers. It’s you that is not playing fair in this team.

Agree. I think he wants the added income with the rest of the domestic status quo remaining static.

But that isn't the deal in your household @blueeeapples. She does the heavy lifting at home. If you want her to pick up financial weight you need to pick up domestic weight.