DP's attitude to money- red flag or am I being OTT?

[jumpinghoops]

Can anyone help/advise me? Me & my DP have been together for 5 yrs and have a DD age 2 together. We live in a flat that I bought before we got together.

We are in a fortunate place financially. I bought before the crunch and our mortgage repayments are small. I have just gone back to work FT having worked PT for a while and between us we bring home more than enough to be comfortable. Our finances are completely separate- all bills/mortgage come out of my acc and he has until now given me proportionate share (usually over and above this tbh) from his wage. My DP earns twice my salary and usually always pays for incidental expenses, though I buy most things for our daughter. I do have some debt (student loan and £200 cc) but I try to keep in control of things. Next year we would like to move to a larger property and have another child.

I feel nervous though- IME he is not very good with money and this makes me nervous. Some examples:

• when he moved in a letter arrived from his previous property saying he had not been paying the council tax for x months and x amount was due immediately.
• the nursery have sent a few letters saying payment is overdue
• a while ago he received a letter from bailiffs saying he had ignored parking fine- he paid straight away claiming he had not revived previous letters (it was addressed incorrectly)
• and now, I am trying to get us to crack on with paying off some of the mortgage while we have surplus cash and he tells me that he has £2000 OD and £800 credit card and needs to sort that first. Some of this money i know has come from paying for a sofa and washing machine and fridge. Fair enough. I don't think he has expensive tastes although I do think he fritters quite a bit day to day- but I certainly don't begrudge daily pleasures! I've suggested I'll pay all bills+mortgage+£243 child care and he use all his wage to reduce yr debts. I've just spoken to him. He gets really grumpy with me when we discuss money. The OD hasn't been reduced.

I worry to start off with that we'll even get a mortgage.
Am I being overly controlling trying to get him to sort this out? Should I (as I'd like to) ask him to show me his finances? We will have a joint acc when we move- but he has said he wants to get paid his wage into his own account and then transfer necessary payments for everything to a joint account. If I don't work, I feel nervous that I'll be totally reliant on him.

I think I'm asking for advice on whether I am being unfair in bringing this up every week-10 days or so, and what u should do to get us on the same page here. He seems to think everyone has debts and it's a normal way to live- but it's not to me!

You are right to be on your guard about the debts, and it's not overly controlling to want to want to make sure the family's finances are on an even keel.

How to get on the same page. The first step is going to be to get your partner to accept that dealing with money together is part of the responsibility of being a family. Right now it sounds as though he sees his earnings as 'my money' rather than 'our money' which is why your suggestions are being treated as a personal attack. That is an immature attitude and it has to change. If he is secretive about his debts or his accounts, that would be a big warning sign to me. Insist on full disclosure and be quite serious that, without it, you doubt his commitment to your relationship. Certainly, never get into a situation where you are entirely dependent upon him for money and really think hard before taking on a joint mortgage with him. Right now, as you're not married and he is not on the deeds or mortgage, he has no rights over the equity in your property. Buy a place together unmarried, give up your job to have more children and I think you'll seriously lose out.

What concerns me most is that you say you're quite comfortable for money at the moment. If he is running up debts, being secretive and obstructive when times are good, he will not cope at all if your finances get stretched by things like a new home, bigger mortgage, additional children or a reduction in income. Having been married to a spendthrift in the past I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Good luck

BTW... the other warning bell for me was that part about 'using his wage to reduce debts' while you pick up all the big expenses. This is a really bad move. IME the spendthrift will quite happily let you pay more but won't keep to their side of the bargain. For this one, he has to come to the table with his plan of how he's going to pay off his debts at the same time as contributing a fair share to the household bills. Again, requires full disclosure and again, he won't like it. But you can't carry him or he'll let you.

OK to get paid into his own account but he needs to set up a standing order into the joint account for all bills, of a pre-agreed amount, proportional to your relative earnings - so he should pay in twice what you do if he earns twice as much. No transferring ad hoc each month every time a bill comes in - not sure but it sounded like that might be the suggestion.

You're right to be cautious. Definitely don't do joint mortgage yet. You do need financial transparency. Plus am agreement not to use credit cards for anything else till this balance is paid off at the very least.

Thank you both- we both have a day off on Friday and can discuss this then. I will explain in those terms Cogito how important this is.

I'm not sure I'm portraying the situation fully in that he's not being secretive as such- I asked him to do an Experian check and he showed me their information they have on him (fair grading, 1 account, 1 cc) I do think he knew though that I'd be upset about the debt and therefore didn't tell me about it.

The idea with the joint account is indeed that he would pay in proportionate amount of income to cover mortgage/bills (or would cover them all if I'm not working).

Your replies have made me realise though that I'm trying to deal with this by making him do what I want him to do. He does need to grow up where money is related and it does need to come from him. I will ask him to come up with a plan to repay the debts- if he's unable to do this and show me that he can stick to it, I'll be clearer about where we stand.

"he knew though that I'd be upset about the debt and therefore didn't tell me about it. "

Somehow you have to turn it around that it's not the debt that upsets you per se, it's the fact that a) he doesn't have a plan to pay it off and b) he's been hiding the details from you. It's a very difficult thing for spendthrifts to get their heads around that someone else i.e. a life-partner, is entitled to have a say in their finances when they've only ever been used to having to justify their expenditure to themselves.

To get a plan together to pay off the debt he needs to go through a full income/expenditure budgeting process in order to establish how much 'spare' cash he has left to put towards his debts. He'll need to think about converting expensive debts to cheaper options. A £2000 O/D will be very expensive, for example. Other signs that he's committed to paying off would be if he set up a DD to pay off his CC balance in full each month. But he really has to come up with these things and demonstrate some enthusiasm or it'll never happen.