Not earning and Children leaving home

[FreshJuice]

I dont earn and spend my time doing photography and very occasionally sell a piece of work but it wouldn't cover much. My DH earns a very good salary, enjoys his work yet also works hard: That said the pandemic hit hard.
Financially we are comfortable (Nice meals, holidays etc ) although we do have a large mortgage. Rightly or wrongly, I have left all financial responsibilities to him and he pays me an allowance, along with paying for for food, school fees, pensions and all bills. I in turn run the house and have created a lovely family. As the children are slowly growing up, 2 at Uni 1 at A levels, is there a pattern for the next part of life and wondering what other families do ? I have never needed to question it but as we approach our 50s I was wondering what might be the norm? I do think we need to talk about money so we can plan, but before I do so any pointers would help. Thanks for any advice.

I work, have DC and run a home. I wouldn't like to have my interests funded by a man as I want financial stability and to overpay my mortgage in advance of retirement.

OP, weren't there times that you felt encouraged to work and discussed this, e.g. when all DC were in primary, or all DC in secondary?

Presumably you are in a social circle of similar highearning families with maybe one parent at home?
Can you ask them?

But what do you want out of the next decade?
What do you both want?

Why do you "run short" ?

Get informed on where the assets,are
Do you have your own pension?

I think you need to start with understanding your current financial position: income, expenditure, savings, pensions

Then what your goals are: timing of retirement, standard of living in retirement, what you want to offer your adult children

Then you can understand whether you should work to make the goals happen

You should also talk about what you want - do you want to work? Does your DH want to take a step back?

The point of posting was to get an insight into how couples split their finances when one earns alot, and the other not.
I doubt you’re going to get much help here as very few would be in such a privileged position that you seem to be in. Your husband must have an extremely high salary to be carrying that about of financial burden on his own for over 20 years.
My husband and I are both moderately high earners but that is both of us contributing to the household budget and the running of the family in general. I genuinely don’t know how I’d feel if only one of us was earning and expected to pay for absolutely everything

That amount not about

I think your situation is extremely rare! Usually one parent will be a SAHP until their children become more independent and by the time they’ve reached secondary school both parents would be working.

If you are well off why doesn’t your DH go part time? Or retire early?

This is how it worked in my parents marriage, private school, significant mortgage and SAH mother, even after all children left home. They had married in 1953 and are no longer with us. My mother had no idea of finances, which my father shortly before his death asked me to take over.

My mother was then in her late 80's with no idea of interest in his money worked so long as the bills continued to be paid. Without trustworthy family, she would have been sooo vulnerable.

It's also how it works for my sister, who I have encouraged to take an interest in order to be prepared to take over the admin when the time comes.

No sign that she had done anything about it. Oddly enough, DH is happy to leave it to me.

@SisterJude

And I don't see this as a privileged position to be in. Its too dependent on somebody else, I find it quite baffling that anyone would actively put themselves in this position.

When I say privileged position I meant more in terms of her family’s general financial position. I absolutely agree with you that a woman with no money if her own and no way of making any decent money, is in no way privileged

it is also possible to run a house and create a lovely family while you work

What is fair for both of you, is that now that your family responsibilities have considerably diminished, you start to look for ways to share the financial burden with your husband and find some paid occupation.

@FreshJuice you need to be clear in your own mind why you want to have this discussion, and what your aim is.

Your OP sounded like it was about retirement planning - all next stage of life, do we need to downsize, when do we pay off mortgage. Which is a valid discussion. But it’s not at all what you said later:

“The point of posting was to get an insight into how couples split their finances when one earns alot, and the other not.”

I’m not trying to trip you up there - just pointing out that you need to be clear in your own mind what you want.

To answer the question though - in our case, we both with but I’m the far higher earner. If you like, my husband’s “allowance” is his salary. I pay everything else. He’s not financially passive though - he’s my second husband and until we married he ran his own household.
As a couple, we don’t actually know each other’s EXACT income - but pretty close!
We both know the years left on my mortgage. (his is paid off and his adult son lives there for free as he’s low waged)
I know what savings and pension he has, and what age he’s targeting to retire (62). Also how he can bridge the gap.
He knows my rather more complicated plans - as I am the higher earner, I have several pensions. He knows which pot is the bridge so I can retire at a similar time (but younger) than him. He knows I’m caning my contributions currently to achieve that - with the result that despite earning more, we have similar “fun” money at the moment. He knows that I’m not overpaying my mortgage because pension tax relief is a better investment for me. He knows my projected annual pension, which of it is guaranteed and which variable. He knows I’m a fan of my offset mortgage account for my emergency fund. He also knows I think he’s crazy for having Premium Bonds - whilst hoping he proves me wrong with the big win 🤣 We both know how much we want to spend on a big old motor home when he retires! And - how we’ll fund that.

We’ve never once looked at a spreadsheet together… this is just conversation.

So on both your points - life plans, and fair split of household money - we’re both fully informed and aligned. We just talk about it in daily life.

My aunt had 4 children and did 2 university degrees (open university) while they were all small.
When they left home she went into geology and had quite a career doing that, then trained to be a vicar.
I've never trusted a man enough not to work which is just as well as both my husbands ran off with younger women.
I have my own home, a decent pension and luckily do not need to rely on anyone else.
Personally I think you are in a dangerous position as you won't even get a state pension and would have to claim benefits if anything happened to your husband.

@SisterJude

I read this as " I can't justify not working any more because the children are basically adults so I need to make sure that dh is happy to continue to fund me whilst i freeload have no real role in the household"

I honestly can't believe some people live like this.

I can see that.

I read it more as: “it’s never bothered me being given an allowance in a somewhat parent-child model. I quite like having to think about money. Sure I didn’t know if he had more money to spend than me, but I figured probably not once he’d paid the big mortgage and 3 sets of school fees. But just recently, I’ve been running out of my allowance… and it’s occurred to me that we’re no longer paying 3x school fees and actually I haven’t got a clue whether he’s got loads of free money, more than me, and now that I have to ask when I run out, I’ve realised that it’s pretty demeaning having pocket money instead of access to the household money.”

*not having to think

Hope you are alright OP and ignoring the nastier replies on here. It’s pretty common to have a SAHP in my area who does everything to do with running the home/children. Older children still do need a lot of support, unfortunately they don’t suddenly stop once they reach eighteen. Everyone has a situation that works for them and it’s not relevant how other posters run their lives or transfer their issues on to you.

I wonder if you could talk to an independent pension adviser/financial planner in your area?
With or without your husband, then have a big conversation about finances and how he feels about it. He may well not be bothered but you need to have a proper discussion.

This set up isn’t unusual where I live, lots of the husbands earn a healthy six figure salary and the wives don’t work.

A non working wife and a higher earning husband isn’t unusual at at all.
But all the women I know in that position:

• know what their husbands earn
• know how long the mortgage have left to run
• have open access to the spending money
• don’t have allowances
• don’t have to ask their husbands when they go over the allowance
• have a good idea of life plans (I’m 52 so women I know like this are also at OP’s “next phase of life / retirement planning” stage)

The point of posting was to get an insight into how couples split their finances when one earns alot, and the other not.

Ok I’ll be honest. I earn a lot. I pay for the house, the school fees x4, most holidays, the primary cars (including eldest DC).

I have done all the long term planning around savings, investments, pensions etc.

I would be furious if DH turned round after decades of my juggling and making everything work and asked what the plan for our future and could we now split finances as if the past two decades hadn’t happened.

@Cocomarine

A non working wife and a higher earning husband isn’t unusual at at all. But all the women I know in that position:

• know what their husbands earn
• know how long the mortgage have left to run
• have open access to the spending money
• don’t have allowances
• don’t have to ask their husbands when they go over the allowance
• have a good idea of life plans (I’m 52 so women I know like this are also at OP’s “next phase of life / retirement planning” stage)

But are these women free of child responsibilities like op?

The only women I know who are sahp have dc of primary school age, with dp/dh who work but on fairly average salaries, who haven't put (now adult) kids through private school, and they certainly haven't got lives of luxury/holidays/treats/gazillion hobbies. They're sahm because childcare is astronomical and not worth it until dc are in school full time. They absolutely know every penny of their household's income/expenditure and generally can't wait to get back into work for their OWN money, state of mind and individual identity. I think there is a very small minority of women in OP's situation.

@DeepaBeesKit

it is also possible to run a house and create a lovely family while you work

What is fair for both of you, is that now that your family responsibilities have considerably diminished, you start to look for ways to share the financial burden with your husband and find some paid occupation.

Maybe she doesn't need to if he has a load of assets stashed away .

Maybe he can retire now with no loss of lifestyle and pay off mortgage with the tax free lump sum

Op has no clue, that is the issue
She has no idea what is what financially

An imbalance in earnings is completely normal.

But how as a SAHSpouse do you run a home if you have no idea what the mortgage costs, or the electric or anything else?!

Thanks all and @Supermohican no hard feelings to anyone. I asked and everyone has different views.

@Cocomarine no tripping up at all. The initial post was to ask how people managed their finances

@KeyboardWorriers, this is what am trying to establish :the level of "allowance" . Is it 50/50 ? I think in general we need to budget and work out what the long term plans are for us together financially and then whats left over we split; my asking has introduced a lot of different opinions as to how people live their lives.

I read this as " I can't justify not working any more because the children are basically adults so I need to make sure that dh is happy to continue to fund me whilst i freeload have no real role in the household"

This. With spots on.

Why are you so reluctant to work?

That really wasn’t clear at all though @FreshJuice and that’s my point - you need to be clear when you speak to your husband.

I’m with @PegasusReturns - if you came and told me that we “need” to budget and work out the long term plan, you’d get this face:

I still don’t it’s clear even from your latest post whether you genuinely want a long term plan or whether you just want more access to the family pot now. If you came at me talking about long term plans then switched to a request to up your allowance… I’d think the latter was what you’d actually been interested in all long. Do you think he doesn’t already have a long term plan? Why haven’t you been interested in it before? What was your plan once your children had grown?