Is £500 a month ok to live on after bills?

[forwardsandbackwardsandup]

I'm having a ridiculous argument with my husband and I have so completely lost sight of what is reasonable. After mortgage/bills, food/petrol, all fixed costs etc. we each have around £500 each month. I usually save around £200 and spend the rest on bits and pieces throughout the month. Coffees, train and lunch the one day a week I go into the office. Little bits for the kids. I pay for swimming lessons and another class from that too. I don't feel rich but I also don't feel poor. The classic "comfortable". I have savings built up from this as well as a bigger (not huge, under £20k) savings pot which has had around £10k from inheritance as well as money from the sale of a property from before I even met him. I appreciate having this cushion and the ability to dip into it if need be, although I rarely do.

He gets to the end of his £500 before the end of the month and thinks I am being rude for suggesting that it is easy to live on this. He cycles, doesn't drink or gamble, I have no idea where it goes.

If it matters, I work part time while the kids are young and he works full time. He pays the majority of bills to allow us to be left with the same figure to spend on us each month. He's starting to complain that he is having to "financially carry this family". I've looked into increasing my days but with 2 in nursery me going up to full time only gives us around £80 more per month so doesn't see worth it.

My question: should £500 be easy enough to live on?

That could well be the case @OxanaVorontsova but seeing as he seems to want more than £500 pm personal money and he won't enter into a discussion about what it goes on (so could indeed highlight that they do need to put more aside for annual and irregular essential joint costs) it's going to be a hard battle for the OP to overcome.

Especially if it ends up that the money that is genuinely spare for him to spend is less than £500.

I can see the argument on the suits. The shirts, he could wash and iron at home but chooses not to. I think that's a personal choice. I iron my own work clothes usually - have one super wrinkly dress I send out!

I didn't realise anyone used dry cleaners any more, not routinely for day to day work clothes anyway.

M&S and likely similar retailers sell plenty of suits and shirts that are machine washable and don't even need ironing, that are fine for the workplace so if you choose to wear dry clean only clothes, the expense, and inconvenience, is on you, its not a household cost.

<awaits the inevitable army of 'big jobbers' insisting that if they wore an M&S suit to work they would be marched out of their office with their P45 hitting them on the head on the way out>.

Haha, I make this point to DH too...

He then counters with "but you take the train when you could cycle" so it is just better if we keep these costs in our personal budgets

I think the issue is that your H is feeling resentful and used. I suggest you address this issue as resentment only gets worse. I think I would feel the same if I had to work full time and my partner worked part time.

the extra £80 is misleading. You would also be improving your pension and your career.

You're doing everything right. You live frugally to only spend £200 a month but that's my privilege speaking but if you have the same amount of money and you take the brunt of childcare, you're equals.

You can ask him if he'd rather you go full time and both of you bare the cost childcare. You made a sacrifice in salary and your career how can this even be compared in the slightest?

I think I would feel the same if I had to work full time and my partner worked part time.

Did you see the part where they have 2 small DC together who need childcare, that they discussed them both working 4 days a week and he didn’t want to do a day of childcare so that’s why OP dies 2 days of childcare? He’s got bugger all reason to feel resentful and if he does he should have a proper word with himself.

What is his solution?

You don’t really have £500 each a month to spend on fun. You need to back out the swimming lessons, car costs, boiler repairs, football season tickets, dry cleaning, and other savings pots. That will leave you both with the true fun pot that you split 50:50. I think you are probably living beyond your means but don’t realise.

@NoSquirrels I fully agree. You cannot resent something when you were given a choice. He chose to work full time, they chose for mum to work 3 days. If she worked full time, they'd have equal salaries but he didn't seem to want that at the time, so it's only right to be split evenly.

P.s. I have two young DC, going into the office is a break compared to having my two crazy babes.

Why are you paying for the DC little bits out of yours, surely that is a joint payment with the bills, are the swimming lessons for you or the DC, if the DC it should be a joint bill

Exactly. We have 400 a month each but the reality is that we still spend money on “joint” expenses from our personal account. I end up with very little at the end of the month.

Personally I don’t think having 500 a month left out of your salary as very much. I’m not surprised that he resents having to account for it - isn’t that the point of having the money to spend as you wish?

I'd just say to him "unless you can lay out exactly where your 500 goes, then no I'm not changing the agreement. If you do a proper dive into what it goes on so we can check you aren't paying for stuff that should come out of the shared pot, I'd be happy to look at how we can both get more from this arrangement. You put more money into this family than me. I put more time into this family than you. Both are equally valuable"

It would be if it was all disposable income but it's not, stuff that should be joint household expenses has to come out of this, though this seems to be only coming out of OPs share not the DHs.

If you're paying for your part-time travel, once a week, into the office from your personal pot, does that mean he's paying for his full time travel? How much does that come to?

DW and I have £300 each to play with but travel comes out of the joint pot because we spend such different amounts and it wouldn't be fair.

If he wanted to be able to spend all his money on himself he shouldn't have got married and had children.

Once those decisions have been made, he is obliged to pay the cost of that choice. He doesn't get to carry on as normal and leave the OP to shoulder the cost of raising their DC.

This is what sometimes happens when 'the big man' keeps his full time job and 'the little woman' goes part time.

In their heads, they are, as he said himself, 'financially carrying the family'.

The solution, a good one to address this ego, is for both to work equally - either both full time or both part time.

I agree with PP. If you have to take some of the 500 back then you don't get 500 a month. Also you need to make sure that work costs like buying and cleaning suits do not come out of personal spends. They're essential for work and should be seen as a bill not discretionary. Train to work, meals if staying away the night for work (within reason) are work expenses. Make sure he really does have the same discretionary spending as you. If he does and he refuses to keep track of where it goes then you can't really help someone who won't help themselves.

YNAB.

It revolutionised our finances.

We’d been lucky to have jobs with regular bonuses that paid for all the extras. A change of job to fixed salary meant we needed to budget things across the year.

We know exactly how much we can spend and when. We also have savings that we never did before. We earned no more, but the difference in the way we managed money was incredible.

£500 a month each for personal spends is fine but you don't have this.

Things like boiler services shouldn't come out of this money, that's a fixed yearly expense no? We get our boiler serviced every October. Same with the season tickets, it's a fixed expense so I would budget annually for that. You had £350 in unexpected expenses this month, that's a big chunk out that £1000 between you. Did you say your car insurance needs to be saved for and paid from your personal money too?? I can understand why your husband is frustrated to be honest.

We have money for personal spends every week but we also have money that goes in to our "annual expenses" account for all the known annual expenses like car insurance, car tax, professional fees and gym costs. Then we have another account for "household expenses" that is for random unexpected stuff that crops up every week, we pay for kid and dog stuff out of this or we save for stuff like weddings from it. Our personal money is just for us.

You just need a joint budget that makes sense.

For me, we have money allocated for everything. Gifts, car insurance, etc. - we pay in monthly to make sure these yearly and unexpected expenses are covered.

This means out disposable money is disposable, and my partner isn't asking me every so often to cough up money for this or that. And vice versa. I understand your DP could pay more attention but why not just make a budget that accounts for everything?

You haven't answered who pays for things like dates and holidays - does that come out a joint pot? Is one of you covering this unequally? Maybe there's resentment if so.

We have a very good income. I’d be delighted to have £1,000 a month left after bills!

It sounds generous but it depends on what it is spent on. We have £200 each it’s purely for personal spends. Anything for the kids/family comes out of the joint account. DH does buy lunch out every day 🤦‍♀️ from the joint account but only up the value of boots/supermarket meal deal, anything extra is from his personal spends.

Oh and travel to work also comes from the joint account.

£1k a month to spend is amazing

Tho as others said joint things like kids swimming /activities /boiler/car insurance

Should all go into joint and and both have less then £500 each

Obv we need to know where his 500 goes. Not all on dry cleaning

Esp if doesn't drink or gamble or work/travel costs

Season ticket is prob 400/500 so needs to save 40/50 a month towards that