We earn nearly 5K a month but we’re always skint

[MoonlitMabel]

Me and my partner have been together 6 years and we have 6 kids between us. We both work and on paper we should be doing ok but honestly we seem to have no money left most months and I dont understand where its all going.

I earn about £1450 a month after tax and he usually brings home around £3200 but it depends on overtime. We get child benefit as well and I get a bit of maintenance for my older two but its not a massive amount. So I know we arent on a low income exactly, which is why its frustrating that we are always counting down to payday.

I have DS11 and DD8 from my previous relationship, he has two girls aged 13 and 10 from his previous relationship and we have a DS who is 2 and a DD who is 8 months. The older two live with me full time. His girls have only recently come to live with us full time because their mum moved away and they wanted to stay with their dad. Their mum isnt paying maintenance at the moment. I dont blame the girls for any of this and they are lovely, its just obviously a lot more expensive having two extra children here all the time.

We rent a 3 bed house and its quite full now but moving isnt an option at the moment. Rent is £850, council tax is about £180, then all the usual bills, phones, petrol, car insurance etc. He pays the rent and most of the bigger bills from his account and I tend to pay for the food shop, things the kids need and bits for the house. It sort of ended up that way rather than us sitting down and deciding it was fair.

The thing is he keeps saying I need to cut down on the food shop. Last night I spent £235 and he was genuinely shocked when he saw it, asking how on earth I had spent that much and saying I need to look at my spending. I know £235 sounds a lot but its for 8 people and I got nappies, washing stuff, toilet roll, packed lunch things, milk, fruit, meat etc. I wasnt buying loads of treats or anything particularly expensive. We were running low on quite a few things so it wasnt even just food.

I did get annoyed because he has been ordering more Airfix stuff recently. He builds the models and paints them and its his hobby, which I do understand, everyone needs something they enjoy. But he will order a kit for £35 then paints another time and tools and bits for another £20 or £30 and he doesnt seem to see it as much because its not all in one go. He says its his hobby and he doesnt go out drinking or spend money on nights out. Fair enough but I dont have money to just buy things for myself whenever I want. If I need clothes or something I usually leave it until the next month.

He says thats different because the food shop is something I can control and I need to plan better. He reckons I buy too much and we dont need half the things I get. I said if he wants to do the food shop and feed all of us for less then he can have a go because its easy to criticise when you arent the one trying to make meals out of whats left in the fridge. That probably didnt help the conversation.

He then said since his girls moved in everything costs more and I seem to have a problem with it. I honestly dont. They are his children and of course they should be able to live with their dad if thats what they want. But we didnt really sit down and work out how much more it would cost or change how we pay for things. We just carried on as before and now we are struggling even more.

He has debt repayments as well, credit cards and a loan from before, which come to around £500 a month. He says those are fixed payments and have to be paid so theres not much he can do about them. I agree they need paying but it means a lot of his wages are already spoken for before we have even bought food or put petrol in the car. His overtime isnt guaranteed either so some months he gets less than £3200.

I dont know if we are just spending too much or if this is what it costs to run a house with this many kids now. We dont have expensive holidays or go out much. The kids have clubs and school things to pay for, they grow out of clothes and shoes, the little ones need nappies and all that. Then theres always something else, a birthday or a school trip or something needs replacing.

We dont have a joint account and neither of us has a proper idea of what the other has left after bills. He thinks he pays most of the money out because the rent and bills come out of his account, and I feel like Im constantly spending mine on everyone and everything and never have anything left. We have never actually added everything up together which I know sounds stupid.

I dont want this to turn into me saying he shouldnt buy his hobby stuff or that his girls cost too much, because thats not what I mean. I just dont see how we can both be working and bringing that much in and still be skint all the time. Is £235 actually ridiculous for a weekly shop for this many people or do I need to look properly at what Im spending? And how do other people split everything when there are children from previous relationships as well?

Your children are still quite young, so sadly the food and other expenses will only get more more expensive as they age, then you may have things like university to account for. One thing we noticed is that they suddenly don't want Next clothing and school trips costs at £1-2k per year.

Times are tough and £5k doesn't get you very far. We only earn slightly more, but have less DCs and benefit of not having a mortgage, but even then don't save that much.

Think you really need to clear debt, cut our junk from food shop.

We earn about the same and it is hard and we feel worse off than we did 10 years ago when I was working part time so earning less. So a big part of it is cost of living crisis.
I also think your shopping bill isn’t that bad for 8 people. I usually spend about £100 a week on 4 of us (2 adults, teen and tween so 4x adult amounts of food), I spent £170 last week in Tesco because we needed some extra things, I could have cried! But it was genuinely all stuff we needed.

Your big expense is your DHs bills and spending on hobbies though, he needs to sort that out before criticising your food shopping.
Also I would actually send him shopping because I think he’d get a shock how expensive things are these days.

Did you ask him to go through the receipt and identify what was not needed?

The crunch points are his debt, and no CM for his girls.

You are under pressure so both feeling resentful, and not havjng a teamwork approach to managing the household.

Sit down together and work out your total family budget and expense that you cover between you Everything: insurance, phones, cars, subscriptions, and then add up the budget for one off expenses, car service, new glasses, dental bills etc. And see what your household costs to run.

I would then suggest you come to an arrangement to pay all this from one household / family account. Pay into it pro rata to your income or by each having an equal amount of personal ‘disposable’

Fantastic that you welcomed his DD’s without hesitation but wholly unrealistic to expect to house 2 extra teens in a 3 bed house with 4 other kids.

And this needs sorting because they are approaching exam years and need space to study.

Is maintenance for the girls being sorted? Presumably your DH was paying maintenance for them before and now no longer needs to make that payment? Their Mum needs to contribute!

Sorry but you are both being unreasonable. I suggest a lot more sensible adult discussions and a lot less sniping. Start with discussing a weekly menu and shopping for that. It will help. Also both of you install snoop on your accounts. It will also help with where savings can be made. Finally have 1 month where you save every receipt or write down if there is no receipt. Go through it together. No blame, no back biting, no passive aggressive comments. Two adults talking about where their finances are and how to improve.

You need a warts and all chat about your joint finances. You both have to be entirely transparent with what's coming in and going out.

What's his debts for? (£6k a year is a significant debt repayment of £36k total in the time you've been together).

You need to claim CMS for his 2 DDS

You both need to list EVERY SINGLE PENNY that you spend. Sure, you could trim a few quid off the food budget for 8 people but he's costing the family £6k a year in debt repayments and airfix tat.

It's the six kids. They are expensive!!

And if he has debts like that he possibly is a bit crap at managing money/planning for emergencies. I would look at MoneySavingExpert and maybe that debt snowball website to see whether it's worth taking a more aggressive approach to pay that down. Paying minimum fixed payments will be costing a lot in interest over time.

Something like YNAB if you used it together would probably be really helpful.

The food bills don't sound OTT to me. I'm surprised your rent isn't higher.

Is his debt getting paid down? How much is it?

Would he talk to a debt management charity about ways to pay it off more effectively?

Why doesn’t his girls mum pay maintenance - does she work? And does she still hold onto their child benefit payment - if so, that’s not fair.

You are merely in the same position as a lot of people your age, MN contributors as well.

I would definitely get maintenance from his ex and that might help ease the situation a bit. Also, you can try some vegetable based dinners like no meat chilli con carne, vegetable curry, pasta bakes, macaroni cheese, etc, these can help to reduce costs too and stretch the budget.

You say you weren’t struggling before his kids moved in but you were in a 3 bed, when there were 2 permanent kids there and 2 part time kids there already, why would you have another 2 children…there is no room for them.

I didn’t get past the “We have six kids”.

Of course adding two people to your household will cost more in utilities, food, clothes and activities. That’s just common sense. You need to both sit down and do a proper budget - you can’t just wing it and hope there’s enough money at the end of the month.

As others have said, track every penny spent for 3 months, look at any discretionary spending and whether you can still afford it. Set a reasonable food budget, get your regular bills as low as possible and from there work out what you can afford in hobbies and activities. Is there a better way to service his debt that would either get it paid off as quickly as humanly possible or reduce its cost.

I suggest Dave Ramseys baby steps - some of the language is a bit American but the principles are absolutely sound. Simply put you need a joint plan to manage your money proactively. You have a big household and a fairly average income, so you need a concrete plan.

I did ask him what I could have not bought and he said the big pack of nappies because we had over half a pack left but we still need them and its best to have more than not enough.

His debt is mostly credit cards, he just sticks things on them and then pays them off a bit at a time but then more goes on and it mounts up again.

His girls mum doesnt work no, so I dont know how much she would be able to pay anyway.

And yes the house is full, we know that, but the girls wanted to stay with their dad and we werent going to say no to them.

Costs are going up constantly at the moment. But yes, 2 extra mouths to feed, pay for all their school stuff, extra water and electricity. It all mounts up. I have a DD away at uni and I really noticed our bills rise when she was here over the summer, and she wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. How much maintenance was DH paying before they moved in, and does it cover the increased costs? I'm guessing not.

You absolutely need to do that "sit down and work out where your money is going" exercise. On the face of it £50 a month on a hobby is perfectly reasonable, but if you have literally no fat in your budget it might not be possible any more.

It's like the famous phrase: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.”
You've flipped from the first case to the second case.

So the op pays in & husband makes his excuses! And on the other side, oh can take money out when he wants. Joint accounts are not the answer!
He needs to pay off his debts, get maintenance from the kids mum and get a grip when it comes to household bills he obviously doesn't know how much everything costs nowadays

He needs to stop with the credit cards. If you can’t afford it without putting it on a card, you can’t afford it. If you got rid of the credit card you’d have an extra £500 per month, which is a very decent saving.

Try to move away from “it’s not fair” and blaming each other - look at it like a joint problem to be solved. You both have 6 kids to feed and a limited income, what needs to happen to make it work.

There are quite a few underlying issues here. The fact that his debt is 1/3 of your take home pay, you don’t own a home and have 6 kids, you’re a relatively low earner (understandable given that you have two young kids).

Honestly though if all 6 kids are going to be living with you for the foreseeable you need to make a plan. And do it jointly. Yes you may need to seriously consider where you shop and do things like meal planning, but he also needs to get his debt paid off and stop spending money on airfix. Personally in your position I’d be agreeing with my DH that we’d have 6 months of really frugal
living to try to get more on an even keel. Including a cut back Christmas, no takeaways, second hand clothes, only domestic holidays etc.

He should also seriously consider sorting out the finances with his kids’ mother. I think you should also be thinking about whether you can increase your own earning potential once your younger kids are in school.

Otherwise, things are only going to get harder. How are you going to stay in this house long term when you have 4 teens and 2 kids between 5-10? What about university fees, secondary school trips etc? You’ve got to plan for this now or you’ll just slip more and more into debt.

6 kids will always be expensive. To be fair, you do well to both work as the logistics / childcare with 6 kids must be huge. I'm assuming you work pt because of your income, and it wouldn't be easy to increase that. But it's not a high income and the debt repayment is proportionally a lot. How much longer will that be going on?

Given that things are tight, your DH needs to cut down on hobby spends.

I agree show DH the shopping receipts and challenge him to suggest some improvements. It is usually cheaper to shop around and get things from different places, but this is obviously time consuming - but maybe there are a few things you can order online in bulk eg toiletries, cleaning products. You could look at this together. I don't think £235 is that high for 8 people but if you need to save money, it might not be as hard as you think.

Good luck OP. You sound very calm and resilient considering you're juggling a complex family life and work and money struggles.

Your problem, aside from having 6 kids,
is the classic - “on paper we earn a good wage” “I know we are fortunate…” “we should be able to afford it”
No you don’t. You simply aren’t earning enough to support 8 people. What constitutes a “good” wage is entirely relative to your outgoings, and yours are always going to be substantial.

You both need transparency and coordination on bills and income.

It seems you are still operating separate finances but with 6 children that isn't going to work. My guess is he has lost touch with food costs. If it's £900 per month that's allowing £30 per day which for 8 people is £3.75 per per day. You might be able to shave something off the food costs but it's not going to be frantically different.

Is he open to sharing his finances? If so then agree to meet monthly where you outline all the essential bills, including his debts and importantly agree a budget. Both of you should have some spending money, if there is something left over.

There are lots of free resources on planning joint finances so suggest you look at these.

As you are not married, your reduced income will impact you later in life as you are able to add to pensions or long term savings. Something to consider...if marriage is not on the cards, then start being selfish and protect your future.

Have you applied for Universal Credit? With 6 kids and £850 rent, you could get about £700 a month on the income you've put in your OP. More if you pay childcare costs.

Your income isn't massive - and with 6 kids!

Sorry but your partner is being unreasonable.
He's gaslighting you.

If he has £500 a debts a month to pay off how can he blame you for YOUR spending?

Either you sit down as adults and create a spread sheet and a plan or you may split up- he sounds a bit of a nightmare.

Came on to say this. Depending on where you are in the country, it could be closer to £1100pm. You should definitely apply.

That's a pretty low wage for six kids. That's why you're skint