AIBU to think childcare expenses should be shared equally?

[deeadee]

Me and DH have been together for three years and have recently had a baby. For the past year or so I started being bothered by the fact that I seem to end up covering most of the pregnancy / childcare and even most household (e.g personal care, cleaning products) costs. DH and I both work for the same organisation however I am in a slightly more senior role and my income is a little higher (roughly by 20%). I have started feeling as though my higher income is the reason why he feels he should contribute less to common expenses. For example, I am the only one who ever buys clothes or personal items for the baby, hygene products and so on. He went out and bought diapers once because I asked him to.
I don’t know what bothers me more - the lack of initative to buy the things we need around the house and assumption that I will take care of it or not offering to cover a share of the expenses when he sees I am doing so much. I feel as though he takes it for granted that I take care of the house and baby stuff and that, since I am on a higher income, it should be me doing it.
When we met he was always very generous but I always offered to split bills, not wanting to owe anything. He still is generous on occasions, he is a great dad and partner, so I don’t know how to approach this without damaging our relationship. I am afraid that voicing my frustration will push him into defensive mode and do more harm than good.
Has anyone been in this situation?

How do you manage your money day to day? I assume it’s not all combined. We have a joint account and when we had a baby, we agreed to put more into the joint account to cover childcare fees, baby stuff etc, so it’s always shared. Seems much easier that way. We earn similar so contribute 50/50 to joint account

I don’t how people run a household together without a joint account?

I agree that the answer to this depends how you manage other day to day expenses, eg food. If you have a shared account then the baby expenses should come out of that.

You are now a family and all family expenses for a shared child come out of the shared joint account.
You can either put all your money in this account and then transfer an equal amount back to each persons account for personal spends

or contribute a percentage, say 70%, of each persons salary to this joint account , so you each keep 30% of your earnings.

a child is a shared expense and is not just for a mother to pay for.

please tell us you didn’t contribute 50:50 during a period of reduced income for you on maternity leave

Also it's not just expenses to think about - is he pulling his weight with caring for the baby?

please tell us you didn’t contribute 50:50 during a period of reduced income for you on maternity leave

If you did, I can only assume you’re married to my ex-DH!

I think the fair way in a marriage is that both get equal spend and save money and the rest goes in the joint pot. It seems more concerning to me that yiu are worried about his reaction to being asked to spend an equal proportion of income on a child that is equally his.

I am not married to dp and we have no joint finances, so he gives me.monthly money for day to day spends on the kids and we go halves on big things like Christmas and school uniform. He was paying for the childcare vouchers through salary sacrifice, but we don't need that any more.

We talked about a joint account for baby expenses and even opened one but didn’t really implement it so far; neither of us trasfered money into it. It probably will be me who will have to take a first step and ask him to follow suit. Although I would have loved for him to take the lead and say “I transfered X amount this month”.. Feels like if I don’t do it and mention it, he won’t. The baby is just a few weeks old and at least on my end I’ve been overwhelmed with all the changes, lack of sleep etc.

He’s not a great dad if he isn’t doing the absolute basic of buying what his child needs. The bar is so low for these men!

This.

We never kept exact track of who pays what but we always took turns and I felt it was well balanced. For example, I would buy groceries one day, he would buy the next time. We would take turns paying for meals out etc. We split the rent and household bills too. In the past I felt this worked well. It’s probably time for a joint account that we actually use..

Amazing how many men think that a child is some kind of a hobby for the woman, and so is their financial / emotional / practical responsibility.

Don't do it ad hoc. "Generous on occasions" does not work now you have a child together. Agree on what you're each going to contribute and set up standing orders to feed a joint account. I wouldn't bother having a house one and a baby one: just one for joint expenses that covers both.

I've done it two different ways: with a partner I didn't have children with and neither of us had other commitments, we worked out what we needed per month for the household and split that according to our relative incomes. That meant when I got a pay rise, his contribution went down, which made him very happy! With a more recent partner, he was paying child maintenance and I was working freelance so we calculated it based vaguely on relative earnings and tweaked it every now and again to make it fair. I also know people who put all their income into a joint account and then get the same amount paid into individual accounts, and one couple who only had one joint account but agreed each individual purchase (which seemed crazy, but there you go).

Have the discussion and get it sorted so you can cross it off your list.

Implement it.
now. today.

standing order to joint and move all bills to that account gas electric mortgage. everything.
when it runs low
“DH you need to add a £200 top up to the joint. I’ve already added mine”

and do not be going and buying “bits” on your own card.
if I go to soft play and get a coffee or a playgroup it goes on the joint.
If I pick up a T-shirt for one of the kids with some stuff for me…it goes through as a separate transaction on the joint.

you carry more than 50% of household planning and management the least he can do is pay his half.

Not everyone can have a joint account. We can’t due to DH’s former bankruptcy.

I do have an account solely for joint household expenses though and we both pay into it - I pay 70%, he pays 30% as that is proportional to our income. So it is a bit like a joint account only he can’t access it.

Thank you for all the advice!! It really helps me to see how everyone else is handling it. This brings me to my other question - would you say that the higher earner should contribute more to the joint account (even if the difference is not huge between incomes)? Should the contribution be proportionate to the income? Or should both partners contribute the same amount?

We split by proportion. E.g. I earn 60% of our total income so I pay 60% of our joint expenses.

We have a joint account where our joint bills come from (mortgage, council tax, Internet etc)

The remainder is mine to spend as I will (just like his 60%). Personal bills include things like our phones, gym, hairdresser etc

Could you add the babies expenses to the list of bills with a rough-ish amount and split between you?

We pool all our money in a shared joint account, and have the same amount for personal spending sent to our personal accounts.
I am currently the higher earner by a lot, and this is fair to us.
He has been the higher earner for many years, so this is evening it up a bit.

50:50 only really works if you earn about the same, as otherwise one person has a lot more left over than the other.

proportional contributions are fairer than 50:50, if the amount earned is very different

If you earn 20% more, you should be pay 55% of everything and he 45%

If you are temporarily on lower pay due to maternity leave, then recalculate based on how much more his income is compared to your maternity income.

This. Same pocket money, everything else pooled.

We do 50/50 despite me being high earner because:

1. Gross salary isn’t fair as tax differs
2. take home is hard to calculate as it depends on several things pensions, bonus etc.
3. I am the higher earner but also the woman so there is the motherhood penalty
4. I contribute more in terms of domestic duties
5. being a woman cost more. Haircuts are more expensive as an example
6. i know I am responsible and the surplus money I have is saved and goes towards our future security. My DH is a saver but also “needs” over 200 random football tops. If he had more spare cash we’d need to rent a garage for them.

In an ideal world OP it would either be all joint money which we do, or you should both be left with the same amount of money after bills/expenses. So that means you paying more into the account but then you will both have an equal amount of “fun money”.

I do think joint finances is the easiest way once you have a family because otherwise you’d be forever keeping track of every little thing and sending each other money. I have a 10 week old baby and if we had separate finances I’d be having to ask my husband to send me random amounts every day for nappies, clothes, wipes, milk etc, much easier to just both contribute to a pot and spend from there

It's worked fine for us for 20 years. I pay some things from my account, he pays others things from his. If either of us needs extra the other one will transfer it.
Seems a bit of a waste to have another account just so we can have a joint one. We already have so many accounts we can't keep track.

Going back to your OP, no need to have an argument about this. Just a normal conversation "ok, I think we need to get a bit more organised and start using that account we set up, shall we have a chat about setting up direct debits?". Take the opportunity to discuss other spending too - it's great that things have happened naturally so far, but while you're on maternity leave you're more likely to be buying household stuff (as you've found) so you can deal with other spending through the same account.

I'd start by making a spreadsheet of all joint expenses - rent, bills, food shopping, car stuff (if you have one), nappies, budget for child's clothes etc. Once you have an estimated total, look at it with DH and agree how you will split the total you need in there each month. It's really up to you if you want to split 50/50 or by take home pay. Our take home pay is fairly similar so we do 50/50. it doesn't need to be an argument or upset anyone, it's a very sensible approach to managing expenses once you have a child. We find it so much easier than transferring each other money or paying for different things. And you have to be strict and use the joint account for baby things. You can also talk about savings, how much money you'll need to budget for childcare etc. it seems worrying to me that you think it will damage your relationship to have a sensible discussion about money management.