Hi, I post now and then and I'm going to try and not give out too much detail so I don't out myself.
I seem to be having some money troubles in my marrage. Sorry this is long!
Myself and my husband both worked full time untill we had a baby. I then took maternity leave, and then left my job after doing the three months needed to keep my maternity money. We did this as we both agreed we didn't want to use childcare. He remains in full time work. We have a joint account that we pay all the bills etc from. Anything left was then our own money, and this joint account remains.
While raising our child I have also worked from home running my own busness. I saved up some money before I went in leave so I could continue to pay into the bills account and pay my way while on maternity, and once I left work.
I still pay into the bills account, it's not much but it's something, and I also pay myself a small allowance from the money I make from my small business. I don't take any money from my husband for myself. I have just managed to cover this from my business, I don't make any extra money or save any money.
My husband pays everything else, including all the bills and the mortgage. Any money left from his wage is then for him to pay for work related expenses such as lunch and petrol, and of course his own monthly allowance. Without going into facts and figures he gets around 3 x as much money as me to spend on himself, once he has paid for work related expenses.
My husband also has a sideline business which he uses to pay into the joint account too. This money is what mostly covers what I don't pay in anymore. I don't have any sight of this account, but I understand that we only take half the profit from this account every month to cover what I don't earn anymore. It also covers the difference in our mortgage when we moved house after I had left work, but we did agree this is where the extra money would come from.
Recently my husband has been worried about money, and he finds it hard to talk about it though. He sometimes tells me that he can't keep taking money from his sideline business to cover what I don't pay, and asks when I will make enough money to pay what I should be into the joint account again. I have explained how hard it is to work and raise a child, and that I need our child to be in school before I can earn proper money again.
He has also said that he has been taking extra money for himself from the sideline business, and he can't keep doing this anymore. He says this is to pay for things that the house needs, that I want. But I don't ask for anything, I even buy all our child's clothes and pay for his pre school fees.
Recently we were given some money by his family, and I made a spreadsheet to manage what we spent it on. This is what we have actually used for house things, and when I tot it up we have spent a third of the money. But he has told me that there is only a tenth of it left. He refuses to help me go through the spreahsheet and workout where it has gone, says he feels anxious about it and its like I am accusing him of wasting money.
I don't know how to get a handle on things. I am super carefull with my money and spend very little, my husband does buy himself nice things, but he always seems to need them for work or something.
I only have sight of my own account and the joint. I can't see his, or the sideline business account.
He makes me feel worried about bringing up money with him, to the extent that when the tumble drier recently broke I was very worried about telling him and his reaction.
He also makes me feel bad for not working a full time job anymore, and that it's my fault we can't eat out as much as we used to or have everything we want. It makes me feel a bit worthless really. I think this is made worse when he buys himself something nice and fancy, and has nice lunches out, and I'm living on very little (although we have a lovely home with nice things like a new kitchen, so that makes it hard to feel hard done by). He seems to have more of a go at me for not earning much when I manage to save enough of my allowance to go out for dinner with my friends, which is rare, like I shouldn't have enough for these things as I don't earn as much as him, or that if I can afford things like that then I should pay more into the joint account so he can keep more in his sideline business, or have more spare money himself.
What can I do? Is our setup normal? How do other married couples with kids balance the books together? It's all starting to get me down and I feel we need to get it sorted. I'm just looking for some sympathy and good advice please.
Reading that back that's a massive post, so thanks for reading!