My partner spent all our savings

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My fiancé is terrible with money. He had debts when I met him which he paid off a few years ago when he received some inheritance and I thought that would be the end of it. The rest of the inheritance bought a few luxury items, new car, some of it squandered but hey, it was his money, I couldn't really begrudge a bit of guilt free spending. We agreed to put £10,000 of it into savings to start our mortgage deposit fund. However, a few weeks ago he admitted to me that he has now spent most of the mortgage savings. He couldn't even tell me what on, it's just been pissed up the wall over the last 6 months. I've put my sensible head on and taken control of the finances now as he cannot be trusted. He's agreed that's fine as he has a problem. But I'm still so angry about it!! I'm not working at the moment (I'm at home with baby) so we have no spare money to even begin to make those savings back up. So it will be up to me to save that money myself when I return to work. Which I guess is fine, it will be my house too, I should chip in. But I'm the one now having to bail him out. I've been scrimping and saving my £40 a week housekeeping for our honeymoon fund and had to use it to pay off a payday loan he had outstanding. How would you feel about being in this situation? Would it be make or break? I love him and can't fault him as a father or partner (bar the money issues!!) so have no intention of leaving him. But anyway, what are you opinions? Sorry for long post.

I'm not technically on maternity leave anymore. My baby is 18 months old. But we don't qualify for any tax credits so 90% of my wages if I went back full time would go on childcare fees. So realistically it's not financially sensible to go back to work until she starts school.

I couldn't stay with a man like this. You will always be worried about money, debts accumulating, bailiffs calling. Debt really grinds you down. And you aren't working on this together, he's deceiving you. Work out how many times he must have lied to you and how many times he's made a poor choice instead of a good one.
The worst thing is, when you do leave, he'll move on to someone else like you never even mattered to him.
Sorry to be harsh but wake-up calls are painful.

Why isn't it? Have you looked at childcare vouchers? I would also point out that if you were on your own and not working/on a low income, the free hours would kick in at aged 2...

OP if you won't walk away from him at least postpone the marriage until he can demonstrate that he has grown up - paid all his debts, sold HIS things to get finances back on track.
If he can't sort himself out within, say, one year then for your child's sake do not marry him.

I didn't actually realise the severity of the situation until a lot of extra things were pointed out to me by some of you so thanks for the insight. I didn't realise the joint bank account would effect my credit score. I didn't even think about how the payday loan would look on the credit report. It was my understanding that debts that have been paid off were removed from the credit score after 5 years but now I'm not so sure? This has properly wrecked our future and any plans to get our own place.

No way to the wedding. Who is paying for that anyway?

Tying yourself to him legally and financially is a godawful idea.

Unfortunately, your children only have one responsible parent. And that's you. And they are depending on you to do the right thing by them.

"90% of my wages if I went back full time would go on childcare fees". He should be paying half of his daughter's childcare fees. If you will both be working full-time, then why on earth would childcare come out of your salary alone? Your thinking on this is as skewed as his.

your problems are bigger than money.

YOU CAN'T TRUST HIM!

and the arse is sunning himself at your expense right now while you sweat trying to fix his mess - again.

he's taking money from you and your kids. shameful. i really don't understand how you can think that taking vows with him in 5 months time is in any way good idea. it certainly isn't good for your kids. he's pissed their chance of a home up the wall.

FFS walk away. Fast!

"I really feel for you, being betrayed like that. But I hope you give him one more chance."

I fucking hope you don't. Women should stop telling other women to give men one more chance to fuck up our lives. No. No fucking chances, you have one life, live it well and don't give anyone a chance to fuck it up. Your life is worth something, our lives are worth something and it depresses and enrages me to hear women being told to value their lives so little, that they should give men who have proved themselves time and time again to be vampires on women's time, energy, love and lives, yet another fucking chance. Fuck that, you owe this loser nothing and you have the right to live your life well.

As for going back to work and 90% of your earnings going on childcare - why? Why isn't your DP paying for childcare? Is it not his child too?

If you left him and worked 30 hours a week, depending on what you earn, you'd have a big proportion of your childcare paid for. Have a look at www.entitledto.co.uk/ to find out what you'd get.

My dad was like this. He put my mother through absolute hell. She was very young when she married him in the 60s, found out when she had 3 kids under 4, and her family refused to support her if she left him. We ended up homeless for over a year.

She worked her arse off to save enough for a deposit. My dad got his mitts on it (1970s, god only knows) and spent it all.

Amazingly, my mother managed to keep this from us until a couple of years ago when a family friend made a comment that brought it all out, explaining a lot of our very early, hazy childhood memories. She took financial control, got a career and divorced him after we left home; she is now well-off, but he cost her so much. The thought of my mother in her 20s, homeless, no support, ill from the stress, but still managing to shelter her children from what their father had done is almost unbearable.

Ok you have had your eyes truly opened now, OP. this is a crap time of year to have this all out in the open, but I suppose there is no good time.
Cancel the wedding ASAP, how the hell were you two paying for it anyway?
Get the deposits back ASAP , and straight into a totally separate account for you & dcs.
For the sake of the dc, you might have to hold on to normality until after the new year, but you really need to plan ahead from tonight. Your children MUST come first, before you & him.
You don't need to tell family anything at the moment.

Oh by the way, with my ex, we were getting married too. In the end when we broke up I walked away thousands of pounds down. I'd paid for most stuff.

He bought my engagement ring, put a small deposit down on the hire of wedding suits and his own wedding ring which he only spend £60 on. So apart from my engagement ring, he spend about £200. Meanwhile me and my family were about £15k down (at least).

Who is paying for your wedding OP?

I'm the wage earner in our household. DH is a SAHP, and the one who manages our finances.

I'm a bit crap with money (though I have never been dishonest).

I have a weekly standing order from our joint account into my spending account. Any less frequently than that and my crapness wins out. My weekly allowance is less than DHs, precisely because he needs to look after DD and that costs money in bus fares, cups of tea, entrance fees and so forth. I cycle to work and make sandwiches.

Joint stuff comes out of the joint account. That includes DDs clothes, presents etc - the stuff that isn't everyday. I have a card for the joint account, but when I spend anything on it, I email DH so his books balance. Having to send that email puts the brakes on my crapness.

Some would argue that I am infantilised. But this is the system we have jointly devised such that I don't end up pissing money away on (excessive) coffee and tat, and DH feels allowed to spend money on (a moderate amount) of coffee and tat, and we are both confident in our budget.

Can you imagine getting to that sort of agreement? Will he admit his culpability and work with you? I'm of the opinion that an important part of a marriage is filling in for each other's defects. That has to be consensual and two-way, but when it is both then it can make a great team.

I bet you are paying for the wedding too on top of holidays he can't afford? Stop giving him pocket money and enabling his financial incontinence and awful lies and run for the bloody hills. You have a golden opportunity to extricate yourself from this utter idiot of a man. You would be a complete fool to marry him. Or go ahead and marry him and come back when you have more kids, repossessed house and debts he has run up in your name. He is dishonest - surely that is enough to end it. Or is your bar set so low that you will stay with him and mother and police his spending until he is unfaithful or violent.

Btw why he needs an allowance per week which is more than you spend on you and your DC - explain how that is fair or right. He is selfish, lying and bankrupt. Get the hell away yesterday, if not sooner.

And take to heart what MrsDesireeCarthorse has said, do you want to have your children suffer like that?

If you are hell bent on marrying this man you must find some way of ascertaining how the money has been spent. Do the figures on the statements you've seen add up to £10K? If not could he have secret bank accounts he's channelling cash through? My first thought on seeing your post was gambling and if that's the case you need to know. Check his credit reports with all three agencies to cover every base. Dissociate yourself financially from him as far as you can and above all do not bail him out any further or take on any debt in your own name.

It is possible to live with a man you can't or won't trust with access to family money but it requires a level of vigilance and steely determination never to be taken for a ride you just may not want to take on especially as it's for life.

Don't worry about jumping down his throat and don't back off from asking whatever you need to know. That's a green light for him to manipulate you into potential disaster.

He now needs to start selling anything he can of his possessions to start paying down the debt and taking on a second job. I'd strongly suggest you go back to work asap to start to build your own long term financial security.

My parents are paying for the wedding. He's not really paid for any of it yet apart from the rings. He was meant to be paying for the suits but he can't really do that now we are cutting back. I know he can't afford it. He would have probably just used the savings, if there were any left by that point! We had like £1000 left by the end of all this and it's now in my savings account so he can't waste any more of it. I wish he had told me about this sooner.

he didn't tell you sooner because he wanted to spend it first!

As a practical suggestion, you might try both using a joint budget tracker for a couple of months. The kind of system where you have to track and record every single purchase. It can be a pain to do it every day, but a) it will demonstrate to both of you exactly where your money is going, and b) the simple act of knowing he has to record every purchase and share it with his partner might help curb his impulse buying. (Which, to give him the benefit of the doubt, might be more like an addiction than him just being thoughtless or selfish.)

You can either use specialist software like YNAB ("You Need A Budget") -- which personally I found a bit too confusing but other people I know swear by it. Or if your excel skills are up to it, just make a shared google doc spreadsheet. Make columns for categories (i.e., 'food', 'baby things', 'rent', 'car things', 'snacks and eating out',) and rows for each day of the month. Have a page each for each month (so you each track your spending, but it's visible to each of you). Make sure you're categories are clear on what are 'family' purchases and what are 'personal' purchases. So groceries you buy that everyone eats, versus snacks and coffees you might get when you are out by yourself; stuff like cleaning products that are for the household, versus his ebay crap which is for only him.

My DH and I did this when we were really broke and having lots of arguments about money. It helped because once it's all laid out in a spreadsheet, it's easier to point at the problem (and admit that there is a problem). For us, it was realizing we each spent way more than we would ever have realized on eating out, both together and individually. With you it might be that, if he is spending ten times as much money as you on groceries because when he goes to buy one thing he comes home with ten others, then that's what you can focus on as the problem, and then discuss (together) a way to resolve.

Anyway, it might be something to propose as an idea (along with perhaps debt-counseling) to try for a few months, to see if he can commit to confronting his problems with money and working to change them.

Are your parents aware of all this?

He has prioritised buying crap on eBay over your wedding plans OP. And over your child.

I know you want to think he just couldn't help it but that's not true.

'I'm not technically on maternity leave anymore. My baby is 18 months old. But we don't qualify for any tax credits so 90% of my wages if I went back full time would go on childcare fees. So realistically it's not financially sensible to go back to work until she starts school.'

NO, NO, NO! You've been very foolish here. Anyone who drops work to look after children whilst with an unmarried partner is being foolish unless he/she is independently wealthy.

You leave him and get back to work. Get a FT job and leave him.

Because if you don't do it now, you'll do it later, when you've been evicted or repossessed, have been out of work even longer, have more kids (and do NOT fall into that trap of thinking you need to stay with him because you want another child and you think you're too old to find another sperm donor) because that is all this man can offer you and your child.

This would be a deal-breaker for me. He has been incredibly dishonest and selfish both with the inheritance and the debt. £10k was an amazing amount to be gifted towards a house deposit and I don't understand even with your response how it could have been frittered away.

Whether you're a SAHP or not the two of you should have discussed money & be fully aware or your family income and outgoings.

If he was single then he can be irresponsible like this but with a family it's unacceptable. I would leave him (something I never say lightly!)

Sheer madness to have quit work, childcare is a joint expense when part of a couple.

Maintaining financial independence should be drilled into girls at school. Relationships can go wrong, the other earner can lose their job, pensions get screwed and employers don't usually look twice at cvs with huge gaps when they have plenty of others showing a work ethic.

There's also no way I'd be letting my parents pay for a wedding.

It does seem like you expect everyone else to pay for your wants, wedding house etc but don't want to work and help yourself.