Husband and money

[ittybittylivingspace]

Hi all,

Would appreciate your views on my DH and I money situation. This will be long, sorry.

We've been together 13 years, married for 4, have a baby together. We own a house together and until I went on maternity leave we paid the same amount each into the joint account each month for mortgage and bills. DH earns £23k a year and I earn £14k.

When I went on maternity leave I got 6 weeks of 90% pay, then it's 33 weeks of SMP which is about £580 a month. Now I'm on zero per month for the next few months until I return to work. DH has been paying an extra £200 into the joint account each month and I've been paying £200 less in. I've been using my savings to fund myself while off work. When I go back to work I will have about £5k left of my savings. DH has £33k savings. I'll be doing 3 days a week and won't be able to afford to pay half the mortgage and bills. I also won't qualify for universal credit due to DH's savings. I don't see a penny of this money though.

Should he continue paying more money into the joint account and me pay less seen as my wage will be about 3 times less than his? I'll only be on £8k. I know if I ask him to do this it will cause a major argument.

By his logic, that doesn't matter.

Each family needs to earn enough to cover bills and needs to do basic housework and look after the kids.

If both partners are equal, they can be responsible for pulling their own weight - doing half of the housework / childcare and paying half of the bills.

Some families can optimise their income if they can focus all their effort on their job, so one person will do most of the childcare/housework and the other will pay most of the bills. That's great teamwork.

But in this case he's expecting you do to 80%(?) of the childcare and housework and still pay 50% of the bills. He's not pulling his weight - you're pulling some of it for him.

By his logic, that doesn't matter.

Sorry, I started a thought at the beginning of my post and didn't finish it!

I meant that he doesn't take you being PT into account when deciding how to split the bills, so he shouldn't take you being PT into account when deciding how to split the housework/childcare.

Either PT makes a difference (to both parts), or it doesn't.

Tell him that you agree with him, that what's his is his and what's yours is yours, but unfortunately you can't survive on what is being suggested so you're going to go to work full time and he will have to look after that baby or put £6k into childcare.
Your husband is a nob by the way.

We pay all wages into a combined pot.
60% goes into everyday account for rent, bills etc.
20% to a splurge account for dinners out, hair cuts etc.
20% to savings for holidays, new cars etc.
Separate accounts when you have a family does not work.

I honestly can't believe how many women continue to pay the same amount into the family pot, whilst on maternity leave, out of their own savings, as they did when working full time. Plus pay for everything baby related, plus take a drop in earnings by going back to work part time, which results in them reducing their pension, dipping further into savings and, in some cases benefits. This really needs to change, in this day and age of equality why is this still happening? You also have to question the selfishness of their husbands/partners who are happy to go along with this arrangement. It's disgraceful!

Reading all this back makes me amazed at why I have put up with this for so long
They are such manipulators you don't even realise it's happening.
Not until you get that 'light bulb' moment.
I really hope he does step up but I doubt it.
Start looking at family lawyers in your area. I'd make an appointment to see where I stood if separation did happen.

100% agree TheReef, it's so depressing.

If it helps OP my husband and I earn very different amounts, even before kids I earned around a 1/3 of what he did. That gap has of course increased as I've taken two year-long mat leaves and now work 4 days a week instead of 5. He puts in 2/3 more than me into our joint account, and our savings are shared/joint. He puts money into my personal ISA each year from his bonus. We are a family so it makes no sense at all to have anything separate, the pot is our pot.

You see it all the time, TheReef. I've even warned my daughter about 'The 50:50 guy'. Anyone who sees so black and white is likely to be a sexist pig, because again, I've yet to meet a 50:50 guy who is 50:50 about anything aside from money.

This sounds like financial abuse to me.

Unless his savings are locked up in a fixed term savings account of some sort? But still, he earns so much more that he should be paying MORE into the family unit to begin with.

What on earth would happen if you stayed at home to be a full-time parent? He sounds like a selfish twat to me.

Yes of course you should not be paying equal amounts. I work part time and my DH pays in roughly 2.5 times what I pay in. He earns a bit over 2 times what I earn. The child benefit also goes into our joint account. My contribution really just covers our childcare costs, and his contribution covers everything else (mortgage, bills etc), although it's all in one pot.

I think you need to talk to him.
Explain that he is also responsible for your child.
That as your working for him looking after your child he needs to pay more of the bills.
Baby has 168 hours in a week.
So as he works say 40 hours, your covering the same hours. Leaves. 128 hours.
Baby sleeps 10 hours at night so 70 hours a week. Leaves 58.
You do half so 26 hours a week each as he does maybe 6 hours your doing 20 hours a week he should be helping with, child care is £4 ish an hour so £80 a week or £320 that he should pay more a month.

OP paying half the bills when you have different incomes was always inequitable.
He sounds selfish.

My DH and I don’t have joint current accounts but we pool our money by keeping the same amount for discretionary spends then transferring the rest of our salaries to an account from which all bills are paid with the remainder being saved.

I’m currently on unpaid mat leave, we’ve both dropped our discretionary slightly, my husband is paying all the bills, my spends are from our maternity savings.
Child costs are now covered by the bills account.

Would this be an opinion for you both?

I don't agree that all money must be in a joint account.

My DH has a very different approach to spending than I do (likes expensive kit for his hobbies, brands Tec. Where I have v low cost hobbies and likes to shop second hand). An equal percentage of our incomes go into a joint account, everything thing else is individual. I watched my dad tell my mum what she could and couldn't spend money she had earned on and was determined not to have that happen to me.

Once our obligation to the joint account is covered our money is our own to spend/save as we wish. I realise that should we split, all accounts would be considered as proceeds of the marriage and probably affect me more (lower income, low spender, more savings) but I would spend that money on family stuff anyway if we needed it.

I just wanted to say that 'all money is family money' isn't the only way to manage joint finances.

You would be much better off without him. He's a taker does nothing to better you and your DDs life.

I'm curious. Has this 50/50 always been like this from when you first started dating?

@RantyAnty yes we have always had our own accounts for wages, then got a joint account for rent/mortgage and bills when we moved in together

I'm going to talk to him after I've got my uni essay out the way next week as I need to focus on that short term.

I'm gonna ask if we can put all wages into the joint account and use it for all spends on food, clothes etc. He can keep his £33 savings but I need him to help me out more

I would never expect my wife to contribute 50% of the household costs when I earn 7 times what she does.

She’s a nurse, I’m an entrepreneur.

I don’t actually ask for anything at all from her but never let her pay more then a 7th of anything if she insists.

Truthfully, what we have is “ours” and I encourage her to use all of the resources we have even when she doesn’t want to take anything and for commercial risk reasons I put our properties and savings in her name alone.

Not only do I love my wife, I trust her and know I couldn’t do what I do if at several key points she hadn’t supported me (physically and emotionally).

You also need to replenish your savings so he NEED'S to pay half of what you have spent during maternity leave. He's a joke.

Dont phrase it as helping you out. The family is his responsibility not just yours.

‘At the moment, the money available is not covering the basic needs of our child. We need to have our wages go into a joint account and have our food, clothing, nursery costs etc come out of it.

You both wanted a child but thought it fair that only you should take the financial hit. Why?

@AngelsSins that's part of the problem really. I wanted a child, he didn't. He agreed to have one to stop us splitting up, as I made it clear I couldn't live without having kids. He always implied he wanted kids eventually but kept putting it off, so I married him thinking we would have kids.

I had to really push to get him to agree to marriage. Then when I pushed the kids subject he said "you're never happy, you always want more".

Anyway, he always throws this back at me if I complain I'm struggling or I'm exhausted- "well you wanted this".

So I guess I've tried to not ask for much in terms of money as I feel guilty and feel like it's my cross to bear.

God this is awful when I hear it all out loud

It sounds like he really did not want this. What does he actually bring to your relationship?
On paper, you would be better off alone.

Why didnt you have the finances conversation before having a child??

@OneDay10 well from reading OPs update, because he didn't even want the child so wasn't going to change his way of life to accommodate it.

I'm sure in hindsight OP would've done things differently.