Secret savings account!!

[MumaJo]

I'll keep it as brief as possible....
I've been with my partner for 15 years, we have alway been financial separate until the last 3 year when we had our son, since then I've had to rely on him for money as I can only work part time!
I have £10k debt from when I brought our house, (my partner help with renovation cost so it's half his house) and he has his own house that he rents out...
He works hard and is on a very good wage currently earning 3.5 times what I get, he also gives me money towards the household bills and covers the nursery! I have very little if not nothing left at the end of the month after all the bills, food and general life.
We usually take turns getting groceries as I like to feel I'm contributing and I tend to get anything my boys need's like, shoes, clothes etc! I do manage to stretch it out to get my hair done etc every couple of months but I'm constantly juggling and occasionally have to add to my loan to get by!!
I have an old 2010 mini which is fine and my partner recently purchased a brand new VW transporter to convert into a camper for us so go off travelling in so that lovely!! He has paid for our holiday! But I keep getting reminders that he paid for that!!
But I've recently found out he has a savings account with £70k in it... and he puts £1000 in a month (he doesn't know I know)
One part of me thinks it's his money, he does contribute towards bills and he can do what he wants with it... but the other half feels like I have been struggling unnecessarily when he could have been helping me!!
I feel he has a lovely safety net, 1.5 houses, a massive saving account and a 3 pension when he gets old!! I on the other hand have debt, no way to work more to pay it off as I look after our boy and all I earn goes on bills and general life!!
Really hard to know what to do! It's not mine, I don't have any right to it and not even sure if I should be upset it exists!!
Let me know what you all think.. TIA xx

How cab you not see what is going on here? He's completely fleecing you, and you aren't even married.

I had savings when I was with my Ex that I didn’t tell him about. I’m a saver & v careful with money & he wasn’t so I didn’t feel comfortable being honest as then he would question my attitude to money/spending “you have money so what’s the problem” etc. he lived in my house & managed to save £20k while we were together & he’s not got much left.

Could it just be different attitudes to spending?

I would go back to work full time & improve your financial situation.

This, with bells on!

You say “we have 1.5 houses, a lovely safety net”. There is no “we” @MumaJo You have very little OP except a lot of debt and only half a house. You aren’t married and have basically not made much pension contributions in the last 3 years. Hour “D”P can leave you hi and dry with a baby and you’ll have nothing to show for it. Get married or address the unequal pay issue.

WTAF!
You need to sort this out and NOW.
If DP makes an income from renting his house, that needs to be included in his earning calculations.

• Sit down and work out ALL the family bills. Mortgage, CT, gas, elec, water, Netflix, childcare, insurance, groceries, holidays, joint savings.
• Your missing pension contributions, including your employer contributions are to be included in this for you to pay into a private pension.
• Work out the percentage share you each need to pay into the pot to cover your joint expenses.
• The remaining is your own for haircut, commuting, gifts etc.
• If you don't want him to have a claim on your house, YOU need to pay the mortgage but he ought to make a contribution for rent and the joint family bills.

You do not have a partnership. You have two individuals who are living together. If you break up he's going to end up with his savings, his pension contributions, his house and half of your house.

In the meantime you're frequently skint, losing out on savings and pension contributions and if you split you get CM and 1/2 a house. Good luck, OP, you have opened yourself up to a world of financial pain.

Never, never, never be a sahm with a man you are not married to. A marriage certificate is more than a piece of paper; it is a degree of financial security for mums.

How did you find out he had a savings account?

Her house is only in her name.

Just get back to work full time. Tell him how much a full time nanny will be, full cost including tax, NI, pension and sick pay plus holiday/maternity cover and all the other dependent / compassionate type of leave that might arise. He’ll need to cover half of that. If he would rather that you do that, he will need to pay accordingly.

@potato57 a good friend of mine did his mortgage renewal (you have to disclose all your financial stuff) and I obviously I tell my friend I'm skint etc... they decided to tell me as thought it wasn't right!! Yes shouldn't have disclosed the info but I'm not mad about that!!

Dynamics may change but the fact that you aren't married doesn't. Get married for your own sake or if you choose not to then you need to accept the fact that he is well within his rights to have money that doesn't need to be shared with you.

Get married. Marriage isn’t just a romantic idea or some old fashioned patriarchal system of oppression. It exists to protect women, specifically mothers. It’s legal recognition of your relationship and if the fact that assets you both own are marital assets that support the family unit.

If he has proof he's paid for the renovations he could have a claim on your house in the event of a split, even if it's not in his name.

You need to be very, very careful.

Stop saying your house is half his. It isnt. It is yours. You're not married. You need to behave smarter.

start making a note of what you pay for eacb month and what he pays for. Once you have accurate figures, look at how to balance it out. But your house you will need should he or you end the relationship.

eacb year you work part time, or not at all, is a reduction in your standard of living later.

If this was the other way around, posters wouldn't never suggest the women pays off the mans debt

Well your own situation is all of your own making isn't it ? How can he have a se cret bank account or that you can't access ? By the way he's also your partner which means you've absolutely no leg to stand on ?

So to make yourself financially independent and not reliant on a man, you do that by marrying one?? 🤔

Seriously OP, just ask him to marry you. If he refuses you know where you stand with him.

Your friend is going to lose their job when this gets out.

I think in this case, she's probably better off not marrying. When they split up, she'll keep her house this way.

Not many supportive comments on this thread for the OP.

You only have to read the hundreds of posts on here of women being screwed in this exact situation to realise you are putting yourself at so much risk.

You are struggling whilst he is raking it in each month, you pay what sounds like at best 50/50 whilst he earns 3.5x what you do (so you are subsidising his savings too), you buy all the things your child needs like shoes and clothes (why on earth is he not covering at least 50% of this?) and you are sacrificing not only a current wage but a future pension by working less hours so that he can build himself a lovely nest egg.

How on earth you call this a partnership I do not know! Because it is not that. Its 2 people living together where one lives a cushy life, watching the person that gave birth to their child, struggle and scrimp and save.

Im sorry but no decent person would sit by with such inequality and then constantly remark when they stump up for a holiday!

A decent partnership would involve paying all bills (including EVERYTHING relating to your child) proportionate to earnings. Then childcare would either be equally dealt with (either financially or actual care) or the partner that has less earning potential would be helped if they are the primary carer, to build a decent pension pot so they arent losing out.

You are being mugged off in about 10 different ways and you call this a partnership, its just not. You need to change it before you are posting how he has left you and due to being unmarried you have no rights to any of the lovely pot he built up, he has squirrelled money away so pays no CMS and you have spent years barely working so have a tiny pension and no career prospects. You only have to read all the posts on here to see how often this happens.

So he has his house in his name which he rents out. And you have your house in your name which you both live in. That’s a pretty good deal for him as he gets to live with you rent free and just pay towards the bills.

I think you need to move out and rent somewhere together. Then you can get the rental income from your own house and you can use that to pay him back for that capital he spent when you renovated your own house.

Then you need to get back to work part time and he needs to go part time as well so you can share the childcare and housework. You should use your rental income and your salary to pay into your pension.

If he doesn’t want to do that then he needs to pay you to do his share of the childcare and housework and your need to share household bills.

That would make it a lot fairer than it is now. Right now, You are doing all the unpaid, low status, non pensionable work and he is doing all the well paid, high status pensionable work . He is getting a rent from his place ams you are not.

How are you repaying your debt?

im sorry but you are being very naive here. You are setting yourself up to be massively disadvantaged for your future, short and long term. This won’t ‘work itself out!!’ (Your exclamation marks.)

Who is going to pay for childcare, football club, scouts, changing your car, your pension contributions?

As a divorced mother (and note DIVORCED ie we were married) I am never going to catch up on my lost earnings and pension contributions.

As a starter. as suggested above, get out a big sheet of paper or set up a spreadsheet, and calculate everything now, and forecast everything for say five years time. You need to get debt-free asap, and you need access to cash to meet your needs so you are not left with £71 for the rest of the month ever again.

The inequity is making you very vulnerable, and you need to take this seriously. If you stay the course and endure as a couple, you need to act fast to rebalance things. If you split, I would worry for you.

Bang out of order, I had more money than my ex but everything about both of our finances was 100% open, and disclosed. My attitude is make whatever arrangements you like, but openness is critical. If you can't tell the truth and defend it, then something is deeply wrong.

I paid all the bills, but I made sure my ex knew how much every single one was on and had an independent way of verifying they were all paid. She also knew how much I had left and what went where, and we discussed the budget for everything I paid for. If I said no to anything "no" alone wasn't good enough, I explained the reasoning. No secrets, period

I'm concerned you're not married you've had 14 years to do that.

Your lack of money is a blip. I too took a career break to have two children but I did get back to work when the youngest started school.

What are you talking about? Every single comment is supportive of the op.