I will try to keep this brief but it is complicated.
Partner of 9 years, unmarried & have a 3 year old together.
And have been renting together for 5 years.
I have been self-employed for over 4 years, hit a rough patch financially last year & half and have been working tirelessly to re-build and/ or return to full-time employed position for security & secure a house. Despite my instability financially & tbh from the start whilst pregnant & using savings to survive I still have held up my side 50% rent, bills & childcare both unpaid & paid.
I have also clung onto a modest deposit (savings) to buy a house.
From 14m to last month child was in private nursery 2 days only per week.
I may add our child has just started pre-school (school setting not private). So term-time, full-time school hours only.
Partner works shifts 4 on-4 off & gets paid overtime. Has no start time or finish time so this makes it difficult for me to work around in terms of employment should those days fall on working/ school days. So he is not helping at all on his working days due to really long hours.
He was had no reduction in income even through the pandemic & earns more.
On top of this he has a creative side business he is trying to build & seems to be pinning hopes on this for future financial gain. His day job is not his dream whereas mine I have trained in, got a degree & been doing for 16 years.
We are both nearly 40. We are running out of time.
We recently moved to a cheaper rental & do not pay for wraparound care in order to help release some financial pressure. However that only allows me to work 30 hours per week if he is not off & so I have been working before school & after child is in bed if I have a lot of work on. Basically crazy hours in the night if necessary which tbh is part & parcel with running a business & although hard is ok.
I WFH luckily.
After 3 months of being in this new place we have discovered damp & vermin. So I am obvsiously getting increasingly frustrated that we are stuck in a rental trap.
Here comes the issue.
He is in no hurry to buy a house to the point where he shuts down the conversation & says “do you have money to buy a house?” whereas I am explaining if I was to return to full time role, we could afford this if he actually bothered to save for a deposit.
I am fully aware of the property market & my concern is waiting even longer we will get even more priced out of the market. Emotionally I need a stable safe to live & for our daughter.
He says “you have had X amount of years to buy a house, if you wanted to you would have already done it!”
He says he shouldn’t be pressured by me.
If he wanted a house he wouldn’t be waiting on me he’d do it anyway.
Which is incredibly hurtful to me as I have never earned even when employed in my profession enough to have bought a decent house, however in hindsight I do understand it may have been possible 10 years ago when prices weren’t so high.
Although my dream was never to own a house by myself I was stupidly waiting till I met the right person.
I think it is unreasonable & unrealistic to suggest an average single income could afford to buy a house easily.
He also says when he is ready he will buy a house which is total bluesky thinking as he seemingly has not got the money, no idea of the market & how mortgages work, whereas I do as I have been researching it.
He says I shouldn’t just be aiming to buy a house & he has bigger goals & will miraculously be able to buy one when those goals are reached.
I get really angry at his head in the clouds mentality.
All i want to do is speak to a mortgage broker who can assess our situation & tell us where we stand so we can work towards this, but he won’t entertain that either.
I have told him we can have both, nothing will be stopping you working on those goals if we owned as opposed to renting. In a lot of cases my caluclations show we would be paying the same or less on a mortgage instead of renting & obviously building an asset too.
More to the deeper issue here, we are not married & despite having a child we are both committed to, he basically is unwilling to buy a house together & own an asset instead of wasting money on rent.
This to me is not smart & an insult to our relationship. He is clearly not committed to me so there is no future.
Major arguement yesterday where he then decided he would go & live alone after this tenancy ends. It is only a 6m tenancy & we are half of the way through it.
If this ends up being the case this leaves me in a really difficult position. I could not afford the rent alone at the current place (not even sure the landlord would allow me to be the sole tenant) & would be trying to find a rental that excepts dogs as a single mum & maybe self employed to boot.
On top of this it would be the cut off time to apply for the school our child is currently in.
I don’t want to leave the area due to family close by as they are really my only support system also. Or not be able to get my daughter into school by missing school applications as a whole with no fixed address.
So basically I am asking what are your thoughts as outsiders here?
Should I just cut my losses & break up my family due to child’s father not being able to commit & grow up & let myself be ruined even more financially & kiss goodbye to ever owning a house?
There does not seem to be any good option & I am so burned out with this all.
TIA for taking time to read this ridiculous novel xxx