DH and his bonus

[Docugirl]

Can anyone help me articulate why this bothers me so much?

This is not the first time money issues have come up with my DH.

I can’t figure out how to actually say this without sounding grabby and needy.

We pay for our family day to day expenses proportionally. DH earns over twice as much as me.

He gets a large bonus at the end of the year and as per previous years, he does not mention anything about it. He expects anything outside of our usual set up to be spit 50 50. This wouldn’t be a problem for me if our earnings were equal.

We have had some big, essential expenses over the last few years and I have no savings left after paying for my half. We have no joint accounts and he has form for being tight with money so this is a sensitive issue for me. I really have to work at putting some money aside and often go without myself just to have some savings. I have no visibility of his bank account, I know about the bonus payment from our online tax account, and can only presume he has substantial savings.

How does this play out in other houses? He is good at his job and deserves this bonus. I don’t actually want any of it from him but I can’t explain why it bothers me, I think it’s that he won’t celebrate it with me. Like he doesn’t trust me.

Years ago when I wasn’t working full time and our kids were little, he use to give me 200 from his bonus. I used to buy Christmas presents with it, often for him, it wasn’t for me to spend on myself. I actually posted about it one year as he mistakenly transferred me more than 200 and asked me for some of it back.

He really sees this as his own money. Is he right? Some years he has used some of it for household stuff but not recently. I would be happy for him if he treated himself or splashed out on himself. It’s the radio silence that bothers me. While I am always scrambling around looking for deals or trying to do things cheaply so the burden on him isn’t too big, he is earning almost 6 figures.

AIBU about this? I really don’t know

I think these conversations are so hard if you didn't share finances from the beginning of your relationship and the divide tends to get much harder once you have kids.
My husband and I have always had shared finances, originally we earned relatively similar salaries but since then despite my salary increasing, his has increased massively and is more than double mine now.
We would be so miserable if we could only afford to do things that I could pay half of!
We love going on holiday, and the level of these has increased because he wanted to spend things like his bonus on nicer holidays for us as a family.
We have mostly joint accounts but also full access to each others accounts which includes pensions, emergency savings, general savings etc.
We couldn't be any other way, and we both benefit from talking about finances regularly and being on the same page about our future plans and budgets etc.
I don't know why people in these relationships want to have nice things for themselves and have their partner unable to do anything but scrape by. It's so miserly and unattractive, where's the love and care, wanting the best for you partner?
I think that people who want to do split finances but have big discrepancy in salaries tend to do proportional payments? Eg 40% of each persons salary goes to the joint pot for family expenses.
I would want to protect myself in this situation, so I would probably build up your savings again and refuse things like holidays because you can't afford them. What would happen if you lost your job? Do you have a good pension already?

I received unexpected back pay this month and am usually the higher earner. I have told my husband that I will buy all the presents this year, for his family too.

I'm reading all of these responses. Thank you to you all for taking the time to share this with me. It is really helping.

@skippy67

The point of a joint account is to make it easier and more efficient to split bills (household, for kids, etc.)

Surely, if you don't have a joint account you're just wasting your own time working out bills and transferring money to each other's account?

It's a simple thing to get that makes married life easier (and generally, more fair).

DH and I used to earn similar amounts for many years, but in the past few years his earnings have gone past mine to a notable amount. That's largely irrelevant as everything goes straight into the joint account. But he also gets a decent bonus each year (this year was particularly decent). He has always directed this straight into his pension pot. This feels like the most sensible use of the money by far - it means it's not taxable, and helps grow the pot overall. So I guess arguably his bonus is benefiting him rather than us, but assuming we have the same approach to finances in retirement as we do now (all one big pot) then I guess I will benefit then.

I did have a small bonus this year too, so that went straight into my pension. My pension is a lot smaller than DH's due to not having access to a company pension until I was 27 and then some years of self employment when I couldn't contribute to one, but it's making up a bit of ground now so will hopefully be OK when the time comes...

I think it’s insane.

I earn a similar amount to OPs DH and get good bonuses. It all goes into our joint bank account. My DH has completely equal access. We get excited together about spending it on things we want, like holidays etc.

Frankly I think women who agree to marry someone but split finances are completely naive. Legally your property is joint once you are married. If your husband is keeping parts of his salary away from you he is essentially financially abusing you. I find the whole recent trend for this really depressing. It’s not modern or edgy to keep finances seperate after marriage. It completely defeats the point of marriage.

Yeah we just pool everything, I can't imagine not doing this. You are a family, and a unit or you're not. I don't know what he thinks he is achieving keeping it secret and keeping it to himself, but it says nothing good about him as a person, or how he sees your marriage.

My husband is a very high earner, he gets bonuses and does freelance work occasionally which provide extra chunks of money. Every last penny goes in our joint account and we spend what we need. I don't work at the moment (SAHM) but if/when I do work again, we'd still pool all our money.

Before we were married, we lived together and didn't have completely joint finances. We both put in the same amount to a joint account and that covered all essential outgoings (food, bills, mortgage). Then we both had a decent amount leftover in our own accounts for our own spending. If an unexpected bill came up or something for the house needed paying, we'd put in the relative amount. E.g. if DH had 2k in his spending account and I had 1k, he'd put in more. You're in a partnership, I don't know how one partner with money could watch the other struggle.

I'm quite old and I've known some of my friends all my life so yes, we do know rather a lot about each other. It's not something I discuss with someone I've just met.

This is awful & I would put my foot down. We split our household expenses 70% partner & 30% me as I can only work part time due to being primary childcare for our daughter & earn half the amount! I would make a spreadsheet of ALL your outgoings - mortgage, bills, food etc & then sit him down & discuss how to split it fairly. He sounds like a tight arse & a dickhead tbh - sorry but I find this such an ugly trait in a life partner.

This is grossly unfair.

I would prioritise your savings. You need savings and this doesn’t require explanation.

Unless you’re 100% sure he’ll never cheat or leave then savings are a necessity.

He is allowing you to go without because you don’t have the self esteem to prioritise yourself and he can.

Start treating yourself, and he takes issue then suggest you don’t work or work less because what’s the point if you have no lifestyle ?

In my household, pre divorce, all money and assets were considered joint, with hindsight a dumb idea because when we divorced it was pretty much 50/50 despite me being the one to bring more into the marriage, I left with considerably less. Had some of it been kept and considered to be mine only I might have had a chance of keeping more.
OP, I doubt very much if you don't currently know how much is in the marital pot while things are rosie that you stand a chance of knowing how much you dh has squirrelled away when he's expected to disclose joint assets.

If he doesn't want to share money equally that's fine, but he should be paying you the amount a full time private childminder or nanny with housekeeper duties would receive, monthly.

Or if you already have some childcare hours externally, paying for those in full and paying you for the other hours on top.

If he doesn't want to do that, he should share his money out.

My DH got a nice inheritance. You know how we are spending it? Nice house we both want. He said...if you don't want the house, let's set up some NS&I accounts in your name. We earned equally, we paid equally. We've covered for each other in job loss, we are transparent about what we have and see a financial advisor jointly. We have a rule to consult each other if it is more than a £500 spend on something nonessential. I wouldn't do it any other way. You are a team, or you should be.

I honestly don’t get this when people have kids together. I currently earn more than DH but until recently he earned more than me because I went PT for a few years with the kids and he got a couple of years of large retention bonuses. However there was no question at all that all our money went into the same pot. Now I am FT again and earning more than him. I also sold a flat I had pre-marriage which freed up a lot of cash. Again, no question it is all one pot (we’ve spent it all on extending and renovating the house but that’s by the by).

If he earns loads more than you, but you pay half for various things, that is grossly unfair.
Absolutely everything should be proportional to salaries.

So if he earns 80% of the household total income and you earn 20%, then he pays for 80% of the holidays and home improvements, as well as 80% of the mortgage, bills, and all daily household costs, including all the children's costs.
Of course the easiest way to manage this is with a joint current account, that you pay into in a 80/20 ratio.

However, even that is unfair, because what he has left over to keep for himself will be a bigger actual amount than you have left for you, so he still has more spending power. The alternative is that you both pay 100% of your incomes into the joint account, and then transfer a fixed amount to each of your personal accounts for personal spends, e.g. £200 or £500 each or whatever you can jointly afford.

You also have to be aware that he is likely building up a big pension pot and you are not, so the inequality will continue into retirement.

What you need to do is:
firstly refuse to pay for stuff, just keep telling him "I can't afford it",
secondly have a big conversation, or series of conversations, to get this issue sorted,
thirdly up your pension contributions and let him pick up the shortfall in the household budget,
and fourthly, if he does not see the error of his ways then divorce him and take him to the cleaners.

Let me guess - you do the majority of the housework?
So he is keeping you poorer than him, and keeping you as his domestic servant.

Agree with this totally. My DH is not always transparent about how much he gets (some years his bonus can be 6 figures) or how much money he has squirrelled away in savings for our retirement/emergency funds, which has niggled in the past. He doesn’t like me to run away with myself on ways to spend it (new kitchen, 5star holidays LOL), but this is because he puts it in a fund to pay off the mortgage so that he is redundancy proofed, the kids uni fund is protected and he ALWAYS draws from that money to pay for unexpected costs, like a new boiler, paying the balloon payment on my car rather than servicing a loan etc. So technically it is ring fenced as his money, but he always checks whether there are things we need as a family. Ie., he deems it ‘our’ money… that he is keeping safe!

But on the basis I have been taking a chisel to the non frost free freezer and have had the fridge doors duct-taped together for years (the kids don’t seem to understand that if the shelves are overloaded, repeated slamming the fridge door will not close it), he knows I won’t really prioritise something frivolously.

My married life is pretty easy thanks. DH pays some bills (including the mortgage when we had one) I pay the others. There's no formal split, or transferring between accounts. Really, really easy.

There’s no need to work anything out at all - it’s all just approximate. I would not have my salary paid into a joint account, so I would have to transfer it and why? I think that’s sensible I’m afraid based on what I read. Plus I’m not having DH going through and critiquing my spending.

The only thing that matters is that you are both largely on the same page in terms of money. Joint accounts are a detail, you can have one or not.

Ridiculous to post this. They're completely different scenarios, not even remotely comparable.

Also agree with the PP who disagrees with splitting finances.

There is nothing equal about men and women and marriage and children. Having a baby made a feminist out of me & realise the inequality. Splitting finances makes you less equal.

You sacrifice more being a woman and a Mother, you just do. You also give your prime of your life to someone and hope they’ll honour it.

Also when you have sex with a man you have to basically let him inside you. It’s not an equal exchange, men are indebted to us the minute we sleep with them and birth their children.

We deserve to be looked after as an insurance policy incase they ever run off with their secretary like so many do.

This is how I really think.

He sounds very miserly, squirrelling away his bonus money just for him. Does he actually spend it on himself, or is it a savings obsession?
My dh is in the same situation, has a large bonus, he doesn’t put it into a joint account, but when we have expenses (such as a new boiler recently) he’ll pay for it entirely so I don’t have to dip into my savings. He pays more of our day to day expenses, presents for kids for example, too. We’re a family unit.

My DH doesn’t earn more than me and doesn’t have a secretary.

If your husband has evidence that he has always solely paid the mortgage from his account, this could cause big problems for you if you ever split.

Utter nonsense