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 never understand these setups. I am the only person working outside the home and I pay my entire salary (less £100 for the phone bill I've not yet transferred) to the joint account, from which we jointly spend what we need because ...we are married and trust each other.

DH and I both get bonuses. The amounts vary a lot year to year. We consider them to be entirely family money and wouldn’t dream of keeping it to ourselves. We have a discussion about what to spend it on - sometimes saving for something specific, one year we got the kitchen done, another year we paid for a holiday, one year we invested it as long-term savings.

I would feel terrible sitting on a mountain of money while DH went without to pay for Christmas presents! As would DH in the reverse scenario.

Are you a family? (In which case surely you should all have the same standard of living?!) or not? In which case, why are you married? Splitting big costs equally when you earn much less is not remotely fair.

to raise it with him, maybe ask him why he doesn’t seem to see you all as a joint family unit? And why he’s happy seeing you scrimp and save while he has so much more? Is he not embarrassed to treat his wife this way?

He's a selfish twat.

This 👆🏻 I couldn’t agree more.

Most people on here do apparently. We didn't. No need.

Probably not a popular opinion but we don't share our bonus. We do sometime talk about bigger expenses to spend them on but it is ultimately the own persons decision.
This year my DH bonus went on our family holiday and mine went on buying things we needed for the house. Mine is usually a fraction of DH (no more than a couple of hundred). DH is usually a couple of thousand.

Everything else is split 60:40 as my DH earns more. I've never though to ask him for 40% of his bonus as usually it benefits me anyway

Edit : We have a joint account but are salaries are paid into personal accounts and we transfer our % to the joint one.

I don't agree. It's not that straightforward. Second marriage, it was my house, he has kids, I have kids.

With me and my DH, we both share ALL of our money. Everything goes into a joint bank account, and everything comes out of it. There's no 60/40 split or anything like that.

We also share all of our savings accounts, and sit down together each month to do a budget together to keep track of our finances.

I'm about to go on maternity leave and will be taking home less than half my normal salary, but the set up will remain the same.

I really don't get why families do it other ways - the woman is ALWAYS in a worse position if she earns less and is expected to pay for half of things.

DH has always earned more than me.
It all goes into one pot. Savings are done in the most tax efficient way, as is spending.
All big purchases are decided together- sometimes we move money from my savings, sometimes from his.
We are a team. Not 2 units operating independently.

Your set up sounds awful.

I'm in a relationship where the finances were similar. I earned a third of what OH earned and as we got older, the wage gap got bigger. By the time we had split the bills 50 50 each month, that left me with £100. Who wants to work full time for £100 a month? Not me, so I quit work (DOH! DUH!). What would have been fairer I think, was what others have suggested - he earns 3 times as much so he should pay 3 times as much, not just expect things to be split down the middle. Anyhoo, the finances were just one red flag in a bunting display of red flags, so I wonder if OP has other issues too? Because I stupidly gave up work I ended up trapped in the relationship (I can see a way out now though) so don't give up work because it feels you can never earn enough, which is what I naively did.

Practice not hiding his behaviour from people op. Holidays aren’t happening anymore as you are putting that money away. Next conversation with another couple that turns to holidays say casually I don’t think we will be taking any, we split finances and I just can’t afford to cover half of the usual holiday anymore.
let him sit in the knowledge that others see the real him too. There will be awkward silence, that’s his awkward silence.

We both work full time in a country where no income tax is collected, with DH earning about 65% of our total income. On top of this, he gets shares and bonuses, whereas I have neither. I do some additional work outside of my main job, such as earning about £8k a year from Masters level tuition, which is paid into our UK account. Everything we have that can be joint, is joint. The only exception is premium bonds, where we have equal amounts held. He will get a bonus of around equivalent to £40k in the spring and plans to buy a motorbike (which will cost more than my new car did, incidentally, but will be around half of his bonus and his own car is nearly 7 years old, whereas mine is 2.5 years old).

I am absolutely ok with this, because he earns enough to cover it and also has spent about three months away from home this year in total because of his job, which is global. We share all expenses, we share all income, so I don't mind if he wants to splurge a bit. We're about to spend more than we have ever spent on a holiday, and I have Invisalign, which isn't cheap either!

The difference is in the transparency and accountability. I won't have to go without anything in order for him to buy that bike. Our standard of living won't be affected. He has no other hobbies really, other than diving and he already has all he needs for that. I am not scrimping and saving and worrying while he zooms off down the road! I couldn't put up with your DH's attitude, which would make me a lesser person than him. We may not have equal income (we never have had, but currently the gap is bigger than it's ever been, and we are close to retirement now) but we are still equal.

Not sharing bonuses is very different from creating a division where the OP pays out nearly all her money on family expenses and shared treats leaving her with nothing, while her husband gets to pay out a bit more on routine expenses while still keeping large amounts of cash to himself. And not even sharing how much he is keeping.

DH and I do pretty much what @SJM1988 does, we know roughly how much we each have and we discuss big individual expenditures as well as the joint ones. When DH earned a lot more than I did he never tried to rip me off for half the family holiday!

How does this play out in other houses?

I always made much, much more than DW (though not much over average wage). Also she was a SAHM and early-retired to be a family carer. We never bother looking at each other's accounts, and none are joint. We each pay for what we feel like. There's no system at all. Obviously I pay most. She takes cash from my wallet, 'borrows' my credit card, or hands me a payment screen saying 'just sort this will you'. Or she'll just pay out herself. I can't believe a cushion costs £60 - and you need five for each sofa - or a bottle of wine is £20. Nevertheless, I love and trust her absolutely. I am a saver, she's not. But she can decide what happens to it. I do all the tax admin. It's chaos, as a PP put it, but it's ours and we don't mind.

You need to reframe your thinking in your communication with him.
You aren't being whiny, rather this is a result of him being a selfish, mean and financially abusive arsehole, and you need to sort it out fairly so that your children grow up in a nicer atmosphere.

How does it play out in our house? We are married, share money and have one account. It eliminates all of these problems.

i really don’t understand the need to separate money when married and sharing a home/kids.

Yea there are exceptions but if this is both of your only marriages and you only have children together than why wouldn’t you share money?

DH's bonus just gets added to the pot, it's not treated any differently from his normal salary. TBH we don't even separate things like birthday money (from parents), it just gets paid in (annoyingly by cheque) and gets mixed up with all the other money in the account. DH earns loads more than me but we've always treated all our money as one pot, and we don't quibble over who has paid for what. It just sounds like a headache keeping track of it all.

This is nauseating to read. You shouldn’t pay anything for the children until you have paid off your debt. He should pay everything for them even if it means less in his pension. He treats you like a single woman. Act like one. Take care of yourself first and let him pay for his children as though you aren’t in the picture.

Oh OP - I remember your "overpaid" Christmas money thread and if memory serves, people back then were telling you that he is (at best) mean and (at worst) financially abusive.

I'm just chiming in to say that the fact you can't have a conversation about money without being painted as "whiney and grabby" is a big red flag. Note that I said "being painted". There is NOTHING whiney and grabby about saying "I am your wife, your life partner, the mother and principal carer of your children, and the keeper of your home. I have provided days, weeks, months and years of practical and emotional support, my unpaid labour in our family and in our home has facilitated the salary you are able to earn. Everything that comes into this house and everything that needs spending in this family should be shared equitably."

FWIW I have never married but when discussing moving in with an ex, we split things 40/60 to cover that fact that his child lived with him 50/50. When with a partner who outearned me 6:1, I never paid a thing unless I wanted to make a gesture or give a gift.

My parents have been married for donkey's years, both have worked, full-time, part-time, over-time, my dad had jobs on the side too when they needed extra, my mum retrained to change career. They both did childcare around anti-social hours. Everything went into the same joint bank account for over 30 years. It only changed when my mum needed her own account for her new job, and they joked for years that my dad's money goes into the joint account and my mum's money is her own, although she "rewards" him with the occasional holiday. This is the sort of mutual respect and equality that I hold in high esteem.

I'd be appalled that I had to go without essentials for myself to meet him 50-50 for stuff, while he squirrels away potential millions. Of course his bonus might only be a grand. But his secretive nature could be deemed financial abuse.
Why wouldn't he tell you what he gets in the bonus? Why won't he share any of it with you?
Is he planning on giving it to the kids? If so then you still need to know about it.
I can imagine the worst in that he's hiding money in the event of divorce.
Honestly I think it's unacceptable.

I will never understand couples who will share genetic material to make new humans but won't share money.
The notion of one of partner having a higher standard of living and more savings....it's insanity. What kind of marriage is that?

No. We share everything. Would never accept less.

I earn about 4 x what DH earns. He puts a monthly amount into our joint account towards some of the bills and then I pay for everything else, from a meal in the pub to holidays, the lot. I get a significant bonus each year and I maybe keep 1k for me, for some clothes or whatever, and the rest goes into the joint savings account where it pays for major expenditures like a family car, house repairs etc. That's always been the way we do it, any other way wouldn't feel right.

Your DH need to change his ways.

Two parts to my response:

When DH and I first met, I was the sole earner and paid for everything, no questions earned. We got married, had DC and now he's the sole earner and pays for everything, no questions asked. He gets an annual bonus. He has always told me that that bonus is ours, not his, because he couldn't have earned it if I hadn't been dealing with everything else in his life. I don't want the money (and actually have never spent any of it - neither of us do, it just sits there), but the fact he feels that way about his efforts at work is priceless to me. It's not about the money.

HOWEVER, it's easy for me to say this because we're in a more comfortable financial situation than it sounds like you are. It sounds like you actually do "need" the money ("need" because you wouldn't be starving, but it's reasonable for a two-income household, one of whom is on nearly 6 figures, to take children on holiday once a year). This is why you're worrying about sounding grabby. The principle is that a married couple with children should share and share alike: there are no separate pots because you're not separate units. You're a single family unit. However, you have uneven earning power and your DH is forcing you to be separate financial units.

With a man as tight as this, I don't think there's anything you can say that will change his mind in a way that won't cause further problems for you. He knows exactly what the situation is. Him hoarding his money for himself is a reflection of how he views his life, his wife, his children. It's not about money. It's that he's not in it jointly. He's separate from you, and wants to stay that way.

And I think you need to treat him accordingly. If you can't afford to do various things by paying separately, you just don't do them. Your children won't come to harm for not going on holiday for a year or two. They will start asking why not, your DH will hear them asking, he will hear you saying "I can't afford my share on what I earn, and Daddy doesn't want to pay more than half" and he will react accordingly. He doesn't get to hoard his money selfishly AND have it kept secret with you covering for him. There are consequences to his actions, and they are that his family lose out and know that it's because of him. Him acting like he's not in a family unit, but wanting the children and the outside world to think he is, simply isn't an option. That's YOU paying the price for HIS selfishness.

We split our day to day expenses based on income and financial situation - my partner earns significantly more than me and has less personal outgoings because we’re from different backgrounds. For everything else, we split 50/50 or discuss where we both are financially and decide how to pay for it between us. Both of us have paid for most, or all, of something if the other can’t afford it and we don’t keep a score.

You’re a team, he should want to share resources so you both have a comfortable life and minimal money worries. If he wants to keep all his bonus, that’s fine, but maybe he should fund more of the extras. I’d be embarrassed if I earnt six figures and left my partner in a precarious financial position by hoarding it all for myself.

@Docugirl you have taken time out from your career to birth and raise his children. This has affected your finances, career prospects and pension.

YOU do the majority of the child care, household chores and life admin and you do that while you work whatever hours you work.

50/50 finances are not equal because he is only getting to work the hours he works and earn the salary he does because YOU allow it. If you refused to do the household and child work, he would have to do it or pay someone to do it.

You've set yourself up to fail and left yourself financially vulnerable while he has prospered off your unpaid labour.

You can't be a housewife and work part time while he keeps all but the bare bones bill share money. That isn't a fair split.

If you went back to work tomorrow full time - how much would childcare and a cleaner and cook cost? Find out and have him pay you that extra OR he lowers his hours and he takes care of it.

Put a stop to this bullshittery right now. He is a selfish, sexist pig who has had his cake and eaten it all while throwing you crumbs and you've allowed it.