Looking for some perspective and hoping to show this to my fiance.
He earns over 80k working full time and long hours, he works away mon-friday, back home every weekend. Take home pay is around 3,100 or thereabouts. He works incredibly hard for this.
I work 3 days a week in a decent job but it's not well paid, take home pay is about 1200 every month.
I get child maintenance from exp, was 300 a month but now it's going to be slashed to about 150.
Child benefit comes to me every week on top of that.
When we met, we were both 31 and both had one child each. We got engaged a year after meeting and made the choice to have a 3rd child between us before getting married. We had hoped to be married a while ago but life with 3 kids has gotten in the way and has gone to the bottom of the priority list sadly.
When we met, I rented, OH owned his home. I had no debt, OH had a huge amount (mostly due to his divorce and ongoing court proceedings as his exp was trying to stop contact with his DC 🙄) but he has no debt now.
9 years later, blended family is for the most part pretty good. All 3 kids adore each other and get on very well and love being together.
His exp is no longer an issue but my exp is always causing issues with child maintenance amongst other things so that does being a decent amount of stress into the relationship, but so does finances.
I will be the first to admit that due to not having any financial awareness when growing up, not having any adults to talk to about finances and discuss these type of issues as a young person leaving home, and not having any decent role models full stop, I am not particularly money savvy. In the past I have also been a very impulsive shopper and if I felt I needed it, I would buy, then would worry about it later. Now at almost 40 I of course regret that as I have zero savings and about 10k of credit card debt, I'm completely ashamed actually and beat myself up a lot about this, however a lot of this was accrued from needing to put diesel in car, buy birthday or Xmas gifts for the kids or buy food as money was so short on more than a few occasions.
OH puts in 1300 to the joint account. I put in around 800. With my bills including phone, debt repayments, DC's clubs (I pay some and OH pays some) then I'm usually left with around £100 -150 disposable income.
Over the years I've felt very frustrated about this set up. I believe it makes much more sense to pool all income, pay off bills and with whatever is left that covers kids clubs, savings then we both decide how much disposable income we want to take from what's left over. OH has always been dead set against this.
We're lucky to have a lovely 4bed detached (which I of course couldn't afford on my wage alone) but as OH's career has taken off especially in the last 5 years, I'm becoming pretty resentful as I can't work full time. There is no after school care provision in my area thanks to covid and grandparents can't help much.
OH is very careful with his money and always has been, something I admire and wish I had been able to be over the years . He sees me getting into debt as my own fault and not his issue. He often says, it's not my fault you chose this career, I shouldn't have to suffer because of your choices. I can see why he wants to ring fence his money, his eldest DC will need support with buying a home probably in around 10-15 years time or so, this is very important to him and I appreciate that. But he now says I need to put more in to the pot, I've explained I can't, he replies work full time then, which is easier said than done.
His outgoings are no where near as significant as mine, although he pays about 200 in CM and pays for his own food when away mon-fri and had his own bills too, and to be fair he does all the DIY I the house and pays for all of this. Eg. Any issues with the car he pays for it, re-tiled the bathroom and put a new shower in, he paid for it. Lots of things like this which I would struggle to contribute to, but he does say to me ' look at everything I do for this family, I pay for x,y,z'
So again I'm made to feel bad because I cant/don't contribute to these things.
The latest is he's saying the amount I contribute doesn't even cover myself, let alone my DC and I need to put in more because he's paying 'twice'. He believes he pays for his child when at her mum's, as well as my child, also believes he pays 'twice' for food as the money he puts into the joint account goes towards food then he pays for his own midweek.
What's got to me is that he's announced we now need to put diesel in the car from our own disposable income. We've always paid for that through the joint account but as my job now involves me driving when at work (and I claim mileage which is minimal and this is paid to me) he announced he will not be paying for 'my employers name' too! And he's fed up paying for EVERYTHING
I get where he is coming from so I'm happy to put the difference into the joint account going forward but this leaves me with even less disposable income.
I very much live pay check to pay check, I have a lot of nieces and nephews who have birthdays etc through the year and although it's a modest amount of spend, things like this plus kids friends parties etc all add up and often I'm in my overdraft.
It all feels very much like we're flatmates at times, and a bit like him vs me instead of a solid family unit doing life and hard things together.
I think he resents me as he sees me being at home 2x days a week but it's hard work keeping a family of 5 going all the time and my days off are absolutely not days off. Thanks for getting this far, please let me know your thoughts 🙏