Husband wants me to work full-time

[Lovelifesmile]

My husband and I have two children (aged 4 and 2). I currently work the equivalent of 3 days a week doing shift work and my husband works full-time at 5 days per week. I would like to work the equivalent of 4 days per week when my youngest child goes to school. My husband wants me to go full-time. My husbands income is £2700 per month. My income part-time 3 days per week is £2200 and if I worked 4 days per week I would earn £2900. We are comfortable financially as we are currently, and would be very comfortable with me going 4 days per week. I want to use the 'day off' per week to do the food shop, house cleaning, washing, gardening maintenance and food prep. My values are that I want to earn enough money to be comfortable, but also have time to do the housework, appointments, school admin and help with homework to free up our weekends to go out and not to household chores on the weekend. It appears my husband values money the most. If I was full time I would take home £3400 per month so it's a difference of £500 per month. I am more than happy for him to also drop to 4 days per week to spend more time with the children if he wants to, but he doesn't wish to do this.

Full time with young children is a trap. You then end up taking on all housekeeping, childcare and domestic admin responsibility plus working full time. Have very careful conversations before doing this and make expectations clear. I burned out for a few years in a very stressful job without realising the problem was my husband who seemed to think everything at home just happened by magic.

He now does all the food shopping and cooking, I do the washing, ironing and household / school / club admin and running around and we have a cleaner for a few hours once a week to make things more fair.

I’d start with a “trial run” by using one of your days off to do a nice hobby & drop the household stuff you do that day, then delegate it to him. Along with exactly 50% of household chores in general.

I can absolutely guarantee he will not do 50%.

If you do go back full time OP that extra money isn’t for his hobbies. It should stay in your sole account.

So basically he wants you to increase your hours to fund his hobbies. He really is taking the mick.

This sounds like your finances are "one pot", i.e. everything joint.
This only works if you have similar values and priorities and spending habits.

If he wants to spend more on expensive hobbies, you need to re-structure your finances, so that you have a joint household account and separate personal accounts. All hobbies and personal luxuries spending comes out of your individual accounts, not the joint.

You can either pay proportionally into the joint, so that your personal amounts reflect your different incomes (i.e. the higher earner has a higher amount, as that is how % works), OR you can set it up so that you both have the same £ personal money (all income goes into the joint then you both get the same £ transferred to your personal accounts each month).

Then he can spend his on hobbies, and you can spend or save yours as you see fit.

This is a separate issue to how many days you work and how the housework is split.

This needs to be the basis of your discussion - you need to show that the increased costs of summer/holiday childcare will soon eat up that extra money and that he will have to be involved in doing 50% of the household chores and school related tasks.

Pretty much all the things he wants the extra money for are things for himself, not the family. You will be earning more than him when you work 4 days a week. If he wants more money for holidays/rock climbing/Iron Man, he can find a better paid job.

All the stuff that you will do on your day off will benefit him and the rest of the family. You are a team player, he is not.

Tell him he's not going to have time for hobbies if you work full-time, as he'll be doing a lot more childcare and chores.

Stop drip feeding OP. How are chores split (I suspect 90% done by you) and will you tell him he now needs to 50%? Will you be telling him that you will want equal quality leisure time and spends? So he goes away for a weekend and you then get a weekend away too?

I agree and don't spend your day off doing household chores! You need some time to yourself, especially when the children are at school/nursery; when they are at home with you, you can have some fun. With your combined income, you can afford a cleaner for two hours a week and outsource ironing. That will make.a tremendous difference and husband can do a few essential chores over the weekend, leaving time for you to relax and do family stuff.

There's little point in having too much in savings as long as you are financially stable, own your home, etc, and have enough for home maintenance, holidays and cars. Presumably you both pay into a pension. I say this as an elderly person. So many people pop their clogs before having a chance to enjoy their hard earned money, don't be one of them. Have good times while you are young, it doesn't last long.

This is an excellent suggestion

This! Does/will he pull his weight at the weekend in doing chores? Is it crystal clear to him that you wouldn’t have time to do these yourself on your own, if you worked full time. I would not consider it, if there’s any doubt on this one, as it could end up in you both working F/T, him getting all these new hobbies from the extra money coming in, but said hobbies will undoubtedly fall on weekend family time and parental house cleaning time! You don’t want a scenario where you ending doing full time then are spending a lot of time cleaning, or entertaining the kids alone at the weekend

So he wants you to work full time so you are the main earner. Then he gets to go and do activities whilst you are rushing around at the weekend doing food shopping, chores, looking after the children and doing homework. There won't be much time for quality family time or rest. He is a CF, don't do it.

This. Every family I know where both partners work fulltime and have little children have pretty much no spare time
at all. Life is basically work, sleep, childcare, chores.

He definitely won’t be training for an Ironman - not a chance! He will be too busy cleaning the loo!

With DC that age, I wouldn't tolerate mine doing Iron Mans and other sports events with the time commitment that entails regardless of the work hours issue.

But obviously it's a piss take that he expects you to earn more to facilitate it rather than increase his own earning capacity also.

Quite. He’s a CF if that’s why he wants you to work more (and do all the household jobs I dare say).

Oh and that will mean him swanning off to do loads of training at the weekend too - no thanks!

If he wants more money he can increase his salary. At 4 days per week you’d already be contributing more than him.

Your youngest is only 2 so you are thinking at least 2 years ahead, cannot see any need to make decisions now, a lot can change between now and then.

He is being unreasonable I think.He wants more money and you are doing 4 days a week ! The extra day should really be for you and the fact that you are picking up most of the "grunt work" and deserve a fair amount of time to juggle everything.School is a different ball game to Nursery with holidays and earlier collection times than most Nurseries

Wow!!! Your husband is utterly selfish. Me, me, me.

whilst no one is perfect, selfishness destroys a family.

he won’t stop being selfish, it’ll manifest in different ways throughout, and you’ll end up divorcing him. I’d assume that will happen at some point and thus protect your career and pension.

this is not a good man.

No parent gets to have a full on time suck hobby with kids that age unless they have a private income or something and don’t need to work. Iron man 🙄🙄

Your income on 4 days will be more than his. Therefore you will be contributing more to the pot than he is. Considering this fact, it’s not his place to dictate how much you work. If he wants the non-necessities of life, he needs to upskill and find a way to earn more

As a Mum who use to do 3 days and now does FT over 5 days it’s really hard work. I increased my hours when DD was 7. Fitting everything into life is not easy.

The hardest part of returning to FT work and what nearly destroyed my relationship was the home dynamics. My partner was use to me doing everything and going about it silently. Things just got done and he didn’t appreciate that when I was PT. Trying to shift dynamics back is still not fully working right 3 years later. I would suggest you ensure he is doing 50:50 in every part of life before even entertaining this conversation again.

If he wants more money for holidays and savings then he will have to earn more, because you rightly have other priorities in your life while your children are small.

Why is his want more important than what you want, especially when it’s you that would have to make the sacrifice?

But surely he will AGREE to do 50/50 with the chores etc, to get you to go full time and then suddenly 'not be able to because ...(work, training, needing to socialise, planning for IM,) etc.? By which time you are stuck because you've taken the extra hours and suddenly nothing is getting done so you end up doing EVERYTHING by default?

I've found men are very keen to say they will do 50% of the household and admin chores because they fondly imagine that this is running a hoover around once a week, cooking the odd meal (and they'll just get a takeway) and putting the laundry on. They don't see everything that you're doing, and if they take it on - they just don't do it.

Well all of these extra curricular activities are going to be difficult for him to fit in if he has to do 50% of all the parenting and domestic drudgery in his free time, aren't they? Unless by "iron man" he means that he will be doing all the ironing?

I think your offer of spending one whole working day every week doing household tasks instead of earning money is extremely generous and he would be a fool to turn it down.