Money

[pen28]

I'm fed up with my job. Teach part time and not enjoying it any more. Have DD at school/after school club and DS at nursery and sick of shelling out for some else to look after them while I work at something I'm not enjoying. I know all working mums feel like this from time to time but with me it's a permanent state of affairs and here's the twist - DH has stacks of money squirrelled away, enough to pay off mortgage. My salary covers child care and mortgage so if DH paid mortgage off, I wouldn't have to do job I hate. But he refuses to even discuss it. Is it unreasonable to expect him to do this? Help!

Too right its unreasonable!!
Surely you are a couple - why is it 'his' money squirrelled away. What is he planning to do with it if not pay off the mortgage?

Sorry - said that wrong!
I meant its not unreasonable to expect him to do this.
Being a bit thick this morning.

OFGS what is wrong with him? It is your money too, you have 50 per cent right to decide what to do with it. Tell him that you are paying off half the mortgage and that you will be cutting down 50 per cent work.

Is it money he has earmarked for something else - eg retirement? Why is it his money and not both of yours - Did he have the money before you married so not seen as joint asset?

It's money he inherited 3 years ago when his gran died. We've been married 10 years. Have always had separate bank accounts with one joint one for bills. As far as I know, a lot of DH's inheritance is sitting in his current account! It's driving me mad...

Maybe you could come at it from a different angle - like discussing re-training for a career that you do want.

Is your dh happy in his job? Do you think he may be hoping he could use the money to retrain/ retire early etc?

It seems a little odd that he hasnt spoken about what he may want to do with the money, but refuses to discuss your idea.

could you get another job? If you hate it so much there must be a way you could apply for a new job you would enjoy more or re-train so you can...?

BTW - I think you ARE being unreasonable to expect your husband to just let you give up work just because you hate your job. Ate you just wantiing to not work or are you planning on getting something you enjoy more?

If you have never talked about the possibility of you being a SAHM I think it would be wrong of you to just expect to do it now just because he happens to have his own savings.

Oh dear. Money is always a tough issue even for the most solid of couples. Here are my two cents for what it is worth.

Money discussions, IMO, at a very basic level, are often about power and control. In good and bad ways. My husband and I got married in our thirties, both of us had past lives, past debt and are crap with money. Together, we have tried to "grow up" and have had many painful conversations about how to manage things. As a result, we've been able to get rid of some debt, buy a house and now have a joint bank account (not everyone has to do this but it worked for us). For us, being brave and transparent about the issue as a couple, although difficult, has been a positive experience. Each of us have had to take responsibility and, at times, swallow a lot of pride and concede some control to face the realities of our life and finance management.

As a working mother, I completely understand how you feel and I would suggest taking a constructive approach with your husband. I wonder how you would react if you presented him with a 3 or 5 year life/finance plan? Something that encompasses the needs of the whole family, including your children? One that outlines your ideas for the future.

I guess what I'm saying is that you and your husband clearly seem to need to talk about this but if you come armed with some ideas and a plan, he may be more open to sharing with you (money and his plans...he may well have some of his own).

Good luck.

OOhh - good post greyclay

agree - great post greyclay

I sort of understand your dh. I inherited enough money about 5 years ago to pay off half our mortgage.

Rather than actually pay off the mortgage, we changed our mortgage to an offset mortgage which means that we benefit as a couple through lower repayments, but I retain the actual money in my account.

Somehow, that money is special to me. It was given to me by my grandparents and I still think of it as "my" money.

DH is fine with this and knows that if I die, it will go directly in trust for dd, and not form part of my estate which goes directly to him.

About 2 years ago, DH recieved an equivalent amount when an investment paid off. Again, he retained the actual money in his account, but our repayments lowered again as it was counted against our offset mortgage.

I think that if your dh was refusing to use the money and it was causing you financial hardship then he would be being unreasonable. However, I think that you are actually the one being unreasonable, expecting him to pay off the mortgage with his inheritance money, just because you don't like your job.

i'd remind him that legally half the money is probably your anyway

just out of interest, if DH said he was no longer enjoying his job, and would like to pay off the mortgage and stay at home with the children, would you be happy with that, and to carry on working to support the family?

What Littlefish's post reiterates for me is that you still need to negotiate these things as a couple. Set boundaries that are appropriate for you but plan/come to an agreement together. I sincerely hope that Pen's DH does engage her in conversation about the issue and does not opt for the "sticking-head-in-sand" approach. (which was my MO in the past)

I don't understand this. If I inherited money, I would immediately pay down the mortgage and consider it family money. It wouldn't even occur to me to squirrel it away somewhere solely for my own benefit. When I got a redundancy payment, I used half to reduce the mortgage and the rest to buy a car/redecorate the house. It is our car and our house, not my car and my house. I don't understand this "my money, your money" thing. What is the point of marriage if you can't share everything and use money to make each other's lives easier and better?

Personally I would pay the mortgage off if it were my money but I had this sort of conversation with my ex many a time. He had savings roughly equivalent to his mortgage (which is barely big enough to be called a mortgage!) but hung onto the cash in a high-interest instead of paying it off. His logic was that he could afford to finance the mortgage each month with plenty to spare and he also had a pot of money to fall back on should something unexpected happen. If he paid the mortgage off, he would be debt-free but also savings-free - which had taken him most of his life to accumulate. If he then needed to re-mortgage at any point in the future, he was worried about being locked into an unfavourable deal cf what he currently had.

If your husband thinks like this, I would save your breath for cooling your coffee tbh.

I must add that in my case, I had no moral or legal rights to any of the money as it was his money, his mortgage. In my case, it was purely a speculative argument (as in debate, not row).

Yes Greyclay - lots of discussion got us to a point where we were both happy with the outcome.

Dollius - I understand what you're saying too. Our salaries are completely shared, as are any dividends or bonuses.

We are using our money to make each other's lives easier and better. In fact, this is any extremely efficient way to make the money work well for us, whilst still retaining enough capital in case any unexpected bills or life changes occur. It just isn't the way that you would choose to do it. I feel comforted by the fact that we have a high level of savings between us, even though they are in different accounts.

SimplySally - x post - that's the sort of position we're in.

I'm with you dollius on this one. I can't understand how a woman chooses to live, sleep, maybe marry and bear children with a man but won't share her money. Its a bugbear of mine. We have no individual money in our house, just one joint account and a tiny savings account each (our running away money ) Here endeth the lesson.

JamesCagney - maybe I just want to be able to run further away

A lot of it is sitting in his current account?
Send him over to www.moneysavingexpert.com to see where it would be better off sitting, and claim half the interest he earns as yours.

damn right girl! Fortunately my sister (equally broke) and I have agreed that we can run away to each other's houses. DH will have to live with his parents .

We are talking about two separate things here, and IMO they should be kept separate, rather than muddled together.

(1) Your DH's inheritance
(2) Your work

The right to share one another's money is fine and most couples take this approach. However I do understand your DH not wanting to see an inheritance being frittered away, which is what effectively you are suggesting. If you carry on working to pay the mortgage you end up paying off your house AND a capital sum from your inheritance. If you use the inheritance to pay off the mortgage to fund your leisure time then you will end up much worse off in the future. It is after all his inheritance and presumably he respects the fact that his grandparents worked hard for this money.

On the work point, I don't believe that anyone has an entitlement to be financially supported by anyone else - particularly if the other party does not want to do the financial supporting. Isn't your DH entitled to expect you to take some share of financial responsibility? What do you propose to do about your pension? Isn't the real point at issue that you don't like your job? Can you not try to find something else that you might enjoy rather than feeling disgruntled because you are not (as you seem to see it) being allowed to give up work?