...I've found out this evening that he has no pension!
My DH is incredibly tight, whenever I suggest we buy anything he say we can't afford it. He's had the same clothes for the whole 10 years I've known him, never wants to go out - he just hates spending money on anything. I try to be careful with money but also feel that life is for living and don't think an occasional indulgence is a bad thing.
When we go overdrawn and I ask him to help me budget, he just mutters about cutting up my debit card. Not sure how he thinks I'll do the food shopping!
Mostly I just let it wash over me, cos his attitude does tend to reign me in when I get caried away and start to think about spending too much on stuff we don't need - we balance each other IYSWIM.
But I never ever thought he would let his tightwad attitude jeopardise our future. He's always tight cos he's careful, and wants us to save, get out of debt etc, which is a good attitude to have. So why the fuck has he not taken a pension option at work!?!?! He says we can't afford a pension. But we save spend money on all kinds of things that aren't essential, like Sky, gym membership, and still manage to break more or less even each month. If I'd had any idea that he wasn't paying into a pension because we didn't have the money, I'd have found a way to budget it in!
He like to play martyr on all kinds of levels, and make out that things are worse than they are. But I'm absolutely flattened by his thinking that he can play martyr with our futures. He's the main breadwinner, it's his pension we'll be living on when we're old. If he doesn't want a company pension, which I've heard can be dodgy, fair enough, but he should have organised something!
I've tried talking to him and he just says we can't afford it and having enough to eat in the present is more important than the future. But we're not frikkin' starving! We might have to budget a bit more but we can afford to plan for our future!
It's more the fact that he didn't even tell me. It never occurred to me for a minute that a man who is usually the poster boy for responsibility could be so totally irresponsible and selfish, while painting it as being selfless to the family cause. I've never been so angry with him, and don't know how to sort this out. He just keep shrugging and saying 'we can't afford it' when I try to rationally explain why we need a retirement plan. I'm a very short fuse away from losing my temper and screaming at him.
He's 36, btw, and I'm 35, with both of us not even starting out careers until our early 30's so we're kinda short of time to secure our future as it is, not early 20-somethings with loads of time!
How can he not get it!?!