My DP, formerly a somewhat high-earning professional who one would generously consider middle aged, is broke.
This is 100% self-inflicted.
He has started an MBA ( 20 years older than most on the course) and cut his work to one day consulting a week.
And now we cannot go out for dinner anymore.
DP is in finance (like me) and beyond the age where extra letters after his name would propel him towards the C-suite. He will most likely enjoy his course then return to his former director level job or similar with impressive new Powerpoint skills.
But I thought his career break was a nice idea, until he told me that he is broke.
I was not sure this was true, so we looked at his budget. He's broke.
He has enough savings to fund his course, pay his mortgage, pay his nanny, buy food for himself and the kids and run the car. And also to keep paying his non-mortgaged ex wife her court-ordered absolutely flabbergasting monthly maintenance as well as the substantial list of extras the exw, I just learned, is billing DP for monthly.
These comprise: children's clothes, clubs, extra curricular sports, holiday camps, school uniforms, tuition, therapists, school dinners, mobile phone, pocket money, horse riding, birthday parties, football shoes and LEGO.
They have the children 50-50. The exw works part time but does not need to and does not pay for childcare because of generous parents. The 50-50 was agreed by exw after fantabulous maintenance was secured. Lol.
I don't live with DP so am not directly affected by his brokeness exactly.
But we do share a life and a lifestyle. And pre-brokeness it was a nice one. Dinners out a couple of times a month. A foreign holiday together once a year. Taking both sets of kids to plays and musicals at weekends. We always went Dutch. I always knew the exw was richer than me because she worked very hard in court for several months to prove her womb was golden and I worked in offices for 25 years so as not to rely on an ex husband, but I didn't mind as my lifestyle was the same as before I met DP.
But now DP is broke it is going to cost me.
When I fancy sharing a bottle of plonk and fish and chips at home, I will have to buy it.
When we have mutual friends over for a meal, I will have to buy the food.
When my child is in a play and wants DP and his kids to come, I will be buying all five tickets.
This is probably an AIBU but I put it on step parents because I am a step parent in all but living arrangement - DP and I shift nomadically between our two homes depending on which kids we have when.
And yet when it comes to having a say on finances, I am feeling nothing like a partner and very like a girlfriend who may have just sleepwalked into buying meals for a geriatric student who is paying for his exw to summer in Tuscany.
I am asking myself whether:
I should've been consulted ahead of the MBA decision with fully discussing the finances?
I should have realised he was paying over the odds for child stuff?
I should ask DP to review this now or to vary his maintenance order in court? (He will say the exw will respond by pulling the kids out of activities and not buying them shoes.)
I should resign as quasi step parent on the basis I should not have responsibility for DP's kids when I have such little agency over how we live our joint lives?
I should merrily commit all my disposable income to myself and get a season ticket to Champneys, leaving DP at home to eat Pot Noodle?
I should join his student lifestyle, learn to love Pot Noodle again and clear my mortgage early? (Quite like thiis idea actually, lemons into lemonade.)