AIBU for thinking my financial situation isn't sustainable and I'm heading for an almighty fall and mental health crisis

[TheHotRock98]

Hello,

I'm afraid I used chat GPT to help write this. I was asking it what I should do and asked it to convert to an AIBU query. This was inspired also by a thread by another MNer a couple of days ago. It frightened me as our situations were a little similar, though she sounds a much better/ more together person than me...

I'm 39 and my partner is 54. We've been together several years, live together in his home (he owns it but still has some to pay), and have a three-year-old together. He also has a 14-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.

We're not married.

I'm really struggling financially and it's affecting both my physical and mental health. I feel like I'm constantly on the verge of panic.

My finances are:

• £173 into my overdraft (my limit is £200).
• Around £2,042 on a credit card.
• A loan with about £2,000 left to repay.

I work three days a week and my take-home pay is £1,500 a month.

Our three-year-old goes to nursery for two of the days I work, and my dad looks after him on the third day. I'm with my child on the other two weekdays.

My partner earns around £93,000 a year. He also owns a property abroad which he rents out. I believe the rental income is around €900 a month (I think that's right )

As far as I know, he has savings in both pounds and euros. I think the euro savings are around €70,000 (sorry I don't know if I heard him correctly at the time but it really sounded like he was saying this, could have been €17,000 I suppose, and this was a while ago anyway), although I don't know the exact figure and I have no idea how much he has in his UK savings. He says both have taken a significant hit because he was made redundant previously and that he's trying to build them back up. He's now back in full-time employment and has passed probation.

He pays the mortgage (it's his house), child maintenance of around £600 a month for his older child, plus additional costs for her (school holidays, school trips, etc.).

He also has therapy five times a week at around £95 a session. From what I understand, his therapist takes around two months' holiday each year, so he pays for roughly 10 months of therapy annually.

I don't pay towards the mortgage, but I do pay for childcare for our three-year-old (currently £130 a month, but it's due to increase by around another £200 a month soon).

I also pay for a lot of our toddler's day-to-day costs - clothes, toys, days out, little treats like cake or ice cream, and I buy some of the groceries, although not all. Also things like presents for other children when we go to their birthday parties.

On top of that I have my own regular expenses:

• contact lenses
• dental appointments and hygienist appointments
• tampons
• toiletries (deodorant, moisturiser, SPF, face wash, body lotion etc.)
• vitamin supplements
• dry cleaning for work clothes
• haircuts and hair colouring because I have a lot of grey hair and work in a professional environment.
• I do also but and wear make up, and not drug store either I'm afraid I do like the department store stuff (I know thats bad given my financial situation and living beyond my means etc. )

I suspect I might have ADHD (so as yet undiagnosed) and I'm aware I'm not naturally good with money. I'm sure that's contributed to some of my debt, so I'm not pretending I've managed everything perfectly.

Recently we've also had unexpected household costs. We had a plumbing issue affecting the flat which cost me £190 to sort out(I thought it was important, he thinks otherwise and the call out was unnecessary ), and our oven broke and had to be replaced, costing him around £500.

Before payday this month he told me he only had around £1,600 left in his current account because of various expenses. He says he's trying to rebuild his savings after the redundancy, so I appreciate he has financial commitments and isn't sitting on endless disposable income.

At the same time, I'm in debt, living in my overdraft and feeling like I'm sinking while trying to cover childcare, my own costs and many of our child's day-to-day expenses.

What I'm struggling with is whether this is simply how it has to be because we're not married, or whether it's reasonable to expect someone earning around £93,000 a year to contribute more towards the costs of the child we have together when I'm earning £1,500 a month and ending up in debt.

Can he reasonably say that my debts are my responsibility and refuse to help financially? Or should we be sharing the costs of raising our child in a way that reflects our very different incomes?

I'm genuinely asking because I don't know if my judgement is being clouded by stress. I feel like I'm spiralling and I can't carry on like this, but equally I don't want to be unfair to him if I'm expecting something unreasonable. I had a health scare recently and thankfully all came back clear and fine - but reading the summary of my consultation with the Dr she said I seemed stressed and tearful though I didn't cry. I don't even remember that, I had my toddler with me so I was listening to what she was saying while caring for him.

Also.i.paynfot the cleaner to come once a week (68 pounds) but I do.all laundry and ironing of clothes and bedding. He does 85% of cooking, but I do the clean up afterwards....

If you've got this far thank you. I don't know how I've fallen so far, when I started maternity leave I had around £8000 in the bank...

Ah ok, sorry missed that.

I don't have any advice but just solidarity as your situation is similar to mine. I'm 38 and my partner is 56. He's a high earner, hundreds of thousands in savings. I have a decent job but nowhere near as much as him. I'm in debt as I have a car loan and run out of money some months to pay the bills. He doesn't want to take our child for a day out yet is in the pub 4x a week. I even had to play for mine and put childs flights- he refused to pay half for our shared child and said if I didn't pay for his flight I wasnt allowed to go.

Kindly OP, I think you need to learn to budget your money better. I earn the same as you and work 3 days a week. I pay for the food shopping (about £600 a month) and save into Monzo pots for Christmas/car/birthdays/holidays etc and still manage to put £250 into a cash isa every month that I never touch. I’ve learnt to cut my cloth and when my spending money is gone, it’s gone. When you work part time you have to amend your spending. I’m not judging you, when I worked full time I contributed about 60/40 but also spent every penny I earned as I felt I deserved treats all the time. I don’t think your partner is being inherently unreasonable at all. What would the alternative arrangement be? He pays for everything so you can can buy everything your hearts desires? That doesn’t seem very fair either.

Not to distract from the OP too much but how do you manage the pots? Do you put money in straight after payday?

Why are you still with this man?

Quite

Yes I put £40/£50 per month into Monzo savings pots on pay day. I find it’s the only thing that really works for me for building up savings for specific things. You can also lock pots so you can’t dip into them. It’s been a learning curve for me :)

I'm so sorry that sounds horrible. And he sounds properly abusive. I hope you have a nice and kind family and support network in your corner 💐

The person I was responding to was dismissing it out of hand. which was I wrote that in response to her, not as a comment on the general tone of the thread.

He is paying for their child, he pays all of their bills and majority of their food. She pays for his clothes and toys and £135 for childcare. He also apparently does 85% of the cooking.

We see plenty of men on MN who do nothing etc, but it does not say anywhere that this is the case with him. Her contribution to his costs are one off costs, he pays for all of their daily costs.

I honestly cannot fathom how anyone can read OPs posts and think that her DP should be topping up her wages so she can afford more personal expenditures. The only things she pays are minimal, the rest appears to go on make up, hair, cleaner, dry cleaning, clothes etc. all things she has a right to spend her money on but why should her DP increase his contribution so OP can continue to spend fairly frivolously

What you’re suggesting is he covers ALL of their child’s costs though. As he already pays the majority of their costs. Now you think he should cover the small amount that OP pays towards her child? Why do you think a woman shouldn’t have to pay towards her child? Why is her money, hers, but his money theirs?

Wtf are you not married?

Again no mention of the frivolous £2k per month he spends on therapy!

Why does he get to spend so much on himself and get so much free time? Why did she have to burn through her savings when she was on maternity? He earns significantly more than her yet she is stressed and worried about money and is covering all the childcare. Including organising it, paying for it and doing it two days per week.

I’m suggesting it should be fair and proportionate. He has progressed his career and has savings, a pension, a house in his name and another rental property . Yet the OP (his partner and the mother of his child) has debt and is worried about money. Her career took a hit when she was off on maternity and now she is part time to look after his child (which considering he has therapy every day after work doesn’t seem to spend much time with). He never has to worry about childcare.

It’s fair he has thousands more a month to spend? When she has taken the career hit and is covering all the childcare…?

Well it’s quid pro quo IMO, her DP isn’t asking her to contribute proportionally to the house hold finances, she’s just been tasked with paying for minor outgoings for clothes/toys/minimal child care costs. The rest of her money is her own, she doesn’t have to justify how she spends it. As people on here view it, she spends frivolously. And he then doesn’t need to justify how he spends his money.

I have joint finances with my DW,(both women) but neither of us had assets prior to marriage or other children. We married as equals.

If I entered this relationship with high paying job, assets etc, then I’d have had a different perspective. I certainly wouldn’t be covering all of the living expenses and then transferring a chunk of money to my DW to cover make up, clothes etc. as she has her own money for that. She’s not going without. I’d be happy for her to work PT as it benefits our child. But if she wanted to earn more then I’d pay more for childcare. I know it’s controversial on mumsnet but I don’t see working PT as a favour to the other parent. I’d personally prefer to be PT and do more childcare than be the FT breadwinner.

He has assets and another child to think of. He’s also saving for retirement. And despite the discussions around the necessity for his therapy, I don’t think that people who don’t know him can say whether that’s a waste of his money or not: he may have serious MH issues.

OP chose to have a baby with someone and didn’t discuss how finances would be managed. I don’t think she’s being done here, she benefits from their situation, so does he. I just don’t understand why anyone is suggesting that he should stop his ‘frivolous’ spending to subsidise hers

Given his age he’d done most of those things before he even met OP. People dont build entire careers in their 50s. Nor has the OP anything to do with his property acquisitions

Who says her career took a hit when she was on maternity. Most successful women I know have kids.

She chose to take a 12 month mat leave and work part time. No where has she said he asked her to do either. They could both work and share the nursery drops like most couples.

If it was actually fair and proportionate and she paid towards the mortgage & bills it’s highly unlikely she’d have more money than she has now.

You’re acting as if the OP is some long term put upon SAHM who helped a husband build up his business from scratch.

“He has progressed his career”

“ her career took a hit when she was off on maternity”

there is no reason to assume either that he progressed his career since meeting her or that hers took a hit. OP has said she was a low earner before too, and just went part time

And why is the OP not married!

Why did she have to burn through her savings when she was on maternity?

And why did he have to burn through his savings when he was out of work?
Fairness works both ways.

And the OP according to herself both has a good job and is very good at it. And said she is very attractive like her mother. So a confident self assured person. So much so that she talks negatively about other jobs she feels don’t contribute to society as much as hers.

But for some reason people keep talking about her like she’s a little girl being taken advantage of by a bad man. She was well into her 30s when she had a baby, old enough to decide in what circumstances to have a baby. She did so without marriage and without a firm commitment as to her rights of residence long term or possibly a clear financial understanding. That was very unwise but it does not automatically make the Op a victim.

And from OP's description of her career, it doesn't seem to have taken a hit. And it's a career where she is also not disadvantaged by working part time.

Her son is also 3. If she hadn't have had a child would OP have bought property and made huge career strides in the same time? Her responses do not suggest that she would.

Because he pays the mortgage & the bills and it appears the OP is in a position to do neither!

She could have done what many families have done in the same situation - tightened her belt and cut down to necessities only, paid towards the bills, taken on a second job (or worked full time in her first job). She does none of these things. She leaves her partner to use his savings. The flow of financial "helping out" only seems to run in one direction.

If either of my DH & I were made redundant were are a small step from mortgage arrears. But the OP doesn’t mention much about the redundancy at all, other than her DH needs to build back up from it. So if she perceives a lack of support, it definitely goes both ways.

Maybe if he didn’t spend £2k plus a month on therapy 5 times a week he’d have kept more of his redundancy. Yet OP is the frivolous one. Everyone is continually ignoring this.

She’s also just said childcare is about to go up by £200 per month. God forbid that he gets involved in contributing to this.

Call me old fashioned but when you are a family you should have equal access to money. One shouldn’t have hundreds of thousands of pounds syphoned off, have assets of multiple properties and income from those properties, whilst the other person (whose career will have taken an impact on maternity though we appear to be dismissing that) is in debt and struggling.

Of course he should have supported her more through maternity leave. Any decent partner and father would.

The mistake OP has made is allowing this to happen and not getting married or agreeing finances.