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...

That sounds an awful lot like manifesting a man who will provide for me in places.

It doesn’t make financial sense for DP himself or his two children to share his assets at this point on his life.

That is not to say he couldn’t give Op more security but this is what she settled for. It wasn’t a wise decision but it was hers to make.

I read that the OP doesn't know how much savings he has. She is just guessing. She has a small overdraft but she can't talk to him about it. So she's posting here instead.

Yes I may well be projecting here due to the ongoing situation with my relative and the fact I have experience of the type of people in the therapy bubble this man is in. However, I think other people are projecting too, especially the 'well I have to use childcare full time and work full time so so should OP.' But none of this is the point! The point is about trust and transparency in a relationship where there is a child. An attitude that you are in it together and can pull together - not two people who constantly feel the need to protect themselves against the other and can't discuss money.

My relative is with a quite high earning man and lives in a quite nice house, not in London, but Surrey. Probably the house is worth 2 million or thereabouts. So on the surface, people would think she probably has quite a nice life, right? But she does not - she does not live the kind of lifestyle people would assume - because she lives with a man who, for some unknown reason, has always maintained this weird veneer of financial secrecy and control. This is no way to live, in my view. It's terrible to witness. I see the effects. Not only on her, but on the children. It was only when the kids started stealing from shops that the wool started to fall from my relative's eyes and is slowly realising that she is in an abusive situation. It's the same sort of thing as OP - if she'd run up a small overdraft, she could never have approached her H about it. Even though it would have been nothing to him. Men like this are a disgrace and have no business having families at all.

And as for this twilight bollocks - he’s the same age as me.

He’s not some poor elderly victim who just wanted his pension stash to himself and OP came along with cunning designs.

He, post divorce, got himself into a relationship with a much younger woman. Partly for the sex, partly for the ego boost, partly because be wanted childcare for his DD. He then chose to have another child with her. And then decided to carry on living as a single man nonetheless. Now he’s trying to avoid all of them by spending half his life in Golder’s Green.

If he didn’t want to share his assets with anyone he could have made a simple decision not to get into another relationship, not to have another child, and simply date divorcees who weren’t interested in cohabition.

That sounds an awful lot like manifesting a man who will provide for me in places.

How on earth did you get that from what I said?!

The rest of the post is so completely bizarre that I think you must be trolling. No-one would think that was in any way reasonable.

Also, as a psychotherapist, I have clients like OP. The way she writes is very telling - for instance, the way she feels the need to list the trivial details of quite innocuous things she spends money on. Just the way she writes - it speaks volumes.

I would also say that where men are secretive / controlling about money in a marriage or relationship with a child, there are invariably other behaviours related to control / denial / secrecy that emerge. For instance, alcoholism is a common one. Drug use. Affairs. It's a certain psychology that occurs across all income levels and all walks of life.

I think OP should expect the world.

however she won’t get that with her current partner. Her choice is to stay or go.

what her choice isn’t, is to stay and “make”
her current partner perfect.

I agree. It’s a distraction

Incorrect nobody is saying - “I have to work and put my kids in childcare therefore Op should have to”. As I have said many times in response to you I’m disagreeing with the assertion that the DP NEEDS Op not to work.
Many people have two people out at work with the kids in childcare.

And if Op felt that she didn’t have enough commitment or transparency from DP before they had a baby, she could have decided not to have a baby and walk away.

I think you’re the same person who accused people of being “obsessed” with money. I’ve seen that a few times on MNs and it’s often from a partner financially reliant on another. Because is just so unimportant, unless you’re the one who has to earn it.

"And if Op felt that she didn’t have enough commitment or transparency from DP before they had a baby, she could have decided not to have a baby and walk away."

Well yes, true. But women do end up in these situations, sadly.

You say yourself that you don't trust your DH's spending so you need to manage him and keep you money separate and you find this stressful. Yet you still married him.

Although my DH only ever thinks of anything he earns as family money, he's probably one of the most extreme cases of 'workaholic' I've come across and there are obviously pros and cons to living with this personality type.

Yes that’s exactly how some posters come across. Really only looking at this relationship in monetary terms, it’s very odd.

Unfortunately I am not reliant on my DH, I’ve always run my own business.

Im married to my DH I committed to him. I took a vow. That means something to me. And there are things that only became obvious once we had kids. So not the same as the Op. And he still brings an ok salary in, has his own pension etc. He contributes to bills etc.

But what he & the Op remind me of eachother in that they both take quite a childlike attitude to money. The whole oh I’m just not good with money etc. Which is fine if you have someone else picking up the pieces . But it is a tiring dynamic for the other person long term.

I’m sorry. My partner has had his issues with finances (as have I to be fair) but we are on the same page now.

You never know if people will behave honourably in a break up situation or if they meet someone else or if you die. I’m very aware of that, as people who you thought would be entirely decent often aren’t sadly

I’m sorry. My partner has had his issues with finances (as have I to be fair) but we are on the same page now.

You never know if people will behave honourably in a break up situation or if they meet someone else or if you die. I’m very aware of that, as people who you thought would be entirely decent often aren’t sadly

I’m sorry. My partner has had his issues with finances (as have I to be fair) but we are on the same page now.

You never know if people will behave honourably in a break up situation or if they meet someone else or if you die. I’m very aware of that, as people who you thought would be entirely decent often aren’t sadly

Sure, I accept what you're saying. I suppose the extent you would put up with someone who was like a 'teenager' about money would depend on other things he may or may not bring into the relationship - eg. does he take pressure off you in other ways?

For instance, my DH extremely financially-minded. He has always been quite 'extra' in that he's a workaholic. He comes from nothing, he was a child refugee. I think people who come from backgrounds or cultural norms where there was no 'fall back' in terms of benefits, or education or health care can often be more driven than the average U.K. person because what drives them is fear really. A lot of his family are like this, whereas people in my family, although more privileged in the sense we could always take education and health care for granted, have tended to have more of a 9-5 mentality.

Sorry, my point was, when you live with an extreme workaholic, you kind of have to balance the family in other ways. You have to absorb quite a lot actually. Both of us working, the way he is, would have been very difficult and too stressful for the family as a whole. But it was ok, because everything was always 'ours', regardless of whether I was working or not.

Rimmel waterproof mascara does not give panda eyes.

Yes it does. Not every cosmetic product behaves the same way with every person. We are all individuals.

Also, waterproof mascaras contain forever chemicals.

Lol OP, here's everyone discussing your marriage dynamic - people assuming allsorts and projecting our various experiences ... and your main takeaway from all this is something about mascara brands? 😂

Not the main take away no, but the only thing I have time to respond to while on a short break at work. I'm still working my way through the responses.

Your responses have been very interesting though (in part because of your background).

It's a bit overwhelming having one's relationship under microscope. But that's AIBU so goes with the territory.

Ok so this thread for you is all about projecting your DH’s deficiencies onto OP.

Of course OP doesn’t actually say she’s bad with money, merely: I'm aware I'm not naturally good with money. Her debt isn’t huge so she can’t be that bad - it’s not like she has a gambling addiction.

Any admission of weakness or imperfection in AIBU tends to be taken at face value and used as a stick to beat the OP with. So the mantra “bad with money” has bleated like the squeak of a doll’s stomach for an entire thread.

OP could probably cut back on lattes and Dior foundation but that is not going to change the fundamental lack of connection, respect or equality in her relationship.

It’s not expectations it’s about her reality? She is a low earner living in London. She is now in a relationship with someone who is happy to provide all day to day living expenses but it’s not willing to share his assets and savings. She has limited options. She can address her feelings with her DP, but she cannot force him to change their dynamic, as that point she can stay and put up with the status quo. (Which I think is a pretty good option, disposable income, working part time, no living expenses.) Or she can leave claim CMS, benefits and start paying for her own living expenses. Which is fine if she doesn’t want to be in a relationship but is the harder option and not going to increase her money.

The third option, the most aspirational option is that OP retrains and gets a better paid job so that she can build her own assets and she can do that single or in a relationship. That’s up to her. But demanding access to her DPs earnings and assets is not aspirational at all. If they break up, she’d back to square one.

To clarify a few other bits that have come up in replies:

My full-time salary was £37.5k p.a. I have also been paying into a private pension since I joined the workforce in 2009. Naturally, my contributions have reduced because of mat leave and then going part-time.

I do about 90% of the cooking for DS because he eats earlier than we do, for obvious reasons. It's for us that DP does around 85% of the cooking – or so I thought. When I mentioned this during our conversation last night, he said I actually do more cooking than I think. Its true I make several dahls and curries each week. Part of the reason he does so much of the cooking in the first place is that he likes to add meat to dishes. As a vegetarian, I don't really have the heart or the stomach to cook meat.

I don't want the house to go to anyone other than the two children (DSD, DS), but we've agreed that if DP were to die first (not a certainty, but statistically more likely), I could remain in the property for as long as I needed. The children also stand to inherit around €100,000 from DP's mother, barring any catastrophes or unforeseen circumstances. Hopefully, that could help with higher education costs and eventually a deposit for a home. Those two things together give me a bit if peace of mind.

We had a long talk last night (his therapist was away Friday and Monday , so we had a bit more time), and I asked him again about my decision to go part-time, just to check that I was remembering correctly. He said he was just as happy as I was with arranging things this way and fully supported the decision. He agreed it was in DS's best interests, so this wasn't a case of me overruling him. I did wam to check that because sometimes our memories can be a bit selective and biased.

I'm actually quite conservative when it comes to caring for young children. My view is that, ideally, during the first three years, children should have as much time as possible with at least one parent or another close family member, such as a grandparent. I think those early years are especially important for emotional development and forming secure attachments. For that reason, I personally would never have had DS in full-time childcare from 12 months old, regardless of how lovely his nursery carers are. They can't do what a parent / close family member can in terms of supporting development.

Our baby was planned.

We have talked about getting married, but as neither of us want a big fuss or even a do, it'll be more of a formality that can be done in the next couple of years. I won't buy a dress for that, I have a couple that would be suitable already.

We have decided DP will help me with the ~£170 of overdraft, and the CC amount. I can manage the loan with those two taken off my shoulders. I actually only had an overdraft of £50 as a backstop until recently, but I had to move it up to £200 when he was away on business trips in order to cover certain things.

Before DS, I've never been in debt, I balanced the books well enough. I have been careless. I have no time to myself at all: I'm with DS, or I'm in the office, or I'm commuting, or taking care of the house. That's it. I was probably self soothing a bit here and there (including spending on DS), and it got out of hand....

I could probably let go of the cleaner in September when DS goes to nursery for his third day. Its under discussion (bar the kitchen, I quite like cleaning). DP thinks we should keep her though....

"She has limited options. She can address her feelings with her DP, but she cannot force him to change their dynamic"

No she can't force him, this is true. But one thing is for certain - nothing is ever going to change if OP continues to be so gaslighted that she is having to ask questions on the internet, rather than just being able to bring these worries up with him. The anecdote she gives about being at the hospital, and the nurse noticing her anxiety, is very telling. The way financial abusers operate is by making their partner perpetually doubt themselves, in the way OP sounds as if she is. It's an insidious and highly destructive dynamic, like a boiled frog phenomenon that erodes self-worth and identity.

Sorry just saw your update OP. Good for you. Keep going...