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...

I have just under £1,000 a month from my £1,500 salary (I forgot one overhead sorry, not lots but makes a difference, £80 a month, see below):

£130 pm - nursery
£272 pm - cleaner
£55 pm - language school (weekend)
£80 pm - my dad's train fare, I actually think sometimes it's more than £20 per week but he won't accept more (he comes from outside of London to come to us).

I started falling behind on maternity leave when the statutory pay ran out and my reserves dwindled, then I didn't make good enough of an effort to plan or course correct...

We've always had separate finances, even when I wasn't in financial straits. I don't think he's ever intentionally manoeuvred against me, we're not playing chess and he isn't Machiavelli.

I didn’t claim that at all. I said it’s not financial abuse if someone is working and able to keep all of their disposable income without having to contribute to the household costs,

If OP was told she’s not allowed to work or manipulated to not work that would be abusive, if he then refused to provide money that’d be financial abuse.

If OP was working and her DP was demanding 50% of the bills come out of her money, leaving her with no disposable income, then I’d argue that was financial abuse.

If OP willingly gave up her job and her DP agreed to financially support her to do that but he only provided food and bills and refused to give her access to the household finances, yes that would be abusive.

That can happen in wealthy couples or in people with no assets.

But that is not what is happening here. OP is not financially disadvantaged by working part time because she no longer has overheads to pay. Would it be completely normal for them to pool finances? Of course. But people allowed to manage their finances as they deem fit, the DP has way more to lose than OP. If I were him I would protect my retirement fund and my children’s inheritance. But then again I don’t need to demand my DW take care of me. I have worked hard to get a career and have a good income. So does my DW. If I ever remarry I’m not going to hand over half of my assets to someone who wasn’t there when I was building those assets

To be fair, when your stat pay ran out, he deffo should have been giving you money so you didn’t need CC. Unless he was unemployed at that point?

I’d argue that any debts you accumulated at the end of your maternity should be covered by him actually

How is having 1K ( plus extra 300pm in debt) to spend on stuff being in dire straits ?

I have a terrible make up habit, adore yarn and fabric, nice shoes, perfume
Buy from Toast, Cos, Me+Em Ma +Lin
Probably spend £250 monthly

If I was in " dire straits" I just wouldnt spend !

If I ever remarry I'm not going to hand over half my assets to someone who wasn't there when I was building those assets.
Couldn't agree more.

its just as well that’s not the actual definition of abuse then….

I said it’s not financial abuse if someone is working and able to keep all of their disposable income without having to contribute to the household costs,

I know. And I explained that that could be financial abuse in some circumstances and gave you an

Sorry I cba to read the rest of the post.

The fact that you can’t see or accept that spending over £1k per month on random bits and bobs is a problem is the problem.
Why on earth would you piss through £8k in savings and get 4k in debt on top for just random spending? There is no way that’s not a spending problem, some people unfortunately end up in debt on maternity because they didn’t plan to be pregnant and then stat mat pay wasn’t enough to keep up with their basic expenses, but in your case you just kept spending and spending even when it meant going into debt and hardly any of it was necessary.
On mat leave you obviously didn’t even have the nursery cost, you could have paused the cleaner and then you would have had several hundred pounds for the odd cute baby outfit, coffees out and baby classes.

Ok so your Dad’s train fare is also
part of the childcare costs and your DH can’t even cover this? Honestly! He’s doing both of you such a huge favour. And it will be more than that.

Do you just think it’s unreasonable for the OP to pay for anything?

I think the DH should contribute to childcare costs of course he should - it’s his child too! Her Dad is doing them a huge favour.

But in that case should the OP not contribute towards some other costs? Childcare is just one bill in their overall bills. So if the Op took on gas & electric and Dp took childcare would you prefer that?

How is childcare random bits and bobs? Jesus. A cleaner isn’t random bits and bobs- she suggested giving it up and he said no (but doesn’t fancy contributing towards it or doing any housework!).

So she can’t do language school as it’s a ‘random bit and bob’ but his £2k a month in therapy is fine. Ok. Very fair. She gets zero free time as it is. Maybe she should just get more and more in to debt looking after and paying for his kid (with her Dad’s help).

So do you think OP should only contribute 50% of the childcare costs but her partner should cover 100% of every other living expense?

The 1k a month is after the childcare and cleaner, and including no fixed housing costs of living bills, so yes random bits and bobs.

I tell you what most couples do - they contribute proportionally to their incomes! Novel idea. Most relationships involving children don’t have one person with seriously more income and time and assets with the other struggling and in debt.

I think they should both contribute according to their income.

Yes I know! But you are assuming that the Op would be better off if she contributed proportionality whereas I really doubt she’d be left with £1000 a month to spend.

So what are you spending nearly £1000/month on?

Could you track your spending over the last three months and categorise it to see where it’s all going?

It’s very likely the partner pays a higher percentage given he covers the mortgage, insurance, council tax, energy, internet, water, food shopping etc.
The OP pays about 30% of her income on nursery and a cleaner, 30% of the partners income would be around 1,700 and you would be hard pressed to cover what he is and capping it at only £1700.

Well she would as they’d both have access to the same pool of money that’s left over. But I get that you don’t get it. Clearly as OP has £1k to spend and the DH spends £2k alone on therapy. So what do we think he spends on random bits and bobs?

I’ve personally never seen any relationship involving children where one person spends ££££ on themselves every month and leaves the other struggling and in debt.

Must be more common than I realised sadly.

Well he does have that £2k per month for therapy so not sure about your sums.

Well if they’re paying proportional to their income, as you suggested they should, the partner will have free money after the bills, just as OP has her spare £1k.

Excuse you with your clearly they should both contribute according to their income like most couples, so I reasonably assumed you meant total expenses divided into a % each to relative to their income.

But you actually meant the OP should just be given more of DP’s money. Which Op doenst even expect.

The Op has £1,000 a month to spend on kits clothes for a toddler, personal items & treats. If she is in debt it’s not on Dp.