Help with partner...

Dobbibill

Good luck for tomorrow.

Please come back and let us know how it goes.

Pixie5740

My friend is in a similar situation. Her partner has lots of debts from before they met and earns about twice what she does. He lives rent free with her and contributes nothing towards food shopping and utilities. (I have to bite my tongue...a lot). He's so generous in the pub buying drinks for everyone instead of focussing on debt repayments or paying his way but she loves him (vomit).

He said he couldn't afford to go on holiday with her but then miraculously found the money to go on a lads holiday and took the hump with her when she went on holiday with a friend.

You have 3 option. You can nip this in the bud and teach him how to budget, accept that he's a financial loser or show him the door.

hohum

Sounds like early days. He may not ever do a budget, but I second the idea of a joint bills account. Do a breakdown of how much he needs to give you, but I would lay money he wouldn't ever look at it and would be very happy just to be told x amount and he can meet it. My boyfriend always preferred just to know the headline figure he should hand over back when we split bills. He trusted me enough to handle it and really didn't care enough to be interested in detail. More admin for you but probably less than endlessly loaning and repaying each other money.

I would let go of trying to get him to budget your way. That is usually one people need to come to themselves. Also £7k is a fair wage gap, you may want to think about how you handle a fair split on things like holidays.

happybunny86

Had a good chat with my partner this morning. He's agreed he's not managing very well with money since we moved in together and agrees his current system is not working and he's struggling the week that rent comes out.

He's agreed that averaging the payments out over the weeks is a much better idea - Thanks Dobbibill!! We already have the account there as its where the bills come out of now. I agreed to work out what he'd need to put in and when the best time to move to the new method would be to ensure we don't go overdrawn.

He's also agreed for food and holiday money to go into this account. I said this would be much easier for me to keep a hold on the food budget too. Plus its an incentive for me to stick to the food budget/come in under as any extra will go towards a holiday.

Good news all round! Thanks for all the help guys

kerri_gt

thanks for the update Happybunny86, sounds like positive news all round and a good way to start the new year.

Dobbibill

That's excellent, first hurdle over with :T

Now onto the budget, just something I thought I'd better mention as it's often missed and can cause a hiccup further down the line. If you are both going to contribute weekly that will work perfectly for a 50/50 split and is quite straight forward to calculate.
If OH is doing weekly payments and you are going to do monthly payments then don't forget £x weekly x 52 / 12 = £x pcm OR £x pcm (bills acc/2) x12 / 52 = £x weekly to be paid by OH.

From my own experience a Standing Order set up for payday each week/month is easiest as it goes straight out ASAP. Be careful of paydays that fall on a weekend though. (employer sometimes pays early and SO leaves next working day leaving a few days in between)

Really pleased that everything is working out for you, team budgeting in the happybunny household :T :T

happybunny86

Dobbibill wrote: »

If you are both going to contribute weekly that will work perfectly for a 50/50 split and is quite straight forward to calculate.

I get paid 4 weekly and partner gets paid weekly so will work perfectly. Will just need to create a ynab budget for it so I know exactly what is bills money and exactly what is holiday and food as thee as we sometimes skip a month for bills with it technically being 13 pay days per year.

As my pay day is a 4 weekly cycle I transfer money in as it saves messing around changing the dates. Plus i like doing it (weird I know!)

For my partner if we set it up to go out the day he gets paid is that okay? What if payment came out before wages went in?

Have given partner a total figure he's happy with as gives him enough left still for his hobbies etc. Makes me laugh that he didn't even ask how much that breaks down in terms of food etc. I'd want to know the detail!!

We will at some point have to address the fact that I earn more than him but I a imagine that will happen when we buy a house.

Pepperoni

Did you include house deposit savings?

Could you put extra into that pot with the surplus you earn over him to help balance things?

TakeAwayKing_2

What do you mean by "address the fact that you earn more than him"?
Surely you are together or you're not?

happybunny86

He isn't putting anything away for a house deposit at the moment as he's paying a loan off but I have started so we have a head start.

By address the fact I mean my ideal way for us to budget would be to put it all together and to take out some spending money of our own. He won't do this at the moment as he sees it as taking my money. I really don't see it like that. We live together and are making a life together so it should be our money not mine.