Is a Pension a household bill???

lvader

For what its worth I pay all the bills and contribute towards my partners pension and yes my partner does work.

MoneyWorry

Not sure OP that you have told us the full story. If you partner earns over £30K a year with you £6K less, how on earth do you only have £100 a month left over.

In your post, you have already told us that your partner has agreed to split your living expenses as a percentage of what you earn which will give you more money. You've then told us you don't want to contribute to a pension of your own nor have anything to do with joint financial planning for retirement. Why not use some of that extra to contribute to a pension?

Are we to assume from this that if you're together as a couple at retirement, you'll keep to the same arrangement so you live on the state pension and your partner keeps all their accrued pension for themselves. Or maybe, you don't intend to be in this relationship till retirement age. I agree that a pension is not a household expense, but retirement planning and financial planning for your child should be something that you both want to share.

atush

PeacefulWaters wrote: »

What's hers is hers.

What's mine is ours.

So I'm told.

.



Rubbish


what is all of yours, together is yours. 50% each.

If you can't share equally, you should not buy a house together. If you can't share your finances w/o rage, children should not even be contemplated.

atush

MoneyWorry wrote: »

Not sure OP that you have told us the full story. If you partner earns over £30K a year with you £6K less, how on earth do you only have £100 a month left over.

In your post, you have already told us that your partner has agreed to split your living expenses as a percentage of what you earn which will give you more money. You've then told us you don't want to contribute to a pension of your own nor have anything to do with joint financial planning for retirement. Why not use some of that extra to contribute to a pension?

Are we to assume from this that if you're together as a couple at retirement, you'll keep to the same arrangement so you live on the state pension and your partner keeps all their accrued pension for themselves. Or maybe, you don't intend to be in this relationship till retirement age. I agree that a pension is not a household expense, but retirement planning and financial planning for your child should be something that you both want to share.

Not sure your maths are right.

they pay 50% bills each as he reduces his income to hers by his pension contribs. He has enough to pay a pension, she has 100 a month for discretionary spending as she earns 7K less per annum.

Period.

this sounds like flat mates, not life mates.

atush

ermine wrote: »

You need to have a stern talking to yourself if you are trying to force your partner to give up their pension because you can't afford one. The may be a case to be made that they pay for it themselves and that reduces their effective income. There's an example of this it is, after all, is how the taxman views a pension.

The residual gets split as before if that is you you both see things. I can see the argument that you don't want to contribute to their pension.

Probably the correct answer is for you to pay into a pension yourself and give up a bit of consumerism. But if you don't want to do that then let them pay in effectively from income before your 'household tax' and take it from there. That way you don't get to pay into their pension, which I can see would make you sore, although you really ought to pay into yours, unless you plan on taking the Logan's Run option to the problem of getting old

Rubbish. No one is saying the partner should not have a pension, just that as his 100% savings it is not a household bill.

Their partner needs a stern talking to.

They are in this together or they are not.

So get married, or go elsewhere.

Purplesky_2

Those of us who are unmarried have to be realistic and yes, a little pessimistic about assets. We have no legal right to them. He could walk away with all that pension and his own cash.
So we can get married, but that isn't for everyone (and actually doesn't always help - plenty of ways to screw someone financially when you are married or getting divorced - just like my father...)

princeofpounds

The odd bit of woolly thinking on this thread.

Of course a pension is not a household bill.

It is a form of compensation and saving.

Yes, it is different in that it is locked up until you are older, it has certain tax benefits, and it may not be funded entirely by the wages you receive in your monthly pay.

But it is no more a household bill than committing to put a fiver in the piggy bank each week.

What some people are getting confused about is whether the objective of your financial arrangement is to proportionately equalise income after expenses, or to equalise disposable income after expenses. Until you are rock-solid on your joint understanding of this, you will not reach a settled solution.

Talk about being 'penalised for saving' also needs to be approached with caution. There is no particular reason saving should be exempt from any arrangement - to take it to its logical limit, if you put all your income into you own private pension, should he be required to pay for absolutely everything?

On the other hand, don't underestimate how annoying it can be to see a partner contribute less because you are saving for a joint future whilst they are merely consuming.

It gets doubly murky because there is technically no joint future even if your partner imagines there is one and half of his pension will end up ultimately being spent by you (which is probably where his mindset sits right now).

You can see now one reason why marriage was invented... Not that I believe partnerships are a bad idea but you have to be so much more brutal and open about money as you can see.

These problems often also arise because it is typically harder for the lower income partner to save as much, even if they did want to contribute. Another possibility which may seem less confrontational is that you propose to save the same percentage amount into a pension (bearing in mind the tax treatment). Both his and your contributions are kept out of the expenses split, but there is an understanding that you are both saving towards a hopefully-joint future.

There is a hard discussion ahead. If you cannot get your partner to understand the points in this post (and other posts, the sensible ones at least) then I am afraid you may have a problem because there is a difference in objective and in mindset which underlies it all.

Good luck.

PeacefulWaters

atush wrote: »

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Rubbish


what is all of yours, together is yours. 50% each.

If you can't share equally, you should not buy a house together. If you can't share your finances w/o rage, children should not even be contemplated.

I think you missed a sense of humour attempt on my part ...

atush

No got the humor.

I was saying her attitude was rubbish that time Her money is also half yours.

d70cw6

the only sensible thing to do would be to stop paying into the pension and give me the money instead.