'Spending Money' in retirement

TBagpuss

Do you think he's bad at / choosing not to remember what he has withdrawn? It might work better if you have a 'bills account' and separate, individual personal accounts. You could set it up to have a transfer from the bills account to each of your personal accounts, every 4 weeks (or every week if that would make the budgeting easier), and then agree that you will each only spend from your individual accounts.

Obviously this won't work if he knows but doesn't care, but it might make it easier to manage on a practical level, if the issue is more about him not thinking, or not wanting to be bothered to work out what is available.

You could also talk with him about what he wants, what he is spending the money on, and how he is finding retirement - did he go from full time work direct to full retirement? Would he be interested in trying to find some part time work to boost your income a little and give him something to do?

Is there any way you could boost your income at all?

It sounds as though you've been retired for longer than him - are there any things you do which he could take over or do some of the time? Whether it is cooking, some of the housework or whatever. If part of the issue is that he is a t a losse end following his retirement then this might help.

Finally, if you haven't already done so, check out https://www.entitledto.co.uk in case there are any benefits or tax credits which you may qualify for but aren't claiming.

Pollycat

liz3chickens wrote: »

My husband retired in June at 70, I retired a couple of years ago with two small pensions but no SP until 2019. We have savings but our income is less than half pre retirement.
All household bills, food, petrol, savings for expenses etc are paid from our current account and we agreed (or so I thought ) that we would draw out £100 each in cash every four weeks for personal spending money - newspapers, coffee, drinks etc.
For the third month running my husband has spent all his money after two weeks and has drawn out more. At this rate we will be dipping into our savings to cover household expenses every month. Our last discussion about finances ended in a row.
Does anyone have advice on how to resolve this?

Start by talking to him about it.
Why isn't the £100 enough for him?
Was it an agreed figure based on reality or plucked out of the air?
Be prepared to show him what his £200 instead of £100 (and in fairness your £200 too) will mean to your future finances.

mark5

Part of my thinks he's wrong but the other part asks me how your total income is made up.

How does your total pension income compare to his, is it a case of he's spending more than he should or a case of he needs to spend less because you retired before state pension age so his pension needs to subsidise yours?

£25 per week sounds low to me in terms of an enjoyable retirement. If he worked until 70, I think he deserves to be able to enjoy his retirement now.

BrassicWoman

pinkshoes wrote: »

If you do the cooking, serve him beans on toast every night and vegetarian food

This is not a punishment

maman

mark5 wrote: »

Part of my thinks he's wrong but the other part asks me how your total income is made up.

How does your total pension income compare to his, is it a case of he's spending more than he should or a case of he needs to spend less because you retired before state pension age so his pension needs to subsidise yours?

£25 per week sounds low to me in terms of an enjoyable retirement. If he worked until 70, I think he deserves to be able to enjoy his retirement now.

I think this could be a fair point. Also, what is he spending the money on?


I'd agree that £100 is a lot for the odd coffee or newspaper but if it included having drinks/lunch with friends or on a hobby then it's not a great deal at all.


When you have these discussions that turn into rows presumably he's complaining that the £100 isn't enough. What's his reasoning?


DH and I work from a different standpoint and if you've always had a joint account then maybe it's too late to change although bagpuss seems to be suggesting something similar.


We have our personal accounts and our money is paid into those. Each of us has a similar amount of DDs for household bills coming out of those accounts. I pay for all the groceries, mostly with a credit card and we split the bill when it comes in. The same goes for other expenditure like holidays, insurances or household items: one of us pays with a CC and then we split the bill when it comes in. Then anything that's left in our own personal accounts is ours to spend or save as we please. It works for us because we've got fairly similar attitudes to money so neither of us spends extravagantly. I can see that it wouldn't work if your DH spent so much that he didn't have the money to pay his 'share' at the end of the month.


It'll help when we've got a few more details but, at the moment, I think the only way forward is to talk it through objectively and if it means a few rows then so be it.

selement

My husband and I are young but on limited budget due to repaying credit card debt. We get £200 a month spending money each. We tried less and really struggled because we earn a decent wage and feel like we deserve to spend some but can't go wold either (some colleagues seem to spend £100 ok one night out! We can't do things like that). 100 isn't much fun money unless prepared to live a very basic lifestyle (We include takeaways and meals out in this money)

seashore22

The problem is that we don't know how much disposable income the op and her husband have.

£100 might not be much, but it might be all they have. £100 will be a luxury to many in retirement.

Jackmydad

mark5 wrote: »

£25 per week sounds low to me in terms of an enjoyable retirement. If he worked until 70, I think he deserves to be able to enjoy his retirement now.

Everyone does deserve to enjoy their retirement. OTOH It's no good spending what you haven't got and getting into debt.
We all have to budget to a greater or lesser degree.

belfastgirl23

Jackmydad wrote: »

Everyone does deserve to enjoy their retirement. OTOH It's no good spending what you haven't got and getting into debt.
We all have to budget to a greater or lesser degree.

The OP says it's eating into savings not getting into debt

There is a big difference though between £1,000, £10,000 and £100,000 savings in terms of how comfortable you might feel about dipping into them as a stopgap until the pension kicks in

jamiehelsinki

Jackmydad wrote: »

Everyone does deserve to enjoy their retirement. OTOH It's no good spending what you haven't got and getting into debt.
We all have to budget to a greater or lesser degree.

The issue might be the op's contribution to the pot though and not the husbands spending.

When her pension kicks in things will no doubt be fine does she need to work until her state pension age?

Op after paying half the bills from his pension income how much would your husband be left with and how much would you be left with after paying half the bills from your pension income?