When a partner doesn't get it

steampowered

The full state pension is £179.60 per week.

Perhaps do a trial where your husband has to spend 3 months living on £179.60 per week.

He can then decide whether he'll be happy to live on that in retirement, or whether he now understands why having a private pension is important.

anonmoose

Some interesting comments here and thanks for the password & document advice. 

Yes he is far from stupid so I know he would manage if he had to. If you saw him at work you wouldn't believe it's the same person. He just isn't interested in money and because we have always had enough I guess he just assumes it continues that way.

I am happy to continue the financial planning but it's frustrating when he won't do the simplest thing like write a quick email. He has however already admitted he should have sorted it sooner.

And controlling??? Surely a controlling individual would increase the pension contributions themselves so they had the big pot and therefore the control over the partner in retirement?? He is more than happy to increase his contributions but just couldn't be bothered to action it. He is a capable and strong minded individual but this just isn't his area of interest. 

And yes he does bring other things to the relationship so it's in no way trying to put his contribution down, I just guess I wanted a perspective on how others manage this sort of situation.

jennystarpepper

Mine is the same, you are not on your own.

I have looked after the money for the last 20 years, it is only in the last 18 / 24 months he has started to realise the importance of finances, (especially as I'm eager to get rid of the mortgage)  and he has just turned 50....  people at work are just / have or are going retire in the next 18 months, I think the penny has dropped as to how old he is and when he can 'chuck it' and when SP hits, have you asked him when he wants to retire?

We have opened a PB a/c in the last few months and he has started to buy them monthly, we have had a few mishaps, he deleted his opening a/c email and could not remember how to buy, this is now sorted... I did explain if I wasn't here it is an extra stash of money for him in an emergency.

Don't expect him to change overnight, although I think you know this, just keep adding in the odd reminder, I did tell him I would get an extended visa and b0gger off to Oz if he didn't start taking an interest  , he did tell he he has not drawn his cash for work this week (bacon butty money) and can I pay it off the mortgage!  

It just takes time, in my husbands defence he does domestic chores to do with curtains and other basic things I do not have a clue about, even puts his socks together in pairs, people do that apparently!  

MovingForwards

I manage the budgets at home, tried to get my OH interested but he isn't. Now all I do is quarterly updates in a few words. He knows where to find my 'death folder'.

anonmoose

I have started to produce my crib notes of what to find where so at least he can access everything if he ever needs to. 

I think Malmonroe possibly has the wrong end of the stick? I don't mind doing the pension planning or all the admin that's not really the point. And we do live in harmony with our own jobs within the household and rarely ever disagree. So yes we are lucky.

My point is I thought he should know/want active involvement in this stuff and I felt like I shouldn't really be making decisions about his future. What if he looks back and blames me for bad decisions? Like I said before pension planning is more than just admin. 

Obviously it's the way he prefers it and he has agreed to be more proactive in future if there are any tasks related to finances I need him to do such as adjustments to the current works pension. 

I would like a bit more involvement from him in terms of at least understanding where we are at but I liked what one poster said earlier about having more discussions about what our retirement will look like, travel, hobbies etc. I think that might feed into it naturally.

Kim1965

My partner is very similar to yours, no intetest/participation in finances whatsoever. Seems odd to me.
 I have put a concise list of all our/mine and her policies/ pensions in a place she knows about.
 Sounds like your hubby is not a spendaholic or gambler, he is just horizontal. Best thing is for you to do is continue as you have donevin the past.
 Look on the bright side, you can make decisions without arguement or fear he will sabbitage your plans. 

DoublePolaroid

If the overall workload in the relationship is roughly equal i.e. he takes the lead, or a decent share of things like household maintenance, childcare, cooking or whatever, then let it be. In that event he’s evidently not idle, just not interested in personal finance. You can’t make somebody interested and all that cajoling is likely to have the opposite effect to the intended one. 

OTOH if you do everything, eventually it’ll breed resentment, which isn’t healthy, so needs to be addressed 

moving_forward

Ah I think I also misunderstood. So you just want to make sure you are both on the same page with future goals as well as him being a bit more proactive on the parts you can't sort?
Having a light chat about how you both see your retirement is a great place to start then you can do the sums/research into what you need to do to achieve that. If your not where you need to be then talk again and see if you are both happy to change plans or if not how you can afford to put more into pensions. 
As for any increases try typing a letter for him to sign like I do. It saves him forgetting or getting side tracked. 
As for going wrong well you may do but without a crystal ball all of us are in the same boat. We can only do our best with what we have at the time. Money and knowledge.

ex-pat_scot

It's not just workload sharing.
It's ensuring their is consistency of goal, and financial effort to be made, and understanding of how it broadly fits together.

Sadly, personal finance does not make mrs XPS's heart sing.
That's not important.
She does need to know what we have, where it is, how to access it. 
Hence the shared passwords, file of key accounts information etc.
However this is meaningless without a signpost on "the plan".

For example, I share the graph and figure occasionally, showing the inexorable rise in the value of my retirement funds.
(hers are DB, and she has a greater knowledge of how to access them than I do).
My info can tell her who has my SIPP, what the login details are. She can then work out a value.
What she can't do is translate this into the financial plan.
- what's the strategy for investment of the funds? 
- what's the broad decumulation plan (SWR / tax efficient threshold depletion)
- what's the tax implication of various approaches
- how to manage withdrawals and maintaining a liquidity buffer
- how to adjust pension income for inflation, investment performance etc
- whether to defer or draw the SP
- when to consider partial or full annuitisation perhaps
- what's the IHT impacts

Even if I try and explain these, and in particular the magic of the SWR, I rather think it won't be absorbed. 
That's the sadness - not that these things are not being done, but that it's only as good as my memory and ongoing focus. 

You do have to have at least one person who gets into the guts of these things, else you default onto a poor value annuity or blind trust of an (I)FA.  If both of you share the vision and the understanding of the mechanics, then it would be so much better.

NedS

I think this is perfectly normal within a relationship. I take care of all the financial stuff within our relationship with near zero interest / involvement from my partner - they simply trust that I will do a good job (or at least a better job that they may do) and leave me to get on with it with occasion summary updates. There are things that my partner is better at doing than I, and they take care of those things with little passing involvement from me, and I have complete trust that they will do a better job than I would. We are not all great at everything so tasks are best distributed based upon our individual abilities and willingness to engage with those tasks.