My boyfriend and I have been together for about 5 years and are starting to have the buying a house, having kids, figuring out when we get married conversations. Because of that, finances are starting to come up more and more and I’m feeling this vague resentment bubbling up for him.
We both live in a HOCL living city. About 6 months ago, I got a really great finance job that’s allowed me to make about double what he does. My family was pretty low income and financially illiterate (everyone is in massive debt with little savings, and I didn’t open my first credit card until I was 26). I had to pay off all my loans, help pay part of my parent’s mortgage, paid to bury both my grandparents, helped cover some of my brother’s certification payments, etc. Despite that, I have around $14k in savings and I’m starting to put much more towards investments than before.
My boyfriend, by contrast, grew in in an upper middle class neighborhood, and while he lived with his parents didn’t have any expenses outside of himself. Bc of that he’s saved closed to $50k all on his own. His father also left him close to $200k in liquid savings along with a pretty significant amount of investments passed down to him from his uncle. He doesn’t make as much money as I do, but the sheer magnitude of his savings along with everything he’s inherited really has been bothering me lately.
I’m starting to feel really insecure/behind with my own financial savings. I’m also worried that my financial situation is holding us back from things like IVF treatments I would need to have a child, buying a house, have the big wedding we both want, etc. We’ve talked about my feelings before and he insists that these are things we can do when we’re both ready, but I’m still so uncomfortable with the fact that it would be primarily paid for by his inheritance. I’m also very selfishly resentful of how easy he had it regarding his financial situation. But that’s not his fault, and I don’t WANT to resent him for it. I don’t want this to fester into something worse that’ll cause fights down the line
TL;DR: My boyfriend has more generational wealth than I do, and it makes me resent his upbringing and feel disappointed with my own accomplishments. How do I make peace with where we both are? How can I learn to not look at his finances with disdain and simply be comfortable with where I am and the future we can build together?
4 comments
How do you budget between you day-to-day? Since you earn more, are you paying more towards joint expenses? That’s what worked out for me and my husband. We didn’t have such enormous discrepancies, but he has always earned about 10% more than me, and I had more savings when we were first together. So I paid the deposit on our house and figured it works out evenly in the long run because he pays more into the joint account (we each put in 60% of our earnings). Once we bought the house together it’s easier and easier to think of all our money as joint money, because that’s how we treat it. So there’s no worry or animosity over me going on maternity leave and earning hardly anything next year, or the fact that I will be getting inheritance from my grandparents and he didn’t get left anything by his. It’s all family money. And that is after feeling some kind of way about him out-earning me when we were first together. It did take time to accept that he will *always* be the higher earner.
I’m curious if he feels confident or has his own angst. He inherented the money he brings into the relationship and makes less than you. I know people who have trust funds and I wouldn’t assume his ego is rock solid on this even if he’s mostly ok.
Competition on money in a relationship is a recipe for disaster. You’re part of a team where each of your strengths benefit both or you’re rooting for the other to be in a worse position.
The person you love didn’t have to experience the hardships you did, isn’t that a good thing? If you have kids, whose childhood do you want them to have?
If you can’t let go of the feelings or make peace with them – therapy therapy therapy. Undealt with you risk your bf internalizing this view of him.
Random thoughts because I used to work with high net worth clients. Having money is not nearly as important as being good with money and you’re clearly good with money. Hopefully you will both grow together and he won’t blow his inheritance, it’s easier than it sounds to do.
>I’m still so uncomfortable with the fact that it would be primarily paid for by his inheritance.
Why? Is this not something that benefits you both? You are saying you are resentful that he had it easy money wise. But if you two are buying a house and financing the IVF from his money, that also means that you are able to partake in this “easy life” or whatever. What is stopping you from doing that?
[deleted]