This discussion has been ongoing for a while and I’m curious to hear how others would feel about the situation. I’m not a native speaker so I apologise for any potential spelling mistakes.
I (F30) have been dating my boyfriend (30) for three years and we’ve been living together for around one year now. We have a great relationship and are very happy together apart from one (admittedly major) thing: how to divide chores and finances.
He’s a journalist and works a typical 40 hour week. Sometimes he’ll have to work irregular hours whenever he had to go on set, but it’s not an incredibly regular occurence. His commute to work is around 20-30 minutes and he typically works from 10:30 to 6 or so.
I’m an MD and work at the surgical department in a hospital with a 1:15 to 1:30 hours commute, depending on public transport. I start around 7 to 7:15 and often work until around 6 or 6:30. In addition, i often work nights or weekends. I typically leave the house at 5:55 and don’t come home until 19:30 or so. He leaves around 10 or 10:30 and comes back around 18:30.
As you can see, my hours appear a lot worse. In return, i make around 300 euros a month more than he does. We both pay the same amount of money to a shared account and use it for groceries and rent.
I feel that since I work a lot more, it’d be nice if he did a little more house-related tasks during the week with me doing a bit extra during the weekends. He wants to split all tasks 50/50 seeing as we both pay the same amount of money for our household. I don’t feel like paying extra since the difference in income is small and my hours are much worse than his. His response to that is that I “chose” my hours and therefore have no right to complain if I don’t pay extra. I’m set to make a lot more money than him after i graduate residency and stated that I’m more than happy to start paying more once my income significantly increases, but he does not believe that I will actually do so. He’s also upset with the fact that lately he’s been unable to save money due to his cigarette habit, housing costs and student debt.
What’s the fair thing to do? Should I start contributing more to the house account in trade for less chores, even though the difference in income is small and my hours are much worse? Thank you for your advice!
9 comments
Your working hours are an investment in yourself and he shouldn’t have to pay for that.
You have more discretionary spending than he does; he has more free time. You are unwilling to give up a larger chunk of your money; he is unwilling to give up a larger chunk of his free time. You both feel that this is unfair.
It seems totally feasible to come to a compromise here, but neither of you seems willing to do that.
His reasoning is wrong: you might even pay the same amount of rent, but given that you have a fully shared bank account (congrats, that’s the way forward), it means that you contribute 300 euro’s per month more to your shared savings than he does. So he is wrong.
This whole discussion is pointless, because how much you earn is not relevant: even if you would earn less than him, it shouldn’t make a difference, because this is about running a household with the available free time that you have. You work way more hours than he does, so he needs to do more chores. Simple.
Also, speaking from my (25M) own experience: your relationship is not that sound as you think it is. My LTR was equally as good as yours, but I’m a saver and my ex was an emotional spender. This financial issue that you’ve talked about (and his opportunism of you contributing more if you want him to do chores, like wtf) might look small, but in the long run, it will have a devastating effect on your relationship. Be very careful with that and try to straighten your opinions, find a compromise now, sooner than later.
You should make your lives easier by just agreeing to hire someone to clean once per week/every two weeks with you contributing a larger percentage to it. Between the two of you it should be feasible.
Clean up after every mess you personally make and it shouldn’t be a problem since you’re never home.
Me and my husband split things proportionally. If you earn only slightly more, why not pay very slightly more.
I think he’s right that you can’t have it both ways. You either split thing 50:50 like roommates, or you each pitch in as much as you can and are a team. You don’t get to pick and choose which way to do it so it benefits you most on both counts.
I was never on board with balancing money and chores in a relationship. The argument “you make less, you do more” or vice versa just feels wrong for me. If you want to exchange money for chores you hire someone.
Otherwise, you make two separate agreements. One is about how each contributes financially, the other is about how each contributes to chores (cooking, cleaning, shopping, maintenance, etc.). However, seeing so many posts here about home labor division I think either an average poster lives in a huge mention or they have crazy high cleaning standards. Or pride? I honestly don’t know.
What works for me and my partner is first of all having machines that clean up for you which these days isn’t a crazy expense especially on two incomes. And then honestly – you just stop keeping score, everyone does what they can and sometimes you just don’t mop the floor.
I’m an oncologist and my bf is an engineer. We split shared costs 50:50 so we each do 50% of the chores. If I wanted him to do more chores then I would expect to pay that equivalent more in shared expenses. I feel like expecting him to do more just based on our work hours would be selfish.
Honestly, in my opinion, the chores should be split evenly between the people living in the house. You all live there, and so you all need to take care of it. It has nothing to do with who works more or less.
So you are asking the wrong question, you should be asking “how do I build a life with someone who thinks being equal is more important than supporting me when I’m down?”
When my partner has a bad week, I do more. I don’t ask, I don’t even bring it up. If my partner was in a job that took more hours then me, I would just do more, because I want to support them.
I believe chores should be split based on hours work, no money involved; the one with more time picks up a little more. Money can either be split 50/50 or proportional.
You make very little more than him, but he has much more time then you do. Add to that your job won’t always be this way- yes being a doctor will always be stressful, but you should have more set hours in the future. Why wouldn’t he want to invest in you and your success? Plenty of partners take on the financial burden when the other partner is growing (school, new job, having a baby) because it benefits them both. But here your partner is unwilling to invest his TIME in you when you need it, and when it would benefit you both in the future.
That’s what you need to sort through.