{"id":396077,"date":"2026-04-13T10:43:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T10:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/396077\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T10:43:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T10:43:25","slug":"i-spend-200-a-month-more-on-the-kids-than-my-husband","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/396077\/","title":{"rendered":"I spend \u00a3200 a month more on the kids than my husband"},"content":{"rendered":"

Becoming a mother leads to a substantial and long-lasting reduction in earnings<\/a>, with women losing an average of \u00a365,618 in pay by the time their first child turns five, according to the ONS. But there is another way parenthood hurts women\u2019s wallets.<\/p>\n

One afternoon, as I was stuffing school jumpers and leggings into my bag at the self-checkout tills in the supermarket, the card machine beeped. My card had been declined. Weird, I thought, trying again and quickly checking my online banking app. I had my answer: the balance was much less than I thought.<\/p>\n

When I got home, I decided to take a closer look at my finances<\/a>. I\u2019m not particularly good with money, but I\u2019m not bad either. But in the past few years, I had a vague sense that I was very quickly using up my money each month, and a narrative was forming in my head that I was spending frivolously. On paper, I had enough money to cover my costs but I didn\u2019t understand where all my money was going, especially in comparison to my husband, who was not running out of cash like me.<\/p>\n

New FeatureIn ShortQuick Stories. Same trusted journalism.<\/p>\n

I took the opportunity to audit my finances<\/a>, looking at what was coming in and out across my personal account and the joint account we share. I realised I was spending \u00a3200 each month on our children; buying food, clothes, days out and entertainment for them. One day I might spend \u00a320 on a new pair of school shoes, \u00a320 on lunch on a day out and \u00a310 on toys in the gift shop. My default approach was to use my personal account to pay for this.<\/p>\n

My partner, meanwhile, tended to use the joint account to cover similar costs, and he didn\u2019t realise I wasn\u2019t doing the same. He\u2019s also spent less on our children, as, despite our desire for equal parenting, I have become the default parent since I have spent more time with our children either on maternity leave, or working part-time around childcare. I don\u2019t hate this role, but I do think it brings extra responsibility. Parenting comes with an endless stream of costs; birthday presents, treats, school uniform, clothes, shoes, tickets and food. While I do not doubt that if I asked him, my husband would happily buy any of these things, the reality is that, thanks to unconscious conditioning, this task falls to me.<\/p>\n

I realised that, like many women, I was in a spending gap relationship. Research on mothers in Canada found motherhood changes how women think, spend and save money. Data from the Accounting for Motherhood<\/a> study shows many child-related costs come at the expense of mothers as they assume them, leaving less cash for personal use.<\/p>\n

While the individual costs didn\u2019t feel like huge amounts, they quickly add up. Daily spending could easily include a \u00a35 snack, a \u00a315 birthday present for a party, \u00a320 for cinema tickets and \u00a310 for new socks. Neither my partner nor I intended for this discrepancy in spending but we failed to understand the extent of it. Over the nine years I\u2019ve been a parent, I estimate I have spent thousands of pounds more on our kids than him.<\/p>\n

This motherhood spending gap<\/a> means as well as earning less, I\u2019ve also saved less than my partner, and have less disposable income just for myself. Based on my earnings, I planned to save around \u00a3300 a month \u2013 but I had been saving nothing over the previous 12 months.<\/p>\n

Our approach to family finances since we started living together 16 years ago is that we both contribute to a shared account, which covers our mortgage, bills, food shopping and other joint costs like holidays. We keep the rest of our money separately in personal accounts. This worked really well when we both contributed to and benefited from the joint account equally. But we never discussed how this would change when we added two additional members to the family.<\/p>\n

Babies, despite being life-changing, don\u2019t actually cost that much once you\u2019ve got the big-ticket items like a buggy and car seat. In my experience, you don\u2019t really need to buy clothes or toys for a baby since people love to gift you a cute, tiny baby grow or fluffy rabbit. But as they grow older, the costs of parenting creep up on you. There is now an endless need for new clothes, shoes and swimsuits to keep up with their growth spurts, along with after-school clubs, swimming lessons, birthday parties and days out.<\/p>\n

But who should pay for stuff for the kids? And what exactly counts as a family cost? It\u2019s not an exact science and every family will have a different take. I\u2019m coming at this as part of a straight couple with two working parents who earn comparable incomes. The situation will be different for single parents, co-parents, same-sex couples and households where one partner doesn\u2019t work or earns a significantly different amount than the other. But what I do think matters is having an honest conversation about the real cost of parenting and who is paying it.<\/p>\n

Mothers face a huge amount of financial inequality<\/a>. Alongside lost and reduced earnings, government data shows women have 37- 48 per cent less in their pension than men, which totals around \u00a381,000 to \u00a3156,000 less for retirement.<\/p>\n

Being financially secure and independent gives you more control and freedom, even in a happy marriage. Parenting isn\u2019t equal for men and women \u2013 there is the gender pay gap, the mental load, and the fact that mothers are usually the ones school or nursery call first when there\u2019s a problem, and the unspoken idea that men are babysitting when they are looking after their own children \u2013 but this difference in our parental spending felt like one playing field we could level.<\/p>\n

Since noticing our spending gap, I\u2019ve discussed it with my partner and we\u2019ve decided to use the joint account for all family costs. I\u2019ve already noticed a big difference in my personal spending and saving habits, and this has made me feel much better about how I spend and save. We both agreed to slightly increase our contributions to cover this, and I\u2019ve been able to up my pension contributions too by around \u00a3100 a month.<\/p>\n

Marriage means a partnership and sharing of resources but, as it is for many millennial women, being financially independent and secure has always been important to me. While it might once have been the default for me to pay for things for our children, now reaching for the joint account card at the till feels like a tiny act of financial feminism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Becoming a mother leads to a substantial and long-lasting reduction in earnings, with women losing an average of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,778,176,61,60,4630,1087,1786,174,175],"class_list":{"0":"post-396077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-features","10":"tag-finance","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-marriage","14":"tag-money","15":"tag-parenting","16":"tag-personal-finance","17":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}