The Vault with Financielle - Help! I’m Financially Tied To My Ex | The Vault Episode 24

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

Send us a textWelcome to The Vault with Financielle.In Episode 24 of The Vault, we discuss the controversial opinion, ‘Maternity leave should be fully paid for at least a year’ 🤰, before diving into our listener dilemmas:"I’m going into debt for school trips” "I'm in a PCP agreement with my ex!”We celebrate a fantastic win from one of our listeners who took a big step towards financial control. She’s reducing her credit limit to break the cycle of debt! 🎉💪✨ #FinancialEmpowerment #SmallWins #HabitChangeIf you’d like to share your money win, head to the community in the Financielle app or email [e-mail] your (totally anonymous) money dilemmas to [e-mail] and we may feature yours on a future episode 💌Visit https://www.financielle.co.uk to join our community!Chapters:00:00 Introduction00:31 Glittery Cowboy Hat Story01:30 Controversial Opinion: Maternity Leave02:12 Personal Maternity Leave Experiences05:46 Financial Planning for Parenthood07:22 Shared Parental Leave and Gender Gaps08:04 Financielle App Promotion12:03 Dilemma: Funding a School Trip19:55 Community Win: Reducing Credit Limit21:43 Dilemma: Camper Van Ownership27:54 Final Thoughts and ClosingThe Vault is an entertaining yet thought provoking podcast that answers our community’s dilemmas and confessions surrounding women and money.Visit https://www.financielle.com to download our app.Watch the podcast on YouTube.Follow Financielle for more:▶︎ TikTok▶︎ InstagramAbout Financielle:Financielle is a female focussed finance app helping women to take back control of their money, ditch debt, increase savings and invest in their future.Recorded and Produced by Liverpool Podcast Studios▶︎ Web ▶︎ Instagram▶︎ LinkedIn

We love a strong tea. That's the pod. That's a wrap. And that's it. That's it. And we're done. Welcome to The Vault with Financial. This is a safe space where we talk all things life and money and no topics are off limits.

Howdy. Morning, morning. Howdy. Howdy. this ain't texas no it's definitely not texas thank god my daughter did a um dance show and she did a cotton eye joe and she um had like this red cowboy hat that had no glitter on it and the dance teacher said can you put some glitter on it and so my husband yes saw a challenge and said we will glitter this hat glitter everywhere in my house now like every shower I have because it's like you can see the bits so that they're just it's a red glitter but he glittered and glittered

and glittered so the whole thing is glitter oh my god it's it's amazing but I um I'll be loves the Texas song yes and will not use the cowboy hat for it because that's what got Nigel I was like oh you're like please give it me come on

let's have a play I'll have a go that is the one Nigel you do not use that for Beyonce how disappointing we've got props in our house and we can't use them

maybe we make our own financial pink one I'm done for that in the office next part you're gonna see us all sat there yeah the cowboy hat blind dancing on from the side Go on. I'm done for that. In the office. Next part you're going to see us all sat there. Yeah. The crowd by the table.

Blind dancing on the side. Okay. Controversial opinion time. Maternity leave should be fully paid for at least a year. You speak to mothers who've been on maternity leave who will obviously say yes that's a great idea but what do you mean do you mean the government do you mean employers like what do you mean by should should be paid by whom for a year before we get angry comments I'm gonna say employers employers yeah I feel like that's long I think it's lovely and ideal um

but I feel like it's probably long I've been on three maternity leaves the first one I got six months full pay and then like your holidays and stuff as well and then it reverts to statutory and that was so welcomed like first baby you don't even know what the hell you're doing um you know that you'd only just kind of got used to that salary because it was quite you know I was fairly young and that was really important at that time um the second one even though it was then six years later was awful like a rubbish rubbish maternity policy I got way less money on my second maternity leave than I did on my first and I got paid double and and so if you think about it like your expenses have gone up as you're getting older

and you have more responsibility it had a child in you know um having wraparound care and school costs and stuff and and that was like to when you suddenly drop to the statutory you just it's so so hard i just don't know how anyone thinks that families can function because families have to function on two salaries nowadays typically when someone's in a um when people are single parents it is just i just don't know how they do i'm so impressed constantly especially they don't get you know the proper help or you've got two single parents like you know typically dad and mum trying to navigate running two different households it's so so difficult the idea that you know you can suddenly drop to one salary when you were off maternity it was really hard the third one was when i was at financial so it was like

i had a short maternity leave but I could be really flexible at least as well so that one kind of doesn't count because that was obviously our business um but also I think it is really important that employers offer that paid time because it's it's for it's for a period of time it's not forever and you end up retaining staff a lot better than if you don't because like you've just given back to someone at that time when they're in that time of need yeah so it might I think a year's possibly probably unrealistic for a lot of employers especially you know we worked in an industry where it was quite female heavy that would be quite I imagine

a financial burden on a company and also now I'm out of that maternity leave bubble because when you're in it, you're like, I should get this. I should, like, let's not beat around the bush. Like you feel very entitled because obviously you're in that situation. You know, you're going to suffer financially. So you're very passionate about making sure

that you get the best deal. But when I reflect now, I've got two older children. Children isn't on the cards for everybody and they might want to do other things in life that's like a bit of a passion project for them. Sabbaticals, travel. Should they not get the same treatment in terms of like you're going to have a baby because that's your choice or not sometimes it can be thrust upon you it kind of wasn't planned but you're going to be given that opportunity to have that break and dedicate your efforts into kind of growing this child and building up a family it might not be for everyone and I'm much more empathetic towards people that don't have children and their passions and what they want to do and

whether an employer will support them so I'm much more balanced about it now ask me years ago I'd have been like yeah you know what's fair though we've got friends who've had um like unplanned children our children later and they've gone I was not as nice to people with children as I should have been where they've seen the other side of what it's like to run a budget on a statute of maternity leave what it's like when they're nurturing you every day because the emotional turmoil going back to work early like yeah like I think that's what I hate I think that um I love it when people have this is why we don't really do because if we can help people get on this financial well-being path even in the cost of living crisis even when things are tough we talk about sinking funds and what I really love seeing in our community is when people make that plan to try to become parents and pause their financial goals like they stop being as

intense they stop being as like you know maybe aspirational and go go without on other things like they might not travel as much they might not buy these big homes because they're like we know that's going to cost a lot of money I want to get there and not feel like we're struggling and so they build the pot they build the pot before they even have the child and then when they've had the child they've got money to sustain them and and top up the budget where perhaps an employer can't fill so I love seeing that yeah because it's quite a vulnerable time I think we've have talked about it in the past on maternity leave you feel constantly feel guilty for spending money you constantly feel like you don't have enough you constantly feel like you're out all the time because you just need to get out the house because it's really truly very difficult and you could

become a victim of I'm just going to stay and not spend any money and that's just not good for anybody so we have community members like Laura said that have said we're going to start trying for a baby and build these funds up and the joy that those people have on maternity leave you can tell because it's just one less stress to take off yeah they're just and it's the same for like you know if you're saving for for a sabbatical or for travel or for a trip doing it where you're in control but the big thing that is much more common now lucy but wasn't for us not that long ago was shared parental leave so there's so much about the like gender pension gap and and gender pay gaps and stuff all connected around this time of maternity leave

and coming back from maternity leave and there's so many men that just get that two week and i just and i feel for them so much because and that was completely the norm in fact many people like wouldn't even take the full two weeks and couldn't afford to take. Or they'd take one week paid, one week unpaid. That used to be really common. Yeah, you didn't have the right holidays. And just like, I can't imagine. I mean, if you've got a partner that went through a C-section,

like that's crazy enough that they need to recover and be looked after. You can't drive for six weeks. Just a quick one, Laura here. If you're wanting to take back control of your money, ditch debt, make better decisions and build wealth for the future, the Financial app is for you. With Financial, you can track your spending on the go, hit your money goals faster and create a realistic budget that you can actually stick to.

Not to mention, you'll be part of an exclusive money community who share tips, offer support, and celebrate your successes along the way. Click the link in the description to download Fan and Shell and start your free trial now. This is your sign to take control of your money today. Okay, I'm done. Let's go back to the vault. Like you cannot drive for, you were recommended not to drive for six weeks. So these poor women that have survived for years you can't pick your baby up it's painful to do so you're gonna do the school run with baby number one yeah i'll put a wash on like because your baby's sick on every bit of clothing that ever owns just like can project i'll vomit three meters in every direction everything sounds like you speak from experience everything needs watching every five minutes

there's a really good family picture of neil's got sick all down him but none of us realized you know it's really truly difficult and now you have got the shared parental leave and i know some really good hr directors that have moved mountains to try and accommodate um women and maternity leave and maternity leave and they're not without challenge as well it's a thank task because it you know people at the top have had possibly had children a very long time ago and they're like oh the fact you know they're over it now can your wife not do that yeah oh god the comments but the fact now that men and women can can have really good parental leave policies and then dads can have that time with their babies and bond early and and it like

evidence shows that when that happens it facilitates a much more joint sharing of the life admin and the unseen work the unpaid work around the home the baby isn't seen as the mum's job it's seen as our job and we take it in turns and and likewise having the the woman being able to go back to um to work a little bit you know if you want to do shared parental and not have the full year so I think it's a little controversial maybe you didn't expect us to come down the side of it's a bit extravagant or a bit large I felt the six month one for me was so good because I was able to save a little bit to top up for the last three and I think I took in fact I think I took a year off with my first one and I ended up six months paid and

three months on statutory and then three months unpaid but because of the balance I was able to kind of save and spread out and and to be honest that's where my really good money journey kicked in was when I was on maternity leave because you shouldn't suddenly have to make the money stretch. Go further. Yeah. I think a lot of people will do that and become budget nerds. Like, you know, lots of men, lots of women. But like I said, the thing for anyone,

you know, whether you're planning for a baby, you know, we've talked about this before, same-sex couples, like if you're having children, it's IVF. So you have to work out how you're going to at least plan to to pay for things like that and we've always said on lots of topics here cash is king a good pile of cash gives you a shit ton of options yeah when you've not got a lot that is stressful and so the more we can help people edge towards these like little pots of gold then the world's your oyster if you don't get a year's paid six months paid or any paid and you just get the bare minimum um you've got you've got your own back i like it okay

but you're never having children because you work with us every day you're thinking of that sabbatical trip that's what you're thinking about she's going to Greece to swim with turtles dolphins in Greece what's she know not tortoises I'll go and find out on a year long sabbatical

paid, thank you well done Holly messed it up for us okay, speaking of children dilemma number one hi girls my son has come home with a letter about his summer school trip that he's incredibly excited about the trip costs 400 pounds plus additional money for spending which is something I really want to give to him. However, as a single mum, my finances are tight and I don't have enough saved up to cover the cost. The only way I can afford to send

him is by dipping into my overdraft, which I'm very hesitant to do. I've worked hard to get to the point I'm at now and it's been a long slog, but I'm just four months away from being debt-free. This trip means so much to him and I don't want him to miss out on this experience as all of his friends are going and I know I'd get major mum guilt. On the other hand, I'm so worried about taking on more debt and the impact it would have on my debt-free journey. I've worked out it would put me back two months. It's a tough balance between wanting to give my son opportunities and making sure we don't fall into a financial hole what should I do should I use my overdraft to pay for the trip and risk the added debt or should I explain to my son that we simply

can't afford it this year any guidance would be greatly appreciated oh this is such a difficult one I'm like my head I've got head and heart situation going on my heart says my heart says just do it because it sounds like you're such a good mum and you're you're so responsible paying off this debt you're very um in tune with what how you think your son might respond and you're sympathetic towards that as well if you were to say no but sometimes I hate the life's too short um, but my heart is saying it's too much. Like she's worked it out. She's not just irresponsibly chucking stuff on a credit card.

She's already modelled how far that will put her back. Difficult as a single parent, my advice would be, can you get any extra cash from anywhere to help fund it? Like selling things, we always talk about Vinted. Family members might want to help contribute. Do we want we always talk about vinted family members do we want to set up a go for me like I will give because I just want your son to go um but yeah family members like grandparents and stuff like do you want to contribute towards his trip my heart is saying and I never do this everyone will be really shocked that I'm

saying to take on debt but um I fully sympathize I don't want the mum guilt to eat her up for life as well and I feel like she's mum guilt the worst really yes yeah because there's so many different elements elements to it like your kid fitting in you know if we went to um I went to a charity ball last week um and it was the Sudolo Foundation's colour ball and they raise a lot of money for underprivileged kids and Paul the founder of the company and of the charity was talking about the kind of things that they do and they look after the poorest children in the country and it's even Things like they give goodie bags from like JD because the JD bag is a status thing. Like it's literally a plastic bag,

but it looks like you've been bought something from JD and that's your peak. And like, you know, we've all been there and they give Nike water bottles and it's such a cost-effective gift to be able to give to a kid. But for acceptance, they can take it into school every day.

It's a label, it's a thing. So you can imagine imagine like if you don't want your kid to miss out on a trip um and and it is so important to feel like your child's accepted so if you feel like your child can't go there's always a limit to stuff like that like this isn't a two thousand pound ski trip you know but is everyone I would find out is everyone going on this trip like this sounds a lot of money a four hundred pound for a trip a lot of money and I would also see about swelling your pride if you've got pride and head into that school and have a chat because there are always options at school have they could spread out the payments for you and say like can you make it installments just because everyone needs to pay it this month? It might be because everyone's rubbish and they'll all forget. And so you may have the opportunity to pay it. They may have

like a fund at the school where they can help contribute to families because I know that often happens. So a little bit you don't actually don't get, this is not something you're doing all the time. You are on a plan, you are getting control of your money. This sounds like a one-off. And so definitely like between asking friends and family if they want to contribute ahead of birthdays or like for your birthday or for anything, selling things on Facebook marketplace and you can and going into school,

you never know. You might get to a place where you can fund it. We don't want anyone going into debt for stuff. But there's probably some scenarios like she's so in tune with the numbers this isn't someone just being like stick it on a credit card it doesn't matter she knows exactly what this will mean to her runway and i feel like that in itself makes me feel like she it would be a blip yes it would be the same what we're doing though here is we're treating i think it's fair we're treating the trip like the washing machine breaking because that's what you do um she sounds

like she's not got an emergency fund like this would again this is something that you go is this an emergency it possibly is it's that level of if this isn't all the time if this isn't like a new thing every week yeah it sounds like something that you did not have the funds for um so regardless of what you intend to do i think this is an even bigger sign that you did not have the funds for. So regardless of what you intend to do, I think this is an even bigger sign that you need an emergency fund and that pushes back your debt-free date and that will annoy you. But this is what happens. You get into a situation where you feel desperate and stressed

and that's what your emergency fund's there for. And delaying one to two months or three to four months if she then pauses to build up an emergency fund will mean she can leap forward in the future and the best bit about all this when you can clear your debts and even before then like once you've got an emergency fund you can start building these little sinking funds and and um we know we've been caught short recently on a couple of things at the dance school that school trips we just got caught short i had no idea a school trip was coming up and we're not supposed to know that like school planning things and that's fine but

literally gotta oh by the way there's a school trip in a few months time can you pay the deposit by Friday I'm like whoa where did that come from that technically is that was never my budget I didn't know it was a thing I didn't know it was telling us the story and then my husband rallied the troops because he thought it was really expensive and went in the parents whatsapp group I'm going to speak to the school this is really expensive and he managed to get

some money knocked off so he's very very smug at the moment walking around the schoolyard like you're welcome queen of the PTA you're welcome

but again you don't actually don't get no the PTA raised money I'm in the PTA at school and so istfa raised money i'm in the ptfa at school and so is lauren you we raise money and funds to go to things for the school children so they're

definitely i imagine if someone came to the ptfa and kind of or the school and the school came to the ptfa there's a family struggling for this one trip it's like no problem you don't want anyone to miss out and going to the school and asking can they bring the price down it works yeah true so you do what you feels right no judgment no financial jail probably goes against our usual advice that's why it's like head and heart job because with the with our financial head we'd be like well no the caveat is yeah if it's like an emergency if it feels like an emergency like i said about the if your car broke down and you had no emergency fund you would have to use your overdraft and so you have to get that emergency fund built up but if you think this is an emergency and you think it's not like the bougie trip it's just the one

that everyone's going on and you feel he should go pay for it and learn from it also single parent is it worth I don't know what the relationship is with the other parent but if there is one to be reaching out to them and asking to share the bed all family members his parents yeah yeah everything okay good luck okay community one time little win for me today i reduced my credit limit so i can't rebuild the debt i noticed a pattern that the that when there was a certain amount available to spend showing i'd spend more without thinking too much. So I've paid off a huge chunk and then asked to reduce my limit by that amount. So I physically can't start the cycle again. It's not complete removal of credit cards, but for me, it's a mahoosive step in the right direction.

I love this. How clever. It's strategy over willpower, isn't it? Strategy over willpower is because if it's there, nine days out of 10, you might be able to ignore it. That one day could be your Achilles heel and you undo a lot of work. And that is human nature. That is not because you're bad. So yeah, what a great idea. Some really good tips recently in the community about debt payments. and I'm glad that they're getting shared amongst everybody like I would never think to reduce the credit limit so I can't do that again it's like habit habit building and that's what we're all about

yeah yeah and it's you know that's why we say once you've paid off a card clue like it's like cutting it up yeah it feels like in the corner yeah it's making it a little a little snip in the corner but that's what it feels like doesn't it it's very intentional it's not like I promise I won't

use it again I've decided I'm not going to use it again no no I'm literally will not be able to yeah

do you see like American films sometimes they put cards in the freezer no no in a block that's a good idea

I bet that would still work contactless that's me take the block of a dripping everywhere just suck it on in if I want chocolate I'm taking that block of ice with me if it's a hairdryer on emergency it's like chamois I'm in a PCP agreement with my ex hi ladies I could really use some advice about a tricky situation with my ex two years ago we bought an expensive camper van together and I believe I'm the legal owner though I gave him all the paperwork when we split since our separation he has taken

possession of the camp van and he has been solely responsible for paying the monthly bills and all costs i've mentally written off whatever i paid towards it previously the camper van's pcp loan has both of our names on it with me possibly being the prime the primary name recently i received an annual statement and whilst he continues to make the payments the looming debt worries me it's a five-year commitment my question is can i legally enforce the sale to clear the debt assuming i am indeed the owner despite not having the paperwork even if i am the owner i suspect it will be a while before the campervan is worth enough to cover the debt is there a way i can extract myself from this

situation i haven't seen my ex or the campervan in over a year now and I'm feeling quite stuck this is one I've never heard before it's always the campervan campervans give me strength how do people want to buy a campervan

campervan manufacturers are absolutely rubbing their hands together I want to know if the state in the campervan was the reason for the breakup buying the campervan was the reason for the breakup sounds Buying the camper van was a reason for the breakup. Sounds like they were in love with it and someone got the child in the breakup.

Yeah. He was giving like dog heat. I've not seen them in a year. I've not seen him or the camper van. I'm taking the camper. One time I saw him drove past. I mean, first things first. You don't know if you own it.

Come on. Yeah, this is a lot of like it's quite important this is this is big sister and lawyer time being like okay let's find out what we own and also you sound pretty confident that you're on the PCP deal you'll be able to see that with your credit agreement as well so you're going to do a credit report a free credit report online have a little look you'll you'll know that you'll know the loan. It sounds like you know a little bit of that already, but just know that. And usually you would own it if you're on the PCP, because if it's bought at any point and you're still sat with this loan um it's really important you decouple from the loan as well as the relationship to a Gwyneth and a Chris yeah I'm just decoupling because there's a constant ongoing risk that he stops payments which impacts your credit um and there's a con and and there's a risk that then

you incur charges and interest and you're responsible for that so it's just a situation i think what's hard is the negative equity point i thought the camper fans are worth a lot of money like how annoying that it sounds like they've overpaid maybe or they don't she doesn't think the camper fan is worth what the loan is but you are gonna have to do a little list and get ready and go back to your ex with a proposal which is um like it's really important that obviously I'm not on any documentation if you want to keep it you need to refinance and so let me know when you've done that and buy me out of it and you can say I don't want any money for it. I've written off, you know, the money that I put into it. If so, I mean, try for it if you want it, but otherwise say that's fine, but I want to be off this agreement. It makes sense for us both to be off this agreement.

We're both at risk of each other defaulting and kind of putting a black mark. So hopefully you're in a place where you can do that. But this is why even when you're together, it's just, you shouldn't, mortgage is probably the only thing where typically there's a couple of things. One, you both own the house. The house is usually worth more than the loan. But this is why you get into the situation of like remortgages and buying someone out of house because you don't want to be tied to a debt that you're not even in control of like I said he could I don't think he could sell the proper the camper van well he could sell it like illegally kind of thing but if he doesn't own it if you own

it um then you need the only need to be the one selling it but he could sell it could sell it to anyone and um it's not a good not a good place to. I would want to be removed from that situation. Me too. Would it get you stressed? Yeah, you're not even getting benefit of the camp of her. I want custody. I want joint custody of the camp of her. But he's trashed as well. That's not as cute anymore as well.

It's important to try and tie up as many loose ends as possible financially when you end a relationship because a year later to go crawling back and go can you just start this you know there's there's a moment of time where like you've now not got possession of it you don't own you own it but you've not physically got it and um you're in a finance agreement and that's the same for everything like wherever really wherever as possible don't get joint finance agreements on anything you I've seen it so many times where you have someone that's got better credit takes on a car loan for their partner and then they just stop paying it and you're left with a car and you don't even actually physically have it this is a really similar one

and it could be a loan for a partner because they've not got good credit and I've got a job so I've got a loan out for them and then suddenly you're in a point where you're left holding the the the loan baby so look after your own finances try not to tangle them up too much in finance agreements and it where you have you need to do I did see a really good I saw a TikTok where a girl showed a presentation that she'd done for her I saw on TikTok this presentation that a girl had done and she shared it but she was saying this is the presentation I did for my ex about us dividing our assets and I was like that is uncoupling conscious uncoupling and whatever Gwyneth and Chris did it was like so this is what we have this is what I propose you keep that money I was like this is

mature separation of assets and i don't think they were married i think they were boyfriend and girlfriend yeah i think if a few more people did that would all feel a lot a lot better how very mature okay any final words before we close the vault today don't buy camper vans unless you really really really really want one or buy a rubbish van and do yourself and don't finance it yeah that's all okay that's all for this episode the vault is now closed and just a quick disclaimer the vault is just a chat around life and money topics we are not giving financial advice