Copy MAAIKE OLDE OLTHOF Photography MARTIN DIJKSTRA | 4 minutes
When I was 15, I heard mum asking my dad, ‘Frans, I saw a nice dress at that little clothes shop, you know. The one we came past yesterday. Can I buy that or shall I wait until the end of the month?’ He replied that she could do that just fine, she didn't have to put it on hold. At that time, she was the age I am now and had a part-time job. So basically, it was her own money. But in financial matters, either your own or someone else's, were of no interest to her at all. ‘That's what your father handles and manages at home,’ she said.
That won’t happen to me, I knew for certain right at that very moment. Not in a million years was I going to ask a man if I could buy something. Purely because he would be managing 'our' money matters. You want to oversee those things yourself, don't you? My father raised me money conscious. Money was definitely there to spend but also to save up into an emergency fund You had to work for your money, which I already did at 14 years of age. I had a part-time job at the library, in the evenings I was a receptionist at an old people's home
and as a student I was a domestic care aide.
But still, things gradually took a different turn when I got into a long-term relationship. He became the father of my children and has now been my ex-partner for the past 10 years. In relationships, I am for equality and in love I assume trust. When you love each other that much, and decide to go for a family, you don't like to dwell on ‘what if things go wrong’. Financially speaking, he had a better job. He made a lot of money, significantly more than I did. So after our first daughter had been born, it was almost a natural progression that I would start working less. We talked about it briefly. I took for granted that my salary dropped significantly - we were in a good enough financial position, weren't we?
Foolishly, I had utterly neglected to reflect on what was going to happen were we to break up, something that, if years later, did indeed happen. In the end, as a single mother who had surrendered part of her salary, I drew the shortest straw financially. Not only was I almost homeless, but the quality of my life, and that of the children, worsened considerably. It took years to catch up. At 45, I finally bought a house of my own. A much smaller house than the one I had formerly lived in. But it is, as René Froger once sang, a place under the sun. I am proud to have fought back hard. It's just incredibly unfortunate that I had to fight at all.
The thing I regret most is the assumption that ‘all will be well’, should you break up. I would have preferred to be much more financially independent in that relationship. And make no mistake: independent doesn't just mean ‘I'll always have my own money’ but ‘I can just stay afloat, should the marriage or relationship fall apart’. It means knowing exactly how you are, or are not, linked to your partner in terms of pension, mortgage and banking. And yes, it is not very romantic to discuss this together at length. But believe me, it really is necessary if you don't want to sacrifice quality of life later on.
Let it be a wise lesson: talk about how you envision your financial life were you perhaps to break up. And buy that dress yourself, because you know exactly where you stand financially.
More insight?
If you want insight into your spending patterns and see where you have some margin to save up, check your Burgundian Lifestyle Index (BLI). This is the first step to find out how you are doing financially.
Maaike Olde Olthof is a writer and columnist at LINDA.nl. She is author of 'Wat een Scheidboek'. Messy co-parenting and being a forty-something single provide enough inspiration for a novel or two. She also has two teenage daughters at home, a glaring dislike for household chores and, perhaps, a wish to get her finances in better order than they are now. What about her retirement? And what does the arrival of the new pension mean?
