Should I invest in my house, when it's in my wife's name?
The best answer to this question will depend on you and your wife. What is 'fair' for some may not be 'fair' for others. Some couples split expenses 50:50. Some split proportionately based on income. Some pool everything together. What works best for you will depend on your relative incomes, your financial goals, living standards, and most importantly, your personal beliefs. Here is a great question with various viewpoints: How to organize bank accounts with wife. It doesn't touch heavily on home ownership / pre-nuptial agreements, but might be a good starting point to getting you to think about your options. Consider providing another loan to your wife for additional investments in the home. It seems you are both comfortable with the realities of the pre-nuptial agreement; one of those realities seems to be that in the event of divorce you would lose access to the house. Loaning money has the benefit of allowing for the improvements to be done immediately, while clearly delineating what you have spent on the home from what she has spent on the home. However, this may not be 'fair', depending on how you both define the term. Have you discussed how expenses and savings would be split between you? Since there is no mortgage on the house, she has effectively contributed her pre-marital assets towards paying substantially all of your housing costs. It may be 'fair' for you to contribute to housing costs by at least splitting maintenance 50:50, or it may not be. Hopefully you talked about finances before you got married, and if not, now would be the best time to start. I personally would hate to have an 'uneasy' feeling about a relationship because I failed to openly communicate about finances. Have you talked with her about this? On the one hand you have a point.  Given the prenuptial agreements why should you invest in something that you can never have interest in.  However, you also live in the property.  You did not go into the arrangements but presumably you should be contributing to the upkeep of the home as otherwise you would live there for free. Additionally you did not mention it but it sounds like the prenuptial does not cover your assets.  In the event of divorce she, presumably, would own half of your 400K.  Correct? The key here is a conversation.  What is right for the two of you?  While some might be very uncomfortable with the situation, as is, you two seem to be okay with it.  Go from there, build on it.  Come up with something that is equitable for both parties and your heirs. If you are concerned about it being inequitable due to the prenuptial agreement, discuss the idea of amending the prenuptial agreement to give you some consideration for your investments in the house. Prenuptial agreements often get amended over the course of a marriage.  How do you proceed? It has to start with discussion. It's not an unreasonable concern given your legal separation of assets, so broach the subject and go from there. Perhaps you'll find there's a good reason for you to invest in the property even without having interest in it, who knows. "The prenup complicates things. The traditional vow of a marriage is ""What's mine is yours, what's yours is mine"". With such a traditional marriage it doesn't matter too much which partner's name something is in, in the event of a divorce the assets of the couple would be considered as a whole and then split. But you have a prenup which is presumably intended to change this traditional arrangement (and may or may not actually be enforceable). I think you are as such right to be wary. I think your only way forward long term is to amend the prenup and/or the legal status of the house to recognize it as a shared asset that you will both be contributing to and that it's value should be split in some way in the event of a divorce. In exchange you should probably be contributing some or all of the cash pile you have from selling your house to the common pot. Another loan may seem like a good option in the short term but in the long term the appreciation on a house is likely to be worth more than any interest on the loan (assuming you are using an interest rate comparable to commercial mortgage deals), plus any interest may well end up being taxable." I'm not going to speculate on the nature of your relationship with your wife, but the fact that you are worried about what would happen in the event of a divorce is a bit concerning.  Presumably you married her with the intent of staying together forever, so what's the big deal if you spend 50k upgrading the house you live in, assuming you won't get divorced? Now, if you really are worried about something happening in the future, you might want to seek legal advice about the content of the prenup.  I am guessing if the 400k were your assets before marriage, you have full claim to that amount in the event of a divorce*.  If you document the loan, or make some agreement, I would think you would have claim to at least some of the house's appreciation due to the renovations if they were made with your money*. *obligatgory IANAL "It is my opinion that part of having a successful long-term relationship is being committed to the other person's success and well-being. This commitment is a form of investment in and of itself. The returns are typically non-monetary, so it's important to understand what money actually is. Money is a token people exchange for favors. If I go to a deli and ask for a sandwich. I give them tokens for the favor of having received a sandwich. The people at the deli then exchange those tokens for other favors, and that's the entire economy: people doing favors for other people in exchange for tokens that represent more favors. Sometimes being invested in your spouse is giving them a back rub when they've had a hard day. The investment pays off when you have a hard day and they give you a back rub. Sometimes being invested in your spouse is taking them to a masseuse for a professional massage. The investment pays off when they get two tickets to that thing you love. At the small scale it's easy to mostly ignore minor monetary discrepancies. At the large scale (which I think £50k is plenty large enough given your listed net worth) it becomes harder to tell if the opportunity cost will be worth making that investment. It pretty much comes down to: Will the quality-of-life improvements from that investment be better than the quality-of-life improvements you receive from investing that money elsewhere? As far as answering your actual question of: How should I proceed? There isn't a one-size fits all answer to this. It comes down to decisions you have to make, such as: * in theory it's easy to say that everyone should be able to trust their spouse, but in practice there are a lot of people who are very bad at handling money. It can be worthwhile in some instances to keep your spouse at an arms length from your finances for their own good, such as if your spouse has a gambling addiction. With all of that said, it sounds like you're living in a £1.5m house rent-free. How much of an opportunity cost is that to your wife? Has she been freely investing in your well-being with no explicit expectation of being repaid? This can be your chance to provide a return on her investment. If it were me, I'd make the investment in my spouse, and consider it ""rent"" while enjoying the improvements to my quality of life that come with it."
"Do you guys think it's a good idea to put that much down on the car ? In my opinion, it depends on a lot of factors.  If you have nothing to pay, and are not planning to invest in something that cost a lot soon (I.E an house, etc). Then I see no problem in put ""that much down on the car"". Remember that the more you pay at first, the less you will pay interest on. However, if you are planning on buying something big soon, then you might want to pay less and keep moneys for your future investment. I would honestly not finance a car with the garage as I find their interest rate to high. Possibilities depends a lot of your bank accounts, but what I would personally do is pay it cash using my credit margin with the bank which is only 2.8% interest rate. Garage where I live rarely finance under 7% interest rate. You may not have a credit margin, but maybe you could get a loan with the bank instead ? Many bank keep an history of your loan which will get you a better credit name when trying to buy an home later. On the other side, having a good credit name is not really useful in a garage. What interest rate is reasonable based on my credit score? I don't think it is possible to give a real answer to this as it change a lot around the world. However, I would recommend to simply compare with the interest rate asked when being loan by the bank." My wife has subscribed for trips or whatever so she could preload stuff for offline play.  Total shit show.  Wasn't clear when stuff was actually downloaded.  Seemingly downloaded stuff wouldn't play.  We're going for a long trip in a couple months and would like to subscribe again to pre-load stuff, not sure it is worth it.  We've only used it on Android and it is definitely far from stable.  Crashes are _very_ common.  Having to kill the app and restart it is almost a daily occurrence.  Crashing like the one I screenshot isn't surprising or unusual.  It really is a garbage app.  If possible I'll often use youtube instead if the content is there too, even though that means my screen needs to stay on to keep playing.  We have Google Nexus phones from right before they switched to the Pixel name.  So they're about as vanilla standard Android as phones can get. Easy to say from the comfort of of a middle class lifestyle. I'm happy to have achieved what I have. I make a a modest but sufficient salary, as does my wife. We have many comforts that we would not have if we made even $20K a year less, a comfortable but small house; boring, safe and reliable car; cell phones. My wife grew up without enough food to eat. She used to sneak into the kitchen at night and drink the ketchup because she was so hungry, which resulted in her mom putting a padlock on the fridge. Forgive me for wanting more than that for my daughter, I must be some kind of monster capitalist. It really depends on what part of finance you go into and where. As others mention, investment banking can be a grinder.  When I was working for a large global financial institution in consumer lending, average for most people was probably 45 - 50 hours / week. But my last year there I spent about 65 hours / week but it was largely due to my position and regulatory compliance pressures.  Now I consult for financial institutions. I'm gone from my family 3 - 5 nights a week but love both the work and my firm. When I'm home, I'm home and get to focus on my family. In the past, I would be so tired from the week that I wouldn't want to do much on the weekends. Now I spend my weekends devoted 100% to my family and friends. My wife and I are sure that the total number of quality hours I spend with my kids per week has actually increased now.  Also, there has been some mention here about going outside the US - from my limited experience, financial firms within Europe are far more interested in employee experience than domestic ones. "I often say ""don't let the tax tail wag the investing dog."" I need to change that phrase a bit to ""don't let the tax tail wag the mortgage dog."" Getting a tax deduction on a 4% mortgage basically results (assuming you already itemize) in an effective 3% rate mortgage. The best way to avoid tax is save pretax in a 401(k), IRA, or both.  You are 57, and been through a tough time. You're helping your daughter through college, which is an expense, and admirable kindness to her. But all this means you won't start saving $10K/yr until age 59. The last thing I'd do is buy a bigger home and take on a mortgage. Unless you told me the house you want has an in-law apartment that will bring in a high rent, or can be used to rent rooms and be a money maker, I'd not do this.  No matter how small the mortgage, your property tax bill will go up, and there would be a mortgage to pay. Even a tiny mortgage payment, $400, is nearly half that $10K potential annual savings plan.  Your income is now excellent. Can your wife do anything to get hers to a higher level? In your situation, I'd save every cent I can." If there was no question of improvements to the property, the problem would be simple. Each person invests whatever amount. Calculate the percentage of each person's investment out of the entire investment, and that's what share each one owns. Like: A puts in $10,000 for the deposit and pays $5,000 toward the mortgage over the next however many years. B puts in $5,000 toward the deposit but pays $7,000 of the mortgage. C puts in $15,000 but pays only $1,000 of the mortgage payments. So total investments: A - $15,000, B - $12,000, C - $16,000. Total - $43,000. So A's share of the house is 15,000/43,000 = 34.9%. Etc. If you then sell it you pay off any outstanding debt, and then everybody gets their share of what's left. But once you start making improvements, there is no simple formula. Suppose you put down new flooring in the dining room. You pay $500 for materials and put in 20 hours of labor. Presumably you have now added something more than $500 to your share, but how much more? How much are the hours worth? What if someone damages the house -- puts a hole in the all or something -- and then fixes it. Does the time and effort they put into fixing it add to their investment, or did that just cancel out the damage they did? What if one person does a lot to keep the house in generally good condition in small snippets of time, like cleaning furnace filters and polishing the floors, while another does nothing and lets their share get run down and dirty? It gets very complicated. Theoretically you could come up with a rate at which you value your work -- like say every hour spent maintaining the house is worth $10 or $20 or whatever. But who's going to keep track of it over the course of potentially many years? And what if one person does a small number of big, easily quantifiable jobs, while another does many small, hard-to-count jobs? Like if A mops the floor every week for 2 years, is that worth more or less than B installing 3 ceiling fans, a door, and 2 windows? You could go around and around on this sort of thing. Is she entitled to more of the equity because she made more? No.  Equity should be determined by how much each paid.  But she is entitled to more of the equity if she paid more.  And that may be what she is saying.  That she contributed more to the household's finances than you did.   If you always paid the mortgage out of the joint account, you could presumably go back and look at the account to find out how much each of you contributed to it.  That would give you a reasonable split for the remainder of the equity after your initial investment.  If you both put your entire paychecks into the joint account every time, then it will be the same as the ratio of what you each made.  That would also make sense for splitting up whatever remains in that account.   While you're doing that, you may want to ask for more for your original $65,000.  By my calculation, if your mortgage was 3.5%, that $65,000 saved the household more than $12,000 in interest that became equity instead.  So you could reasonably bump your return on the initial investment up to $77,000 while making the concession on the rest of the equity.   This is just a suggestion for a framework for splitting the equity.  If you can agree on a split, it will almost certainly be easier than going to a mediator or court. Renting your property out at less than market rates is a form of charity. Your heart says that this is the right thing to do, your bank account says no. And so does your wife. This isn't a question for the Money stack exchange, I think ... But since you are asking here: