looking for some perspective. I’ve been sharing a home with a partner for a while and we split our shared expenses proportionally to our share of the household income, based on gross income (i.e. I make 60% and pay 60% (at least, often more) of what we’ve agreed are the shared expenses). we then do our best to evenly split household chores and tasks as we choose.
another option could be to structure contributions such that we have equal personal money after making our shared contributions.
I’d think it would be simple to determine what a “fair share is” but in practice it’s not, plus I’m facing criticism for my focus on “fairness” itself in this sort of exchange.
how do you do things? is it working for you?
My partner has issues with money from growing up poor and eating bread for dinner too many times. Has an extreme dislike of spending money and will stress on stuff like grocery bills when we have years of rent in the bank. It took us being married for about 5 years before they become comfortable enough to merge bank accounts.
Before that, they would feel like they could never spend any money because they didn’t make as much as I did. Essentially staying within their portion of the overall budget, which made them live a less lavish lifestyle but to their own detriment. I would ‘treat’ them by paying for stuff they wanted or needed but would not buy themselves.
After merging accounts, they still kind of feel that way because I still make more and they feel like they are spending ‘my’ money. We’re working through it and it’s probably a more unique scenario but throwing it out there.
I know other people keep them separate when they want to keep a sense of independence. As long as bills are paid, they can spend whatever they want without needing to consult the other person.
For sure, I don’t mean to denigrate people who do it other ways, it’s just really difficult to even imagine trying to plan for long term stuff with separate accounts. Or the idea that I wouldn’t cover an expense that came up because I’d be using ‘my’ money for it. It’s a completely different way of thinking about the financial resources we have.