In this scenario, you should have one joint account that you each contribute your half of the bills to such as housing, groceries, utilities. Splitting bills equally will also affect big future purchases (like houses) because you will have to make sure each person can afford the expense. Splitting bills equally sounds fair, but if one person makes significantly more or less than the other this could put more of a strain on one person than the other. You have control over your own money, but have an easy way to share expenses with your partner. You both contribute the same amount of money towards all bills to be used for any agreed-upon shared expenses like housing, utilities, vacation, date nights, etc. In such cases, couples will have to agree upon who will take care of specific bills and make arrangements to pay them on their own.Įvery expense is split two ways. This is something for you and your partner to talk about as you may handle money better if it’s kept separately. But in many ways it’s hard: you may still worry about your partner’s finances (even though it’s separate from yours), it’s nearly impossible to have no shared expenses so that may get confusing to deal with.Ī lot of couples who’ve been together for years still keep their finances separate. In some ways, this way is easy: you only have to worry about YOU, and your bank accounts, retirement accounts, investments. If your partner isn’t great with budgeting, it won’t affect your finances. You don’t have to financially rely on your significant other, and they aren’t relying on you. You have separate bank accounts, budgets, and bills.Įach of you is in control of your own money. For instance, will eating out as a couple be a shared expense or a fun expense?ģ. Will it be equal amounts? Or, proportional to income? Or, expenses? And, you also need to figure out what expenses will fall under the fun expenses category. It is important to figure out how much ‘fun’ money each partner will get. You get the benefits of combining your finances (complete transparency), but your fun money allows you the freedom to buy whatever you want. All payments and savings are made from that account, but you each have a separate checking account to which you receive some fun money every month. In this method, both your paychecks get deposited to a single account. Combine finances, but each partner gets fun money There is no distinction between what’s mine and what’s yours because all funds and expenses are deposited and withdrawn from this same account.Ģ. If one person’s income rises or the other person’s income falls, they’ll balance each other out. In this case, it doesn’t matter if one person makes twice as much money as their partner because this budget is balanced with your pooled income. You are on the same team working towards the same goals. With your finances so intertwined, you need to be accepting and on the same page with your spending. This means you also need to agree upon discretionary spending. With this scenario, you have complete transparency with finances. To make this work, your need to sit down with your partner, tally up your joint income, and then carve out and agree on a budget that covers all shared expenses, from housing to groceries and bills. All the money goes into one pot and comes out of one pot. In this scenario, both of your incomes are deposited into a joint checking account and both people are using the account and sticking to an agreed-upon budget. So, whether you’re just moving to the financial part of your relationship or you’ve been trying to figure it out for a while, here are a few different ways you can approach money and avoid financial stress. While you’re trying to manage money jointly, there could be major differences in income especially when one partner is the clear breadwinner, or the other half is shouldering steep credit card or student debts. Managing money as a couple can be tricky to sort out with two incomes and two financial situations merging. Those arguments tend to take longer to recover from and are more intense, researchers said. In a study by Kansas State University, researchers found that arguing about money is “by far” the top predictor of whether a couple will stay together or not. After all, money is the leading cause of stress in relationships. February means that valentine’s day is right around the corner, and finances are an important part of being a couple.
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