[pftburger]

All shared expenses are divided based on salary % so expenses are more based on work time than salary

IE, Expense share = My salary / ( her salary + my salary)

To make this doable, we have a shared account, from which all shared expenses are paid (mortgage, food, holidays, anything that can be construed as shared)

So if one person earns 8000 euros a month and the other 2000, the split is 80/20. If we need 100 euros in the account, one pays 80, the other 20

That way, when we go for a nice dinner, it's the same value for both of us. It costs us both 1%, or 1h of work etc.

Savings are private but property is in her name, to offset for gender inequality in general life security.

Context: We're not married, are reasonably young (40/35), have been together a while (8 years, have good conflict resolution skills and plan to have a kid next year. I get paid dramatically more than her but honestly she works harder than me. I work in tech she works in literature.

We plan to move to phase two soonish, of paying salaries into the join account and getting spending money in our checking accounts. Having private accounts is useful for making sense of finances, just in terms of I can double check my own spending list without having to run it by her.

I'm into the single pot idea, but need to figure out how to do proper checks and balances incase we separate at some point. There need to be guards in place working against systemic gender equality, but I also don't want to screw myself over. Having a written agreement about what savings belong to whom is more important when we have joint savings. Things bias towards being in the guys name, so the danger of a simple shared pot verbal agreement is that there is large wiggle room for me to claim everything in a breakup. Hence putting property in her name.

[waterpowder]

> IE, Expense share = My salary / ( her salary + my salary)

My wife and I have been doing that since we've been maried, it works very well.

[IMTDb]

This is very similar to the advice our notary gave us. We opened a joint account, and we collectively agreed to put 75% of our salaries on that joint account. So every time she or I get paid, 75% of it goes on the joint account and 25% remains on our individual - private - accounts.

Anything we buy or pay with the shared account is considered to be 50% hers and 50% mine, regardless of who actually puts more in the account. The logic behind this is that we both make the exact same "effort" in buying those things. So we pay for almost everything with that account: holidays, groceries, utilities, furnitures, ... . If we have extra, we put a bit in a savings account / investment and those also belong to us 50/50.

The benefit of this approach is the it protects both of us. If we decide to have children and that she should work part-time instead of full-time to raise them, she will still have the exact same 50% claim on everything. She will not loose more than I do. We'll just have less money coming in the joint account and will have to adapt our budget accordingly. This is thus a common decision that impacts the both of us equally.

Importantly, our mortgage/rent is also paid off the joint account, so the house belongs to each of us 50-50. I was however able to contribute to a bigger portion of the downpayment for the house. To make things fair, she agreed to sign an "acknowledgement of debt", recognising that she "owes me" half the difference between my contribution to the downpayment and hers. If we stay together, that letter is just a useless paper that sits on a notary desks and we'll never talk about it. If we split, the house will be sold, each of us will get 50% of the proceeds, but I will be able to claim that difference, making things fair.

The remaining 25% on each other private accounts can be used for private expenses. I never have to "justify" buying a video game or an impulsive luxury since it comes out of my private account, I can also go out with friends and not have someone that asks wether that $75 tab at the bar is justified or not. Anything we buy with the private accounts is considered to be 100% belonging to the person who bought it. This account is also used for surprise gifts (birthday, Christmas, ...) since the expenses do not appear in the shared account logs. We agreed that any inheritance will not be split and will remain in our private accounts, so there is no "cheating" there. Also, anything that we had "before" we setup this system remains in our private accounts.

If one of our private accounts becomes "big" and we start seeing some significant asymmetry between those (Eg: I inherent millions and she doesn't, so I could have an amazing life but the join account is frustratingly poor) we have the option of treating some part as regular "income" our of it (Eg: do an automatic payment of $xxx every month). Since this is an income, that amount goes 75% in the joint account and 25% remains in the private account. This increases the amount available on the joint account, so we can afford the cool things we wanted. But the bulk of the money stays in my private account so if we split she won't have any claim to any of it.

Of course, the 75% - 25% split is a decision we took, but you might wanna change percentages according to your situation. Overall we are extremely happy with this arrangement as it brings the financial discussions close to 0 (we had some before).