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by dougmwne
1398 days ago
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My partner and I have been together 15 years. We have always had separate finances and split expenses evenly. We always lived well below our means and never spend more on housing than the person with the lower salary could afford. We have gone back and forth a few times who was making more, anywhere from 2x to one person not having a job for awhile. We are free to spend our own money as we see fit. For any shared purchase, we split the cost, unless it was a gift or talked over doing an uneven split beforehand (maybe if the thing in question was outside the budget of one person and the other person offered to make up the difference). Maybe once a year we run through our bank statements and reconcile big purchases that we owe each other money for. We’ve talked about a joint account for expenses, but just never got around to it. Combining finances sounds absolutely weird and patriarchal to both of us. Like why on earth would I want his money!? I think it works for us because we are both frugal, would never get into any debt or financial trouble, have good family safety nets and communicate well. We both view staying independently financially healthy as part of our responsibility to each other, just as we have a responsibility to stay fit or take care of our health. |
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The number one reason it works for us is we also both live well below our means (house payment is ~4% of combined income, low COL area & bought 8 years ago) and are generally frugal people (think thrift stores, buying used stuff when its logical, mostly eat at home, etc...). If one of us was extravagant constantly and the other wasn't it would probably cause issues in general. We are 100% transparent with each other about how much we are putting away in savings.
We split everything evenly by default via a shared Credit Card and bank account (very low running balance in that bank): eating out, vacations, etc... I own the house from before we met, so that's not split evenly out of fairness since I'm building equity and she isn't technically. So, I pay 70% of the cost (100% of maintenance costs) and build equity, and she gets to save a ton on housing.
The separate finances has become an issue exactly one time, recently, and we have what we think is a pretty fair solution. We are ready to live somewhere we both really like, in a nicer (but small) house with more privacy. We are still looking at stuff below our means, but it will be ~4x current housing costs. The plan is if we find something we love on the cheaper side, we just split it evenly, the end. If we find something perfect that's a bit more of a stretch we will start splitting it unevenly in both down-payment and mortgage payments (60/40 or something) and will have a separate legal agreement outside of the title stating the ownership split.
The summary is: it works for us because other things about each of us keeps us from spending a ton, so the income gap is largely irrelevant. Personality wise, I'm the one that will go extravagant on something every now and then so it works out (think: replacing a broken dishwasher with a really nice one that isn't on sale, not "15k vacation")