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This is pretty similar to my situation. Unmarried partner of 7 years, made similar income for a while, but I'm ~2x now. 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") |