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Background: I have terrible finances compared to her. I make more money on an hourly basis, but I'm not working full time right now, and I've always been quite financially irresponsible. She makes a little less per hour but has been super consistent with her job for decades and is very good at controlling her spending. She's the very epitome of "slow and steady wins the race", while I have spurts of high income followed by months of poverty. How we split it all: To protect her from my poor management, we have separate finances (accounts), but we split the rent and household bills evenly. I end up prepaying for most of it upfront, we use a spreadsheet to calculate what she owes, and she Venmos me her half at the start of every month. For fun spending money, we both deposit the same amount into a joint account every month (we use Zeta, a virtual bank, which replaces what Simple used to offer). We both have a debit card that can charge to it directly, and we use it for joint outings, dinners, and other fun stuff. Sometimes I eat a bit more, sometimes she does, whatever, neither of us are worried about that. And for less predictable shared expenses (groceries, pet vet visits, etc.), we have a separate credit card for that purpose only. We pay it off in full every month. This three-way system has worked very well for us for 3+ years. The essentials are always taken care of first (via my automatic payments and her paying me half). We have a set entertainment budget every month. Then the joint credit card is only for our unexpected/unpredictable spending on top of that, which isn't very much (few hundred dollars a month). |