My boyfriend (24M) and I (23F) have recently started discussing moving in together. I make about twice as much money as he does right now, and I was wondering how people in similar situations split up expenses like rent and groceries. Should we each pay for half, or should we pay an amount proportional to how much we make? What do most couples do?
He's already said that he doesn't expect me to cover more than half, and that it doesn't bother him that I make more money, but that he wouldn't say no if I offered to cover more. I absolutely wouldn't be opposed to paying more, but I'm not sure if this might cause problems down the line.
TLDR: My boyfriend and I want to move in together, but are unsure of how to split expenses as I make twice as much as him.
I think it depends. If you want to go the 50/50 route, the place you choose needs to be at a cost the lower-income party can comfortably afford. If you’d rather live in a nicer, more expensive place because you can afford it, you should be willing to make up the difference.
When my now husband and I moved in together, splitting the rent & bills 50/50 still cost him less than living on his own, so we did it that way. However, when we relocated for my job and I bought a house, I bought a house I could afford on my own but was out of bf’s price range. To make things fair, we proportionally split bills based on proportion of income (so in your case, you’d pay 2/3, he’d pay 1/3). It’s worked well for us.
When my partner was making more than me, we’d split rent evenly but she paid for groceries. When i was making a bit more (couple hundred a month, maybe a few hundred) we split relatively evenly with everything but I’d pay for takeout myself a few times a month or so to try and even in out a little. We have a joint credit card that we put all joint expenses on. I still pay for uber eats regularily and if she feels as though I’ve paid for a few extra things lately then she’ll pay for takeout here and there. We figure it all relatively balances out and we don’t need to get down to dollars and cents all the time
40% of each person’s monthly pay goes into a joint account, from which all household and/or shared expenses are paid.
We went really low tech to start.
All receipts for anything that was a shared expense into a shoebox and square it up in cash at the end of the month.
We still do this 10+ years later only we have a credit card just for joint/family expenses and joint bank accounts and a spreadsheet.
Percentages.
When my husband and I first moved in together while dating, I insisted on paying 50/50 even though he made more money than me because I wanted things to be fair. Even though the place we chose was affordable for me, I didn’t have much disposable income left after paying bills. He was able to eat out more often, buy things on a whim that he wanted, and I frequently found myself relying on him to entirely cover weekend trips and date nights. It ended up not being 50/50 at all and the money he spent to cover my part of the extra things was MUCH more visible than the bill money we sent away each month. This may not become an issue for you, but we went to percentages and that helped so so much. We deposited 60% and 40% of the cost of bills into a shared account that bills were drawn from.