Planning to live together - how to split bills with big earning difference?

theoretica

I suggest you work out the numbers for different scenarios (same percentage of earnings, he pays half of something basic and you pay all the rest) and see how different or similar they work out. What happens when one of both of you has your income change?

Huskyrunner

keep it simple split everything 50-50 money can be a big cause of resentment in relationships. My partner earns around 1100 too 1300pm i earn around 1600 but get quartly bonuses of 3-400, we have a mortgage and bills etc we just have the one joint account and everything is on there from food budget too pet food etc etc

It makes life so much easier if you earn more fine i can understand that but doing 60-40 70-30 etc will make things awkward and if i was your guy i would want too pay an even share.

Turtle

I earn 75% of what my husband earns. We've always paid 50/50 for household expenses and holidays, but then paid for our own cars/personal spending. When we get takeaway or go out for a meal etc, he nearly always pays and that helps to even things out. We're both happy with this set up and have been doing it for 17 years. That was both before and after we were married.

prosaver

i suppose relationships are built on trust,
Why dont you take it in turns to stay at each other place and if things turn ok get married.
If you got place and if it didnt work out after year imagin all the agro of moving again ..big urghs
if things go wrong
wasnt ment to be
, good luck anyways , hope it last

cr1mson

Ultimately I don't think it matters what anyone on the forum thinks as long as you are both happy and can talk about it openly. You are talking about it now which is great. When I moved in with husband we did 60/40 as I earned less it then went to 50/50 of essentials and he paid for things like Sky subscription which he considered essential and I didn't! Although that actually meant I contributed less than when we were doing it 60/40!

Lunar_Eclipse

Any solution that takes your income differential into account is potentially reasonable.

I would be tempted to handle this the other way round though, but it does assume the relationship is a longer term one: both incomes go into the joint account and then you both take out the same amount for personal spends.

Andrew_Ryan_89

It would be good to know how much you both earn and the budget for rent. If he's on £15k a year and your renting a place for £1,500 per month, the most appropriate thing to do would be much different if he was earning a twice that amount, regardless of what you earn.

If you were a married couple, I would suggest combining all your income, minus all your outgoings and splitting the difference. However, not being married and being financially stung in the past, you will need your own money for savings etc. so do it that way probably won't be fair to you.

determined_new_ms

We have had many variations on how we manage our joint expenses, due to changing circumstances over the years. We kinda now do it so we have a fair amount of surplus cash after bills. I put 1/4 of our joint expenses and after that have about £500 left, he has nearly £900. He spends more than me and I save the majority of that whereas he spends most of his. We kinda also both pay for different things. Sometimes he pays sometimes I do. I choose to work part time and spend 2/3 days with our child (she is neither of our biological child, but is my granddaughter). We think it's fair and works. After 10 years neither of us are really caught up on who pays what, sometimes es he pays, sometimes I do

FeelingStrange

We did it the same way you're considering (it was more like 65% and 35%), but it left one of us with less spending money than the other which seemed a little unfair.

So we worked it out in the same way, but then tweaked it a little so that we had a similar amount of spending money each, after all bills are paid.

We both work full time so thought that was fair. There is the argument that if one person works part time simply because they prefer to (i.e. no childcare to think about, no disability, or anything else that would prevent them from working full time) then perhaps the person who puts more graft in should get more spending money. I'm not weighing in on that one either way ;-)

fierystormcloud

Surely pooling your finances into one account and both using it for what you need is the answer.

I never understand why this isn't done by everyone.