What to share and keep separate when you move in together
What you both use, such as the rent, the bills, and the food, is what couples usually share. What only one of you uses, from clothes to debts from before you met, usually stays separate.
Where exactly you draw that line is yours to choose, and so is how you hold the shared part. There are 3 usual ways to do it.
The 3 usual arrangements
All joint
Both incomes go into one account, and everything comes out of it: rent, food, clothes, and the coffee on the way to work. There is one balance to watch and nothing to settle up.
It asks for agreement on almost every purchase, or a personal allowance each that nobody questions. It is also the hardest of the 3 to take apart if your circumstances change.
All separate
You each keep your own account. One of you pays the rent, the other pays the bills, and you even out the difference now and then.
Nobody opens anything new, and nobody's spending is visible to the other. The cost is the settling up. Someone has to keep track of who paid what, and a shared purchase means a conversation about who pays for it.
Yours, mine, and ours
You each keep your own account, and you both pay an agreed amount into a joint one. The shared bills leave from the joint account. Everything else stays where it was.
The shared costs sit in one place, and personal spending stays personal. It asks you to agree how much each of you puts in, which is its own question when you earn different amounts. It also means 3 accounts to keep an eye on instead of 1 or 2.
What usually goes in the shared pot
A useful test is whether you both use it. If you do, it is a candidate for the shared side.
- The home: rent or mortgage, energy, water, internet, and any local tax on the property.
- Running the home: groceries, cleaning things, and repairs.
- Things for shared rooms: the sofa, the kitchen table, and the pans.
- Time together: meals out and the streaming services you both watch.
Some things pass the test for one couple and fail it for another. Talk these through rather than assume:
- A car only one of you drives.
- A pet that one of you brought.
- Holidays, which some couples share and some pay for separately.
- Presents for each other's families.
What usually stays separate
- Debts from before you met: a student loan, a credit card, or car finance. They usually stay with the person who took them on. Telling each other about them is a different question from paying them, and worth answering early.
- Savings from before: what each of you brought into the home.
- Personal spending: clothes, hobbies, and lunches at work.
- Money you send to family: support for a parent, or a sibling's birthday.
The separate side is not secret. It is just not the other person's to decide.
The costs of moving in
Moving in costs money before you have lived there a day, and it usually lands on whoever happens to have it that week. Here is an example:
| Before you move in | Paid by | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit | You | 1,450 |
| First month's rent | Your partner | 1,150 |
| Van and boxes | You | 140 |
| Sofa | Your partner | 600 |
| Total | 3,340 |
If all of it is shared in halves, that is 1,670 each. You paid 1,590 and your partner paid 1,750, so one transfer of 80 from you evens it out.
The deposit is the one to decide on purpose. It comes back when you move out, perhaps years from now, and by then nobody remembers who paid it. If it is shared, half of it is your partner's when it returns. If it is yours alone, leave it out of the sum. The shared costs are then 1,890, which is 945 each, and you send your partner 805 instead of 80.
Both answers are reasonable. What matters is that you choose one and write it down, along with anything over an agreed amount that you buy together for the home.
Settle the rules before the first bill
These 5 questions are easier to answer before the first bill than after it:
- Which account do the shared bills leave from, and on which day?
- How much does each of you put in, and how do you split it? Splitting shared expenses when you earn different amounts works through 3 ways.
- What happens to money left in the shared pot at the end of the month?
- Above what amount do you ask each other before buying something for the home?
- When will you look at all of this again?
The last one matters more than it seems. The first arrangement is a guess about how you will live together. After 3 months you will know which guesses were wrong.
If you track what you spend, the same boundary can run through your records. In Skarb, a shared workspace for the home sits beside a personal workspace for each of you, 2 taps apart, so the shared numbers and your own never mix.
What to do on Monday
- Write 3 lists together: what you both use, what is yours alone, and what you still need to talk through.
- Write down who paid the deposit, and every shared purchase over an amount you agree.
- Decide which account the shared bills leave from, and how much each of you puts in.
- Put a date in both calendars, 3 months from now, to look at the lists again.