How we should split our bills

[sexygrl19]

Okay,so my boyfriend of a year and a half and I are having some problems on how we should split our bills.He wants to just put our money together so that way the money is 'ours.'What do you guys think about his idea?

[RayKay]

Are you living together?

 

I don't recommend unless you are living together you pool your money together....this can cause problems later in the case of a breakup or with creditors.

 

If you are living together, what you can do it open a separate joint account in addition to your personal individual accounts. In this account each of you deposit the funds to pay rent and bills.

 

How much you put in depends on your own personal decisions. Some will split expenses 50-50, some will split them according to the percentage of take home money they are bringing (i.e if you bring home 60% of the house income you pay 60% of the bill costs), some couples will have someone pay rent and the other all other expenses. You could also open a joint savings account to save money for vacations together.

 

But again, if you are not living together and sharing financial responsibilities I do not recommend you do this. And even if you are, I advise that you still have your own personal accounts for money outside of bills/expenses as you need to protect yourselves and have some privacy as well.

[Day_Walker]

its a horrible idea, its pretty straight forward, he pays his bills and you pay yours. Pooling your money together can cause more problems later on down they line. What is the real reason that you are doing this? If one or both of you have trouble managing your money then putting it together wont solve anything.

[BellaDonna]

sexygrl19,

 

What I did when I moved in with my fiance (now husband) was to open a joint checking account when I moved in, however I still kept a separate savings account in just my name- and did not combine that money with his until we got married. If you open a joint checking account you both can make deposits to it, strictly for the bills, and then use checks to pay them. How much each person contributes to the checking account monthly would depend on how much each person made and what you were comfortable with. Rent is often split 50/50 but then there are those other bills, cell phones, internet, credit cards, etc. that may be split differently based on use. Making a budget of who uses/buys what can help with determining the split, or you may just cut it in half (but this could be a problem if one is a bigger spender than the other, or one is more financially conservative, etc)

 

Regardless of how you split it, my opinion is that it's always wise for a "single" person to have a separate savings account for his/her own money to use for leisure, personal items, or simply to have save money in the bank should a person ever need it (and you almost always will). If you are not married yet I would think it would be too risky to combine ALL of your money. You have to look out for yourself and be sure that you will have something to fall back on just in case . I always think it's better safe than sorry, and if you get married you can always combine all the money later.

 

 

That's just my .02 cents,

 

 

 

BellaDonna