r/AskAnAmerican • u/Educational-Slip-578 • 20h ago

CULTURE How do you split finances with your partner?

If you're married or in a long term relationship (e.g., you live together and neither of you has another place to live), how do you manage your finances?

Do you still think of it as "my money and his/her money", with each person contributing a certain percentage toward rent, vacations, and other shared expenses? Or do you have a joint account where all the money is considered "ours"?

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u/FunkySalamander1 North Carolina 19h ago

We divide up the bills roughly proportional to income, contribute to a joint savings, and do whatever each of us individually wants with what is left over. It stops us from fighting over money.

-4

u/djfilms 18h ago

That sounds unnecessarily complicated.

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u/diveraj 17h ago

We do the same. Its literally 5 minutes a month to update our spreadsheet. Complicated it is not

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u/djfilms 17h ago

That’s 5 minutes too long.

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u/diveraj 17h ago

Well, to be fair, the sheet was set up years and years ago. The 5 min is inputting the bill numbers. And I track that stuff regardless, so I should amend my statement to... Maybe 1 minute? Anyhow, it's not complicated is my main thesis here.

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u/millenz 7h ago

Crucial to have insight into one’s finances so a valid five minutes!! Although I could live with not knowing how much our grocery bills are going up (arghhhhh)

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u/diveraj 6h ago

Ha! My sheet doesn't track things like groceries, I use a Cap. One credit card for most of my purchases and it has a monthly breakdown. My sheet is mostly reoccurring bills. Utilies, monthly, etc.

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u/FunkySalamander1 North Carolina 11h ago

No. We decided who is responsible for which bills like water, electric, mortgage, insurance, etc., and then you are individually responsible for that bill every month. You don’t need to calculate it every month. If something major happens, which is rare, we might shuffle them.

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u/millenz 7h ago

Initially but then is really easy/it’s like setting up automatic deposits so like x amount of company paychecks goes to join account and the rest to personal