We pool our money, and pay all bills and operate out of the joint acct.

I also have a personal account that I use for games & comics.

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In theory, we would pay the bills first, then pay out an allowance to each of us, then pool the remainder and divide it up among savings, gift purchases, etc. In actuality, money is tight enough that the "pooled" money consists of the amounts we put toward the credit card.

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I selected the first option as it was the closest fit.

Split communal bills evenly or accordingly to income. I was making a lot more than Mike initially when he moved to Boise so we would split rent 75/25 or 60/40. But our accounts have always been separate.

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Pooling finances did more damage to my last long term relationship than almost anything else.

The only difference in our current model from your own, is that sometimes people who make more money take a slight higher level of responsibility for living expenses. Totally voluntary though.

Right now my finances are completely separate from all my relationships, but I am also living alone now.

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well, when we both worked, we split household expenses 50/50, and pretty much did things are yous appear to do now, aside from one of us usually treating the other [without regard to keeping records or balancing it] to foods/gifts/etc.

nowadays however, i am unemployed and in exchange for mostly [about 90% i'd say] keeping the house [well, working on that] and doing errands/cooking, mark takes care of the finances. i am working on various self employment things, and if i ever make enough out of them to make a dent on expenses, then we will rework things. of course, when we were both working full time, i still at that point did roughly 75% of the housework/errands/cooking...now, it's just a bit more acknowledged/arranged for ;)

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Shared bills are split by percentages based loosely on net and available income. As no household to which I have belonged has had truly joint accounts, approximation includes parties taking full responsibility for smaller bills by income/usage, and rent/mortage being paid out of reserve by one party who is reimbursed by percentages by the other(s). Other expenses are solely the responsibility of the individual, though in the case of joint outings, they are often covered wholesale by the instigator or more affluent party, and occasionally include an adjustment to the next rent reimbursement. Since Pod and I legally married, our income tax expenditures throughout the year have also been handled in this way.

Percentages are readjusted when bills change significantly, net income for any party changes, or available income for a party changes significantly, say, when someone finishes paying off student debt or takes on a car loan. It would be horrifically complicated if any of this changed often, but in reality, even when I was living with three other questionably-employed students, it wasn't that bad.

Edited at 2008-03-26 08:30 pm (UTC)

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Ideally, each person would pay a percentage of the house expenses according to their income; if, pooled, i make 70 percent of the money and he makes 30 percent, he pays a 30% portion of the bill and i pay the other 70%. That money would go into a household account, which each person would make a regular transfer to.


Everything else would be under one's own recognizance, though in practice, if i'm making the money, i tend to buy the fripperies, since i can't seem to keep my wallet in my pocket when someone else says, "ooh, i'd like that." Call it Daddy syndrome. Xp Or being an Aries, whatever you prefer.


I don't really understand any kind of relationship, no matter how many people are involved, where you pool all your income and keep no discretion or independence. No matter how well people get along, that just seems like painting a target on your collective ass. More power to anyone it works for, but no thanks.

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My wife and I pretty much pool our funds, buy the small things we want, and discuss anything large that we want before we get it. If the house equity line is at a nonzero state, we postpone most of the large stuff, and if we have to actually carry a balance on the credit cards longer than a month, we get careful about the small stuff. We don’t really keep track of who bought how much vs. who earned how much because it would be a nuisance; thanks to the tyranny of the fashion industry, it’s inconvenient for her to carry credit cards, so I usually play sugar daddy while we’re out and about.

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We do something similar to the first, except instead of splitting each bill equally, we are in charge of different bills that end up approximately the same cost.

So, I'm in charge of Internet and garbage, my partner is in charge of electric. (my company refunds DSL, so it ends up about equal.) I don't pay any of the electric bill, he doesn't pay any of the garbage or Internet.

Otherwise, what we do is very similar to what you do, and we're generally very happy with it.

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Don't forget the communal treating estro to tea fund! ;}

(And thank you. )

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My setup is pretty thoroughly outside the norm, I'm sure, since I'm functionally a socialist in household situations. However, I'm not always living with other people who are as socialist as I am (although ability to be comfortable in that living situation is a high priority in roommate selection, as is mutual trust), and I live this way because of my beliefs, not as a quid pro quo, so it's generally best if I'm the highest wage earner in the house (which works out well with my fondness for boarding hippies and artists). I generally ask housemates to contribute some percentage of income toward the basic household expenses, although that's radically flexible when life situations change. That, combined with my income, equals the household total pot. In some cases I've entirely merged finances (such as with Becca), in others, we only merge to the extent of that shared household pot (such as Mark, Caleb, and Matt). Beyond that, it's exceedingly free-form. Basically, the money goes for the most important things first, and we tackle things as a household team in terms of prioritizing beyond that. The household pot can also be used to cover both necessities and luxuries for the other housemate, and often is, because it's part of how I redistribute the household wealth, and live in a way that feels fair to me. Overall, it works surprisingly well the vast majority of the time, and I wouldn't trade the occasional stresses of evaulating what is and isn't fair for the stresses of maintaining strict boundaries that feel very unnatural to me.

Very free-flowing, very odd, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to others, but it suits me and mine quite nicely.

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There are good reasons to follow each method. And a lot of it comes down to independence and how you feel about your money and your earning power. Part of my marriage, and I suspect Lupa and Teriel's is about supporting each other through poor times so that in turn each can increase their success.

For that reason, when both are working, and money is good, the success is shared. When one wants to retrain, try something new, take time off, go to school, etc. The other will support them through it. And chances are their turn will come to be supported. Even if only one partner does the initial supporting, it is an investment, because when the other does become successful and times are good again the success is shared. The success is shared in terms of wealth and in terms of credit.

Now of course there is no guarantee on payback, or even that the person will stay with you, it is a risk. But joint success is quite a nice reward if it works. Many couples do this, one puts another through school and they do more chores and such because they have more time available. And then later on when the good job and such comes from that then the other gets their chance to either take it easy, have kids, or go to school themselves.

I suppose the philosophy is that of community property. It doesn't always work, both people in the couple need to share the philosophy and be grateful to each other. When I was fully supporting my ex, he didn't do extra chores, or any for that matter really. And when he was through school, he didn't end up getting a good job. He did feel a little indebted to me, and he gave me some money when we broke up, several thousand dollars. He does have his student loans so I don't feel like he owes me anything more. But the investment didn't work out. But sometimes it does. There is a possiblity my husband is going to be supporting me for a little while in the near future, I might take a part time job and finish school over the next 6-9 months. I know I will pick up more chores and things to help out, and make him feel appreciated. The other option, which I am looking into is taking two part time jobs, or taking one full time that might be a pay cut from my current wage. However, without his support, I don't think I could get into my new career. Also, when I have achieved my goal of being a well paid paralegal, I will support him while he goes to school. Though I really won't count on him doing more chores, it is something about a lot of people, they just won't do more chores.

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Split all bills, split major household purchases, use own money for own purchases, usually just alternate who pays for things like dinner/movies, pay for big fun things based on ability (i.e., if we go on vacation, I'll pay everything but her airfare or I'll pay all the airfare and hotels but she'll get the food, as I have more money).

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In the few household I have been in where this is relevant, this has varied.

My parents have a model that seems to work well for them as it is trust based but with fail-safes. Essentially they have three accounts: hers, his, and theirs. The 'theirs' gets some base percentage of their income and whatever more they feel like chipping in. Bills and basics get paid out of the theirs, and all other uses of the communal funds get discussed. Having their own individual nest-eggs means that there is no stress of financial dependence or beholdeness and gives them the opportunity to "treat" each other even if it ends up being a net split anyway.

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I've basically just split shared expenses up evenly between everyone living in the Home. This is rent, groceries, cable, etc. Everything else is done on an individual basis, but I'm lucky enough to be in a situation currently where there is very open communication with one of my best friends for over a decade. There is a lot of generosity on both ends, so we like to "take care of" things like when eating out together, etc.

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We are a rather traditional arrangement. I pay all the bills and both checks go into our joint account. I keep the other half informed when we run low and he keeps me abreast of more "fun type" expenses like gifts, dinners and wahtnot...

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Never once in my life have I, nor ever will I, trust anyone enough to pool my money with theirs for anything other than shared bills (i.e. utilities, etc.). If Girlfriend has a credit card that expect $400 a month, Girlfriend can goddamn well come up with the $400 herself to pay it--it's not my monetary problem. Conversely, though, neither would I ever expect anyone else to help me pay my own credit card/etc. bills. My debts are my debts, your debts are yours.

At the same time, though, if my partner needed help paying her bills and came to me honestly and requested a little extra scratch to make the ends meet, if I had the money to do so, I'd certainly let her have it. It's just a sad fact of life that the most I've ever made per month is $1100, which means I only have enough for me to survive on. Generosity is always a good thing, if you can afford it.

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I have always done the split-bills thing (Like: I pay the rent, you pay the electricity, TV, house insurance and phone/broadband, and we try to shop food about equally), and so have my parents. It isn't really equally, if one makes more money than the other that one picks up a bit more of the bills, and if one is inclined to use one thing more - my father uses the phone much more than my mother as an example - that person pays for that thing.

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The closest I found to when I last shared a flat with a girlfriend was option 3:
We paid a proportion of the bills matching our incomes, and kept the rest.

So if the bills were £15 and I had an income of £100, while Erin had an income of £50, then I'd pay £10 of the bills and she'd pay £5 of the bills, leaving us £90 and £40 left over to spend on ourselves.

Seemed to work pretty well.

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I tried this arrangements with house mates back int he 90'a. The big thing they said was "be employed" so you can pay something. Guess what? I was the only one with steady work, I was the ony onew who would call services for arrangements when we were short, I was the only constant in that house for 3 years. I became a sub-letter or house mum or whatever its called. Didn't like it. Wasn't getting paid for all the management I was doing. Lived on my own until I got married. That seems to have worked out.

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Oh, this was _purely_ an arrangement with my girlfriend. When flat sharing with others, we split splittable bills and pay our own way otherwise.

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I picked option 1. We each pay part of the bills. It's not really an equal split because we have very different salaries. Generally, I pay the mortgage and one time/infrequent bills (like major repairs, purchasing landscaping materials, etc.)and she pays the electricity/water/cable/internet/etc.

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Separate accounts. Split of bills and rent varies based on specific circumstance (including to points like "one pays 100% of communal bills."). Small expenses are split ad hoc on a general trust basis; I feel like it would be difficult (for us) to operate in a position where we couldn't expect one another to pay for coffee or a trip to the diner.

I suspect partial or complete split solutions are much more common than the cultural image would suggest, and that most people who settle on one particular solution would have a lot of trouble in trying to switch to many of the alternatives.

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It was SUPPOSED TO BE that bills were paid out based on percentages of income - if I made more, I paid more of the bill, but it was still equitable in "shares," then what money didn't go to bills went to anything I wanted to buy. (Comics, sex toys, rpgs, magical paraphernalia, wait, that's potentially redundant...)

How it actually works is that I'm the only wage earner, so I pay the household bills, and things like groceries/car insurance/gas is paid by the stipend my husband gets.

I do not like this situation, Sam-I-Am.

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We each have a checking account for no better reason than because we did when we got together. We each pay some of the bills out of these accounts, although which bills who pays varies with the amount each of us has in our accounts at the time.

We share a savings account which we use to save for trips and other big expenses.

We also share two reward-type credit cards that we use as a checking accounts for all our purchases out in the world. Whoever has the bucks in checking pays them off at the end of every month.

I have my own investments that are part of my inheritance and my hubby has his 401K. We are, of course, each other's primary beneficiaries and together these investments make up OUR nest egg.

We share everything and I don't just mean money. We share one TV, one computer, one car, one bed (not as typical as one would assume), and most of our time (we both work at home).

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I guess I forgot to add:
We each buy whatever under $100-type stuff we want without checking with the other. If we want to buy a major item, we generally discuss it with each other before purchasing it, but it has never been a big deal.

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We have a more traditional "head of householder" arrangement over here. Typically, I pay all the bills out of my pocket. I ask people to commit to giving me a set amount (call it "rent", if you will) that I use for paying those bills and offsetting other common expenses like groceries and the like. Ability to pay is factored in to that amount as well.

It more resembles a landlord-tenant relationship on paper.

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We divvy up rent, electric, internet, and auto insurance; she pays me and I pay the bills, as everything was in my name already (and she didn't even have a checking account before we moved in together). Food we buy as we go, usually she'll buy for the house as she cooks and I'll pay when we go out; it usually balanced out when I had a paying day job, now we mostly eat in, so I'm paying for more in-house food. We each have our own money for our own fun things...

When I was married, we pooled everything, and she was in control. Biiiig mistake...

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General shared expenses are paid out of the collective account. We each take a fixed allowance plus 5% of our income out of the collective account, so it is partially returned based on how much we each make, but with a guaranteed minimum allowance (pretty much how I'd like the greater social order to be managed).

The method of each person pays for an equal share of rent, etc. seems like it requires that everyone have pretty close parity of income. If someone is making a lot more and would like to spend it on housing or groceries, they can't really do so without increasing everyone else's costs. Likewise, if someone is poorer than everyone else in the household, then they are constantly running into dept or struggling to get out of debt, and they are prevented from cutting costs (on housing, food, internet, cable, etc) to get their living expenses within their means, because that would mean everyone else in the household would have to cut back as well.

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Of course, this is ignoring the majority of the household who aren't part of the communal triad. I disapprove of our failure to be fully communal, so I make Amp handle the finances, so I don't have to deal directly with the fact that we have renters.

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Ah, I didn't know that's how you dealt with them.

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Me you, or us you? The problems of non-number specific pronouns!

Yeah, we have a single fee that we charge the upstairs housemates that encompasses mortgage, utilities, cable (internet-phone-tv), and groceries, that we recalculate every few years. The basement dwellers are charged rent that doesn't include groceries. The loan that we borrowed to pay for the new room is covered entirely by the communal triad, and was not rolled into the combined rent. The combined bill means that Jake and Bean are incapable of adjusting their semi-fixed expenses like food or utilities and also makes it difficult or impossible for anyone other than the triad to get reimbursed for grocery expenses. Personally, I wouldn't put up with it, but somehow Amp manages to get Bean and Jake to tolerate it (the fact that we are extremely tolerant of non-payment of rent probably helps make it acceptable).

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Likewise, if someone is poorer than everyone else in the household, then they are constantly running into dept or struggling to get out of debt, and they are prevented from cutting costs (on housing, food, internet, cable, etc) to get their living expenses within their means, because that would mean everyone else in the household would have to cut back as well.

Yeah -- that's my main difficulty with our present household system. I'm not planning to be that poor again, though, and part of my not planning to be that poor again is wanting to plan ahead to set up my end differently.

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I was thinking of your situation when I wrote that.

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My household consists of me. :)

I am vexing your data collection, however, to point out that that is, in part, a decision on my part not even to share bills with anyone.

In the optimal past roommate situation, all three roommates were equally responsible for shares of the rent and the shared utilities. We accomplished this by agreeing to a monthly amount of money each of us was to chip in, total, and by getting a joint checking account in which to store it and from which to pay bills. This allowed us to easily track all payments in one place, and to keep a buffer of money. If all roommates agreed, funds in that pool could be used for other shared resources (cleaning supplies, new trash can, group food, etc.) But then each of us retained our own money in all other ways. We did not typically do group food purchases, but tended to share freely.

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Sven and I split bills evenly.
When Sven, myself, and our housemate Jessi, were looking at a move to another city, we took a different approach. As Jessi and either Sven or myself would have had a dramatically larger income than person number three, we were going to do everything based on percentage of take-home income.

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We had a commune of four adults and an increasing number of children for almost four and a half years. We shared the rent, electricity and the usual groceries, and negotiated about bigger purchases. The dishwasher is owned by all of us, the Wii is ours, something else is theirs and so on. (We were two married couples.)

This worked well, we checked the bills every year and then equalized the money. We used a private wiki to keep track of all the common bills.

Now we're going to live with just my wife and our child. We had separate accounts but common money, in that we share the rent and stuff equally and both have some "own" money to buy luxuries and clothing and so on. If one of us has too little money, he or she asks the other to provide some. We had this system even in the commune, so that in a way we had to systems equalisin the money. It has worked for us for the last 13 years and I see no reason why it won't work in the future, too.

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I'm not always satisfied with the present arrangement, because when I'm broke, convenience grocery shopping rather than stock-up shopping spends *my* money, and then I end up owing it to you. Similarly, the problem of owing money in a situation where, if it were up to me, I'd cancel the cable. We've been over this a bit before, though, and it's not an extremely serious problem, just irksome when my accustomed cost of living on "shared expenses" ends up being lower than others' because I'm broke. I agree that it's more suitable for the month-to-month running of the household on subsistence wages than any other model I can come up with right now, so *shrug*.

I like shadowmorphic's version, in the event that we're making over subsistence income in the first place: people making more income voluntarily contribute more towards household expenses. That bit is key. I can see that model working for us at some point. Right now it's moot -- we've all sort of been wavering between $900 and $1500 a month -- but if one of us starts making more, I am of the mind that some part of it should go toward emergency funds or towards alleviating the general household burden.

Expanding on that, there's also a version of this that we've done in the past with good results and I'd like to do more of it in the future...

You've seen my recent posts (and heard my musings) on finances, abundance, sales and confidence, and how I'm intending to work my situation when I come back. Namely, I'm determined to work towards a surplus, so that the money freakout doesn't happen. I know you and Becca also put away various amounts when possible.

Anyway: the following model is proposed for some kinds of emergencies and also for things like travel. In fact, travel is a great example. We've done this before for the wedding and for some trips we've taken: the cost is distributed among whoever's got surplus they're willing to put in, to pull the whole thing off for everyone.

A bit like the ransom model for publishing, but with fewer participants. If you see what I mean. E.g.: Let's say we have a shared goal (go to Thresholds); the goal requires -- say -- $1000 between us. Under our standard financial setup, which I agree is suitable for month-to-month expenses, we each have to pony up $333.33, give or take a few cents, or owe what we don't pony up.

I say that we might want to look at it more like: if (on a surplus level) someone's got $450, someone's got $350 and someone's got $200, we all "ransom" our vacation together.

And I mean this strictly for when the person with the $450 can in good faith spare the extra. Voluntary-like.



Heck -- one more note in there: *without* changing our current household fund sheet, I'd also like to do the thing merovingian mentioned. I think we have two or three bills of equal size, right? It would make it easier to remember to pay them on time, because instead of "who's going to pay this," each of us would have one bill that was always ours to handle, and put it on the balance sheet like usual.

End ramble. Love you. :-)

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I'm fond of the percentage pooling - each person contributes a fixed percentage of their earnings into a joint account, the remainder is theirs to spend how they like. The joint account is used for household expenses - if there's some left over at the end of the month it can be used for 'treats' or carried over as a 'rainy day' savings.

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I think I fall into the "other" category here. I work and my SO stays at home and watches my son. Generally if he needs something he just asks for it and I hand him the money. Sometimes I give him some money for general spending throughout the week and sometimes not. Most of our shopping we do together so it's not a case of me just buying what I want. We both get what we want and need at the time.

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