Living with your significant other makes sense from an economic and emotional standpoint. By cohabitating together, you no longer have to commute to see each other, you can divide household chores and you can split the bills.
But before you get too invested in the idea of moving in together, first think through these money rules.
[See: 7 Signs Your Romantic Partner Is Financially Unstable.]
Do: Talk about your finances. It’s a myth that talking about money kills romance, says Carla Dearing, CEO of Sum180.com, an online financial wellness service based in Louisville, Kentucky. “Making time for regular conversations about money supports a healthy relationship.”
She also points out that any financial issues will come up in conversation. It’s inevitable. You’ll discuss who’s paying for dinner and how the rent or your mortgage is going to be split and how many, if any, movie, music and TV streaming accounts you each want. But your talks will probably be more productive if you discuss everything you can think of that’s related to money rather just wait for a potential disagreement to reveal itself.
For instance, maybe one partner is a saver, while the other tends to live and spend in the moment. Or perhaps one of you feels you need to pay your bills as soon as the bills come in, while the other prefers to wait until you’re close to the deadline day. A lot of issues don’t seem like they’d be a big deal until you find that one partner feels strongly about a financial topic that doesn’t interest you.
” Conflicts about money are frequently cited as the most common reason for arguing among couples,” Dearing says.
Don’t: Get hung up on who makes the most money. If you or your significant other goes on a power trip, you may resent each other. That’s why Lisa Eaton’s path is a model worth following. Eaton, who lives in Kennebunk, Maine, and owns Bowtie.com, which specializes in selling neckwear and suspenders, says that she and her roommate came up with a way to split the bills. It was so successful that when Eaton moved in with her future husband, they adopted it, too.
Eaton and her college roommate estimated what the household income would be — and the person making more money put more money toward household expenses. “So, when we split the rent, I paid 60 to 65 percent, and she paid 35 to 40 percent,” Eaton says.
And when it came to choosing who got the bigger room, they drew straws. That way, you don’t have one roommate living the good life, while the other is barely scraping by and resenting the other half of the partnership. It may not work for every roommate (though Eaton says she and her college roommate did this in the mid-1980s, and they’re still close friends), but it makes sense as a couple. You don’t want your other half to be scrimping by while you’re splurging. In any case, it’s a strategy that’s worked well for Eaton and her husband. They’ve been married for more than 25 years.
[Read: For Richer or Poorer: How 5 People Co-Manage Money With a Significant Other.]
Do: Try to get both names on the lease. Everyone’s situation is different, and maybe it isn’t practical for you to get a new apartment or house together, and so one of you will move in with the other. But ideally you’ll both move somewhere new, says J. Hope Suis, a writer in Greer, South Carolina, who specializes in writing about relationships and self-improvement.
“I absolutely advise against giving up one’s home and moving in with someone in their already established residence,” Suis says. “That puts them in a weak position from the start. Regardless of how great things are in the beginning, and even what may have been agreed upon, the person with their name on the lease or mortgage pretty much controls the living arrangement,” Suis says. “If the relationship goes south, the ‘guest’ then has to foot the bill for moving out expenses, not to mention obtaining a new place to live including deposits and fees. No one should ever put themselves in this situation.”
Don’t: Hide any financial issues from your partner. Do you owe the Internal Revenue Service? Or maybe you have thousands of dollars of credit card debt. Or perhaps you owe the IRS, have credit card debt and are still paying off those pesky student loans.
According to a 2016 report from the National Endowment for Financial Education, two out of five Americans are likely hiding money problems from their partner. As the saying goes, what you don’t know can’t hurt you. That may be true with relationships, but once your partner finds out what they didn’t know, that can harm and even destroy a relationship. If you’re moving in together, it’s time to say something.
Do: Talk about your expectations of life together. Talking about your expectations is a good idea because you may end up learning something about each other’s spending priorities.
“For example, you might want house-cleaning services once a week, while your significant other expects that you two will spend a romantic Saturday doing a top-to-bottom clean every two weeks,” says Emily Boothroyd, a certified financial planner and private wealth advisor with Price Financial Group LLC in Wilton, Connecticut. “Learn where you’d like to outsource and whether you’ll be splitting the bill or footing it alone,” she says.
[See: 12 Ways to Be a More Mindful Spender.]
Boothroyd also points out that maybe you’ll want to clean and your partner may want to clean less but pay for a cleaning service. You should be able to work out a compromise along those lines. After all, “if the house is clean, that’s the win,” Boothroyd says.
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5 Financial Do’s and Don’ts When Moving In Together originally appeared on usnews.com
