Who should pay the rent if you live with your girlfriend?

What an odd question. You should split the rent, of course.

You each pay a percentage of the rent based on your monthly incomes. If you make more, you pay more, and although she’s paying less, she’s paying the same percentage of her income.

You could go Republican with it and say whomever earns the most per month shouldn’t have to pay rent because they’re making most of the money and investing it back into the system which is the greatest good. It doesn’t matter that the one who makes less is struggling to pay because the one who makes more is helping consumption and providing a better economy for the one who is struggling. It’s much fairer this way, obviously.

If both earn about the same amount, split it 50/50. If your income is quite different, discuss splitting it proportionately.

If she owns her own home, you need to discuss the options… As long as she is the sole owner, your contribution is negotiable.

You should pay at least half of the utilities, as well.

I would offer to pay my fair share if I were living with someone.

It depends on various situations. My boyfriend and I started living together my junior year of college. For that year and my senior year, he paid the full rent, as I was mainly focused on my studies and had only a minimal part-time income for “spending” money.

Since I graduated college, it becomes increasingly less obvious who is paying the rent. Since we do everything together and never split the bill, we kind of just take turns being the one who uses our own credit card, as the money is pretty much the same. We have four bank accounts (we each have one personal account, and we have two joint accounts). We each put a portion of our income in the joint accounts (bills and savings) every month, and the rent money just comes out of that. We aren’t really concerned with which one of us is paying more rent money because we’re not in competition with each other, and we view our finances as contributing to the same final goal of our family and life together in the future.

This is something you two need to work out together. There are as many solutions are there are couples.

queenzboulevard’s analogy is hilarious. I don’t know how Republicans can say their tax plan makes sense.

If the boyfriend makes $4,500 per month and the girlfriend makes $6,000 per month, the boyfriend should use 35% of his income toward rent, and the girlfriend should use 15% of her income towards rent. lol. yes. how practical.

This is probably a question for another thread, but of all of the couples (under 40) I know, the female makes substantially more money. Is this usually the case, or do I just hang with highly ambitious females?

I agree with basp. Discuss this with your girlfriend.

I know this varies from couples. I just wanna know how most people deal with this issue.

huh. Interesting. I think queenz’s analogy is inflammatory and obnoxious.

As to the rent, I think you start from a position of splitting it 50/50. Any shift from that would depend on various factors that we aren’t privy to…..

@bialink. We purchased a home together prior to being married. We started out trading paying the “house” bills every other month. That quickly got messy.

We then tried what GOS suggests above…our own accounts and then joint accounts. That was a pain too.

Ultimately we dumped the individual stuff and did just joint stuff. By this time, however, we were well on our way down the aisle.

Factors that you need to consider.

Is there a huge income disparity between the two of you?

Will there be hard feelings if things don’t work out and one of you was essentially supporting the other?

If the guy is making significantly less than the girl, are either of you going to have issues w/ the girl paying more?

Not knowing you or your commitment to each other, I would recommend that you strive to split the bills down the middle, if at all possible. It will make things easy to define financially and remove some of the stress in making financial decisions.

Yikes. I would never be comfortable with an arrangement other than 50/50.

When my girlfriend moved in with me, I continued to pay all the housing expenses because I lived alone before and could afford it. She agreed to take over buying food and cooking because I hate grocery shopping and am a lousy cook.

That worked okay until we moved to Cali where I can no longer pay all the household expenses and still have enough money left over to live comfortably.

While 50/50 is probably ideal (stuff costs the same whether you make $10 or $15/hour) the proportional based on income isn’t too bad. Take into consideration if your partner wants to live in a place that would be out of your price range if you had to live there alone, or if the other person takes up more room in the house, or wants it to be closer to his/her job, etc. If you’re honest with each other and willing to compromise, you can work it out.

You must discuss it and negotiate. If you can’t figure out how to work this out between you (regardless of what other people do), I don’t predict much long-term success for your relationship.

boufth

I am going with 50/50 and yes, if there are difficult financial times, things can be discussed; however, there are plenty of other ways to arrange the percentages. It really is something you need to be able to discuss – Jeruba is correct. If this is difficult to discuss and agree upon, long-term stuff, yeah…it will be damn near impossible to maintain a long-term relationship.

If there are financial problems on one side or another, that too, should be discussed.

I agree on a 50/50 split. I would have a discussion about finances before moving in together. It is important that you are both on the same page about finances. Remember the most important thing is communication!

queenz: Do Republicans really live together wthout benefit of marriage? lol

Remember if it isn’t 50/50 things will get nasty (or nastier) when it is over. And he will always want the big screen TV but you probably won’t want the bed that you both paid for.

In my past, whether I lived in a group house, or with one other person, we always split the rent equally. Even though we were pretty much all socialists, we never seemed to think that rent should be proportional to income.

Had that been the case, I would have benefitted. I never made much money, and always less than whoever else i was living with. I was living on about 8000 a year from 1979 to 1983. I think my girlfriend was making two or three grand more. The income differential has done nothing but expand over the decades. Of course, now it doesn’t matter. Everything is pooled.

50/50 split. Anything else seems designed to bring about dissatisfaction. Perhaps if they are engaged or married, the split might be based on something else, but an even split is best. They should treat sharing the apartment like they would with any other roommates.

I think that there are a lot of factors to think about, if you are both willing to be as fair as possible.

First, rent should be about 30% of an individual’s income. So if 30% for one person is 600/mo, and for another it is 1000/mo, then you now know your combines limit…1600/mo (Similarly, 30% of both of your incomes will be 1600).

Second, does one of you have significantly more bills to pay than the other? I paid for college myself, but my boyfriend’s parents paid for everything for him (lucky!). He is willing to pay a higher percentage of the rent simply because I have many more bills to pay than he does. So, think about the whole financial situation of each individual involved in the whole.

Living with a sig-o is nice, but one of the advantages is being able to save money by only having one of what each of you need (furniture, etc.) For the above example, since 1/2 of 1600 > 600, one of the individuals in the couple would not only be paying more than they should on their budget, they would not be saving money. They would be sacrificing some financial security to live with you; would you want your sig-o to do that to you, or would you want to do that to him/her? Probably not.

Percentages also allows for change and flux. If one person’s income significantly increases, or significantly decreases, then you’re covered.

Eventually as a couple you will have to bring your money together, so if nothing else this is good training for that. Splitting things 50/50 isn’t always the fairest thing to do, even if it is the easiest!

@rdhotchilepepper: You are forgetting, or ignoring, the ability of one member of a relationship to be respectful of the income level of another member of the relationship. Which is to say, just because someone can put $1,000 towards rent, doesn’t mean they need to. They could choose to be respectful of their partner’s income (that only allows for $600) and look for a place that is only $1200 to rent. That actually works out even better with your point about flexibility because one partner is able to save that much more.

Jezebel actually just had a great article about this—you don’t have to eventually bring your money together as a couple and many people never do entirely. They often have an account for household expenses but keep separate savings or something. It keeps everyone safe in case something should ever go wrong in the relationship.

I highly, highly recommend reading the article and comments. While some people certainly do what you suggest and other what others on this board have suggested—and it works for them, when it comes to money and love, it is important to do what both parties feel best about.

50/50
The amount of income is irrelevant in deciding the split.
The only relevant question is “how much can the lower wage earner afford in his budget?”
Otherwise, the higher wage earner, who may still have savings goals (ie down payment, or for a new car) is being cheated.
You pay what you can afford, and the higher wage earner only pays more if he wants to maintain a higher standard than can be afforded at 50/50.

Hi! Recently divorce, was married 30 plus years. New girlfriend, and we care about each other. She has her own home (very nice) and we talked about move in. She doesn’t make much money, but has a good deal of cash. I make more. She is expecting me to pay more than 50% because I make more, but I have far less cash then she does. Also, I would be just a renter, so my money goes to lowering her principle etc, and she would save a signigicant amt each year. I would save some, versus if I lived in an apartment but obviously not nearly clsoe to what she would save. Bottomline, I want to live with her, but I am feeling this is unfair, I’ll own nothing, and should the relationship go south, like all renters, I am left with nothing, except the knowledge I paid more than 50% of something she owns and help reduced her principle . Am I being to critical about this. I real care greatly for her.

@madhatter12, welcome to Fluther! Since this question is so old, you probably won’t get many answers here. You might want to post what you just wrote there as a new question on the home page.

If you want some help getting acquainted with things around here, our community manager is augustlan, and she is super nice and helpful!

@madhatter12 Have you discussed this with your girlfriend? Do you discuss it antagonistically or peacefully? This could be a big test of the relationship, but I think you should express your feelings about how she is treating you and why she is treating you this way. This kind of thing—a notion of equity—is very important and you both should be on the same page on it.