the talk
Not the birds and the bees talk, the "Baby, how are we going to handle our money?" talk. Now that my honey and I are living in the same apartment so that we can save more easily for our future, we had to decide how we were going to pay expenses fairly. Those of you who have ever bought property may be familiar with a HUD-1 settlement sheet, which is the form that helps sellers and buyers of real estate to account for expenses at closing. That form was the inspiration for the spreadsheet I created. Click it to see a sample in full detail.
This sheet first itemizes what we each have paid in the course of a month for each of the expenses we are jointly responsible for. The second part of the worksheet takes the total amount paid for each expense and splits it according to how we’ve agreed to split the expenses - for example, we’ve agreed that my honey will pay only a quarter of the storage fees, since most of the stuff in our storage space is mine, and I’ll pay for most of the gas, since the car is mine. After the spreadsheet formulas calculate how much we should have paid, then we can actually see who has paid their fair share and who has not at the bottom of the sheet. In this sample worksheet, I have paid $21.25 more than my fair share of the expenses. This means that at the end of the month, my honey would give me $21.25 to make it all even. We’ve both reviewed the sheet and approve of the splits and this method of keeping things straight.
I personally think that money is the last thing a couple should be fighting over. It should be simple. Since I am more anal about money than my honey, he is gladly giving responsibility for stuff like making spreadsheets to me. However, I make sure he sees, understands, and approves of decisions I make. He likes that, and he trusts me. Perhaps this spreadsheet is more complicated than what some other couples may go through every month, but it works for us. The work is already done - the formulas do all the math, and all we have to do is plug in the numbers once a month. (After reading this paragraph to him, my honey has asked me to add, "And we’re a technologically savvy couple." Bless his heart. LOL!)
I was listening to some minister on the tv this morning while i was getting ready for work. And he said something that I at first thought was silly until he explained it. He was talking about cohabitating before marriage and he said that if you really want to know the person you are marrying before hand, try sharing a checkbook with them. If that ain’t true! I’m glad you realize that couples end over money and I think it’s better to be proactive rather than reactive in handling things. Good luck!
it’s all about being proactive for me.
Comment by s23 — October 31, 2007 @ 8:22 am
nice spreadsheet. why not do everything 50/50 — it seems like it would all balance out when you look at the fact that you only have a few line items that you’re doing 25/75 and 60/40?
those sample numbers i plugged in don’t really show this well, but it wouldn’t balance out. the splits that aren’t 50/50 are that way because of our notions of fairness and because they help things balance out a little better than a 50/50 split.
Comment by Dream — October 31, 2007 @ 12:18 pm
Wow! I guess I would just split rent with my bf…:)
Comment by SavingDiva — November 4, 2007 @ 12:01 pm