Dan picked up the $12 at the ice cream stand on the Evanston lakefront on the Fourth of July before I could get my card out. Then he said, "You got the sparklers," which I had, for $9 at a gas station on the way. That's pretty much how our system works, and it took us almost a year to notice we had one.
We started dating last August, after meeting at Priya's birthday drinks. He's 27, works in IT support downtown and rents a place in Avondale with two roommates. I just moved into my studio in Evanston. We each have our own leases, our own bank accounts and our own credit. We plan to keep it that way for a long time.
Why we don't share an account
A joint account makes a lot of sense for couples who live together and share bills. We don't do either. Our money mostly goes to separate rent, separate car or transit costs and separate debts. Mixing it would just create a third account to manage.
There's also a credit reason I care about. Your credit history is your own. A joint account is a bank account, so it doesn't show up on your credit report by itself, but co-signing a lease, a loan or a card would make both people responsible for the whole debt. I spent more than a year climbing from a 668 score into the 750s, and I'm not putting anyone else's name on my obligations, or my name on theirs, until we're actually building a life together. Dan agreed so fast I think he'd already been thinking the same thing.
The system, roughly
We earn different amounts. He makes a bit more than I do, and his rent is lower than mine because he has roommates. So a strict 50/50 on everything would cost me a bigger share of my income. We didn't sit down and make rules. These are just the habits that formed:
- Dinners out: we mostly take turns. Whoever picks a more expensive place usually pays for it.
- Cooking at home: the host buys the groceries. Dan cooks better than I do, so his kitchen gets more use, and I bring dessert or wine.
- Day trips and tickets: we each buy our own train or museum tickets, or one of us covers both and the other gets the next one.
- Bigger plans: anything over about $100 each, we talk about first and split evenly, since those are planned on purpose.
My budget for fun and eating out is $120 a month now that I'm paying my own rent. Dan knows that number. He doesn't push for plans that blow through it, and when he really wants to go somewhere nicer, he says up front that it's his treat. I return the favor with cheap stuff I'm good at finding, like free museum days and lakefront picnics.
Not keeping score
The whole thing works because neither of us tracks the totals. I track my own spending in the club sheet, like I always have, and that includes what I spend on dates. I do not have a column for what Dan spends. If it evened out to 60/40 over the year, I would genuinely not know, and I'd be fine with it.
What we do talk about is the big stuff, plainly. He knows my student loan balance and that I pay $550 a month on it. I know he's saving for a new laptop and that he's going to his cousin's wedding in the fall, which means some cheaper weekends coming. Being honest about where the money is going makes the small stuff easy.
If we ever move in together, which is not on the table, I'd want a shared account just for joint bills, with each of us putting in a share based on income. We'd keep our own accounts for everything else. I've seen it work for friends, and I've seen the "everything in one pot" version go badly for others.
For now, I like that my studio budget is mine. I can see exactly where my take-home goes, and nothing about my bills depends on anyone else's paycheck. That independence matters to me after a year of living in my old bedroom.
On the way back from the lakefront, I mentioned I'd been thinking about writing this post. Dan said, "Make sure you say I paid for the ice cream." So, for the record, he did.
