Moving In with Your Partner: Find Out How to Make It Work and Enjoy Its Financial Benefits

Moving in with your partner can have financial benefits, as long as everything is planned prior to the move. More and more couples are now opting for this setup instead of tying the knot before moving in together. According to statistics, about 70% of couples in the United States move in with their partners before marriage. As mentioned, there’s an advantage when it comes to finances as you don’t have to shoulder everything on your own. Aside from that, you can also test the waters prior to getting hitched and see if you really can live with your partner. This would be more convenient than getting a divorce after getting married and finding out in just a short period that you’re not meant to be. Money and household chores are usually the common reasons why couples have issues. If you decide to live together with your partner, here are some things that you should consider to have a better chance of making it work.

Work on Your Budget

List down the bills that you need to pay like electricity and monthly rent to have an idea on what you need to work on when it comes to your budget. Determine who will be responsible for paying these bills to avoid missing payments, which could result to problems. Give the responsibility to the person who is more organized. You may also use apps that would remind you of your bills or would automatically pay them to prevent forgetting them. Imagine if you forgot to pay your electricity and you find yourself being cut off from the service; this would be stressful and it could cause conflict between you and your partner.

Split the Expenses

As you may know, one of the benefits of moving in together is that you can share your expenses with your partner. This could save you both some cash as long as you divide the cost properly. The easiest and fairest way to do this is split all the expenses in half. However, there are cases that the salary of one person is significantly higher than the other. If this is the case, you could talk about how many percentage the higher earning individual would pay in order to help the other with his or her personal finances. You should both agree with the decided percentage and make sure to give what’s due for you.

Determine Who Does What at Home

Aside from financial matters, another common concern that couples living together, whether married or not, usually have is the household chores. Since both of you are working, the chores should be divided equally so that both parties can do their share. The delegation of tasks must be decided prior to moving or as early as possible. One can do the cleaning and cooking and the other could be responsible for cleaning the dishes and washing the clothes. Another strategy is to make it a weekly rotation for all the tasks. It really depends on what would work best on you. The most important thing is that you agree with the given tasks and you do them.

Be Prepared If It Doesn’t Work

There’s no one hundred percent guarantee that the relationship would work. This is why both of you should have a clear back-up plan in case it doesn’t work out. Determine what you would do with the things that you have purchased together. It’s best if you would have a written agreement regarding this to avoid further problems if this unfortunate thing happens. If you’re the one who moved in to his or her apartment or house, you should have enough savings that would pay for your immediate move out, as well as the expenses that you would need to pay on your own after that. It’s also recommended that you familiarize yourself about the common law marriage in your state. Not all states have this and those that do may have varying terms.

Photo Attribution:

Featured and 1st image by Theheadof1977 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

2nd image by ZagonX (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

3rd image by KishoreHalder (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons