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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My strong opinion, assuming that you are moving in together as a bit of an "are we compatible enough for marriage?" trial run, is that you should each pay for half of your living expenses, and rent a place that you can both afford. The genders of the people are not relevant.

One of the risks of living with someone before marriage is that breaking up seems like such a high bar, that you stay together basically by default. If one person is going to have to take a big hit to their standard of living by moving out, that really increases that risk, in my opinion. You don't want to be in a situation where someone is thinking, ugh, I don't know if this relationship is really working for me, but if I move out I'm going to have to get a much crappier place.

There's also basic fairness. You both share the apartment, you both share the cost. You are NOT a financial unit. You keep your finances separate until/unless you marry. In fact, I'd say that merging finances and making joint financial decisions was the biggest immediate change to my relationship when I got married.

For what it's worth, I lived this. In the early 2000s, I lived with a boyfriend who made $80k to my $35k, and we found a place that I could afford to pay have the rent on (it was essentially a small place and it was like 50% of my take home pay). My then boyfriend saved a ton of money during that time. That was an added bonus - if we had gotten married, we would have had a really big nest egg to start our marriage with. But I ended up dumping him. And I could afford to keep up my standard of living. No regrets.

Oh - and one thing we did do that I think worked out well, is that he would give me, as a present from time to time, a vacation. Worked out great - he'd shell out for a trip for both of us, and we'd call it a "Christmas-Valentines-Birthday" present. Saved him from having to actually shop for a gift, plus losing that when we broke up wasn't big enough to impact my decision, as it wasn't part of my day-to-day life.

Strong recommend.[/quote]

DP here.  In our situation we were engaged when we moved in.  From a financial standpoint my mom always encouraged me to have a situation where as a married couple you could live off one salary if you needed so in good times you increase your nest egg and in downturns/job layoffs you can still afford to pay your bills.  I am also a firm believer each person should be able to support him or herself on their own so when you combine forces it’s  the icing on top rather than being needed for survival and you either stay together due to finances or start off with financial stress. So in our case, my now DH moved in with me and I continued to pay the mortgage since I already could afford it, but he paid other bills like utilities, cable, groceries etc. and put a set amount in a joint savings account (our only joint account) for the wedding.  At the time, he made less than me so this worked out on many fronts.  He had responsibilities for those bills - checking charges and making sure they were paid on time and he was a more economical shopper because he was on a tighter budget so I benefited from that as well.

If we had been dating and not sure about getting married or if we had been looking for a new place to rent together, I probably would have changed the approach slightly.  But fundamentally it was good to split responsibility for the bills, not just have one person do everything and ask for the contribution from the other person to cover their share.  It was also good that we didn’t increase our standard of living such that we needed the combined amount for housing - we stayed within our means probably leaning slightly closer to the lower earner and what we saved put us in a better place financially.  [/quote]

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