Woman Seeks Advice After Boyfriend Making $500K Asks Her To Pay Her Half Of The Rent In Expensive Apartment He Chose
She can't afford the place he wants.
Isaac Benhesed via Unsplash / Marko Aliaksandr via Shutterstock Any counselor or coach worth their salt will tell you that relationships are complicated. There’s a lot of sharing that goes on in a balanced relationship, including sharing of responsibilities, sharing of duties, and when you live together, sharing of costs.
The division of those shares varies by couple, but one woman has faced a bit of a dilemma in her relationship with her boyfriend when trying to decide what's fair.
The woman's boyfriend asked her to move in with him and pay for half of the expenses despite making more than her.
Posting to the Relationship Advice subreddit, the woman explained that she is 22 years old and is looking to get into a graduate program. As it stands, she isn’t making any money and likely won’t be for the next few years while she’s furthering her education.
Her boyfriend, however, is 32 years old and currently making $300,000 a year, but just got a job offer in a different city for which he's been offered a $200k raise. While the woman said that she was happy to move in with him and simply look for another graduate program in the new city, there was a catch: the boyfriend asked her to pay for half of all expenses, including the $5,000 a month rent.
“This would amount to around $2500/ month," she wrote. "My family is capable of providing me with this money, but we are not exorbitantly wealthy so it is a lot of money for us. My family also thinks it is really unreasonable for my boyfriend to ask me to pay these expenses when he makes enough money to support the both of us easily.”
Splitting bills evenly down in the middle isn't the most fair, nor is it recommended.
There are a number of different ways that couples can split expenses, including using a joint account, assigning specific bills to each person or paying for what you use.
While it may seem most fair to split bills in half, experts warn that splitting everything down the middle isn't equitable.
“I think it’s almost not fair to split finances 50-50 without taking into account your partner’s financial situation,” Sophia Bera Daigle, founder of virtual firm Gen Y Planning, told CNBC. While the rent may be 10% of one person's income, it could be 90% of the other's, putting a far more significant financial strain on one person. One person may also have more pre-existing debt and monthly payments than the other. For this reason, Bera Daigle suggests getting "a better financial picture of what’s going on with your significant other” before committing to a 50/50 split.
According to CEO, money coach, and financial literacy advocate Nicole Victoria, the best way to split rent in this situation is to use a percentage of income to equitably split costs.
“It’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all for each couple but it’s really going to be based on this kind of communication,” social psychologist Michael Kraus explained to CNBC. “If you’re really serious about somebody and they’re serious about you, being able to work through a discussion about fairness is something that you can definitely do.”
Dan O'Reilly is a writer who covers news, politics, and social justice.