00:00How long have y'all been together? Four years. You're both totally in love?
00:03Mm-hmm. Prepare for divorce. Okay.
00:08I'm Meredith. I'm a blogger from Brooklyn. My boyfriend is a television producer and I am
00:14curious about how to combine our finances as we move forward in life together. I make about
00:19$30,000 a year. He makes a lot more than that. And are you planning to tie the knot? To
00:27put a
00:27ring on it? Yep. Has he put a ring on it? He has not put a ring on it. Okay.
00:30Is he gonna put a ring on it?
00:32It's in the cards. What I need you to keep in mind is that 90% of women manage their
00:36money on their own at some point in their lives. And so you've got to keep control
00:41of that money. Okay. Number one. Number one. Second thing, are you combining your
00:47income? Yes. Okay. Keep talking. Yes. We bought an apartment together in Brooklyn,
00:53which we pay for together. Okay. Most household items are kind of split equally between the two
01:00of us. We don't have like a joint checking account though. Not yet. Okay. Okay. Okay. Wait,
01:04wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, Meredith. What did you just say split equally? Yes. You split them
01:09equally? Pretty much. Okay. And how about this home you bought together? How do you split the
01:13payments for that? That's split about 60-40. The split 60-40, I'm guessing is off. So let me,
01:19let me tell you how I think about this and what I think is a good approach to it, which
01:24is to share
01:25the expenses based on the proportion of income that each of you have. So let me give you an example.
01:31If he is making, if you're making 30,000, he's making call at a hundred, um, then the split should
01:38be more like 75, 25%. Um, the, you know, it should be in proportion for how much to how much
01:44each of you
01:44are bringing in. You know, this is about equity, um, and having each of you put in an amount that
01:52is comfortable for you at a living standard that's right for you. And while there's, you know,
01:58no right or wrong, splitting things in proportion to how much each of you make enables each of you to
02:05contribute to the household and enables each of you to keep money to the side that you can either spend
02:10on yourself, splurge on other people or invest for the long term. So we're finding increasingly,
02:15that's the way women and, and men and women and people are going to split equitably as opposed to equally.
02:22this is a great example.
02:23So,
