So some background info. Im currently a single parent to 3 kids, now older at 16, 17 and 22. The 22 year old works full time, 16 & 17 year old in full time education, both intend to go to a local uni and stay at home for the foreseeable future. My partner of 3 years is about to move in with us, probably at the end of the summer holidays. He is someone i and my children have known 20 years, my younger two have known him their entire lives. Though we have only been together the past 3 years. My marriage to their father broke down in 2014, it has just been myself and the children ever since. When we got together he knew that taking it slow was important to me as i didnt want any further disruption to my childrens lives. Now all my children are out of school, this is a step we can take. He doesnt currently live locally, nearly 3 hours away, but he visits, and i visit him both with and without my children. I have sat down and discussed with my children about him moving, and they are very happy with the plans. The wait is for his job, it is transferrable, and plans underway, it just takes a little bit of time.
So my question is, how on earth would you split finances? I earn around £34k but my monthly pay varies by up to £400, i still get a small amount of UC (£200-400 a month depending on my overtime, i will stop getting this totally when he moves in) and my eldest contributes £300 a month to the household. I live in a rented council house since we had to sell the home i owned with my husband we were very lucky to get in a lovely sought after area. I plan to keep the house only in my name for a currently unknown amount of time to protect our home incase him moving in doesnt work. He earns slightly less, however, due to my pension and student finance (both undergrad and post grad loans) our take home is about the same.
We are next seeing each other next weekend and i need to broach the topic of household bills, so we have a plan in place that is fair to us both. Ultimately, we are 4 people, he is one, so 50/50 seems unreasonable. My initial thought was i pay 2/3 including the money from my son, he pays 1/3, but im unsure if im chucking myself under a bus here. If it makes any difference i also have zero in savings, and he has 6 months wage saved as a single childfree man. he also currently lives in a place where half his wage is spent on rent, so his outgoings are going to reduce substantially as my rent is already nearly half what he pays at the minute.
The children's costs are 100% my responsibility, all their costs are on me (no CMS either, he has never paid a penny, another story), So i dont want to be seen as taking advantage of another decent wage coming into the house, but i also dont want to be in a position where by im covering a large proportion of the households living costs and he has essentially reduced his outgoings by like 80% (rent already halved, then paying just a third of my current, that is maths i cant do sorry!) moving in with us.