My DP and I are about to “properly” move in together after almost 3 years and a 6 month trial run sharing a rented property whilst my house was renovated – which we will be moving into. We’re currently exploring ways to arrange our finances/split bills etc.
Potted facts: We earn roughly the same amount and have two DC each. Mine live with us although DS1 will fingers crossed be off to university in September. DSS and DSD, who are very similar in age to DS2 – they’re all in their early teens - stay every other weekend, whilst DS2 goes to his Dad’s every other weekend. DS1 is out and about doing his own thing most weekends, which may or may not include visiting his father or letting anyone know where he is at all. DP pays maintenance to his ex each month whilst I receive maintenance from mine. The maintenance my ex pays me is currently about twice that which my DP pays to his ex. Half of this will be being diverted to support DS1 at University though shortly.
Currently our plan is that DP will contribute a sum of money each month which is roughly equivalent to a third of the major household bills, with me paying for myself and DS2 - via his maintenance. (We've bundled the "not here all the time" children into one if that makes sense and taken them out of the equation.) We’ll then deal with any other shared expenditure and associated savings on an ad hoc basis. Personal bills like mobile phone contracts, clubs, boring tv sport channels etc will all remain the responsibility of the person they’re associated with. To us this seems fair, but I’d appreciate a sanity check.
I’ve seen many advocate a 50/50 or proportional split but we’re both firmly on the same page that each other’s children are financially the responsibility of their respective parents. We’re both cautious and independent people and have no plans to marry, or for reasons I shan't bore you with, to become formally financially intertwined with a shared mortgage or anything in the immediate future. This probably sounds incredibly unromantic, we're both quite long in the tooth and happy with this. However the spanner in the works is that the "powers that be" seem to have a different outlook. DP moving in will have a considerable impact on DS1’s maintenance loan next year which means the shortfall that this will cause will need to be made up. I don't expect anyone else to pay for my children, especially my adult ones, but the fact is that things will become much tighter for me. How do we accommodate this?