Cool, thx!

We use a similar approach: we estimated first an amount of money we would use for ‘shared stuff’ like rent, food, daycare costs, insurance stuff etc. .

Then, each income first gets virtually reduced by ‘pocket money’ and by the costs for healthcare. Like this, even if someone does earn next to nothing, he/she is guaranteed to have some money left for ‘just spending’. Next, we sum up all income that is left and compute for each person how many percent of this (virtual) total income he/she earns.

The aforementioned amount of X$ is now divided according to these percentages, and everyone pays there share into a shared account where we all have access to.

If there is too much in the pot after a while, we do something nice; if we need more, we do ‘single payments’ to even things out.

What we like about it: it’s fair in terms of economic power (those who earn more pay more), and everyone has still their own money – plus access to ‘the pot’. This is, of course, a quite left wing view on things; your mileage may vary :)

Thx for sharing! I like the idea of splitting a part of the expenses not via percentages but in terms of ‘shares’, although I am not sure if, in the end, we would want to change our system.