Dan Q
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This self-post was originally posted to /r/polyfamilies. See more things from Dan's Reddit account.
Hi /r/polyfamilies. After much pestering by people who know us, I finally got around to writing about how my polycule and I organise our finances, and I thought that you might be interested to. The whole thing’s described behind that link, but I didn’t want to be seen to be gathering karma or self-promoting, so I thought I’d make a text post to briefly explain it:
Us: My partner, her husband and I are three adults sharing a home (plus, this year, their baby girl!). We rented together for several years, and now we’ve got our first mortgage together. We wanted to come up with a fair way to share our costs (rent/mortgage, bills, shopping, etc.) that wasn’t just “split it three ways”, which didn’t seem fair given that we all earn different amounts – variable even from month to month as my income fluctuates depending on how many days I spend looking after the baby and what kind of freelance work I get, and as my partner gradually returns to work (part-time for now) after her recent maternity leave.
Our system: We use a system of 100% means-assessment based on gross income. So in other words, if Alice, Bob and Chris live together, and Alice earns twice as much as Bob, then she’d be expected to pay twice as much towards their collective household costs, too. And somebody who didn’t earn anything wouldn’t be expected to contribute anything. We didn’t always use 100%: early on, we used 75% – in other words, a quarter of our costs would be simply “split three ways”, and three-quarters of our costs would be split in accordance with means-assessment. Make sense?
It’s really easy: The good news is, it’s really easy to do. I’ve made a spreadsheet on Google Docs that’s a simplified version of our sheet, and you’re welcome to take a copy and use it yourself. Just put in everybody’s salary and what percentage “means assessment” you want to use (0% means ‘simply split X ways’; 100% means ‘split completely according to means’; anything in-between is a balance of the two). Then put in each cost and who paid it (Eve paid the rent, Alice paid for this week’s shopping, Bob paid for last week’s shopping, etc.) and it’ll tell you who owes money to whom in order to square everything up again.
It’s universal: You don’t even have to be a polyfamily to make use of this, I reckon. It works with as little as two people, and it’d work with any household of multiple adults, if you wanted it to. It provides a simple, fair, and slightly-socialist way of splitting up the living costs of a group of people who live together and trust one another.
Let me know what you think!
tl;dr: My polycule and I use a use a spreadsheet to divide up our monthly costs in accordance with our relative incomes, which then tells us who owes money to whom at the end of each month.
This self-post was originally posted to /r/polyamory. See more things from Dan's Reddit account.
Hi /r/polyamory. After much pestering by people who know us, I finally got around to writing about how my polycule and I organise our finances, and I thought that you might be interested to. The whole thing’s described behind that link, but I didn’t want to be seen to be gathering karma or self-promoting, so I thought I’d make a text post to briefly explain it:
Us: My partner, her husband and I are three adults sharing a home (plus, this year, their baby girl!). We rented together for several years, and now we’ve got our first mortgage together. We wanted to come up with a fair way to share our costs (rent/mortgage, bills, shopping, etc.) that wasn’t just “split it three ways”, which didn’t seem fair given that we all earn different amounts – variable even from month to month as my income fluctuates depending on how many days I spend looking after the baby and what kind of freelance work I get, and as my partner gradually returns to work (part-time for now) after her recent maternity leave.
Our system: We use a system of 100% means-assessment based on gross income. So in other words, if Alice, Bob and Chris live together, and Alice earns twice as much as Bob, then she’d be expected to pay twice as much towards their collective household costs, too. And somebody who didn’t earn anything wouldn’t be expected to contribute anything. We didn’t always use 100%: early on, we used 75% – in other words, a quarter of our costs would be simply “split three ways”, and three-quarters of our costs would be split in accordance with means-assessment. Make sense?
It’s really easy: The good news is, it’s really easy to do. I’ve made a spreadsheet on Google Docs that’s a simplified version of our sheet, and you’re welcome to take a copy and use it yourself. Just put in everybody’s salary and what percentage “means assessment” you want to use (0% means ‘simply split X ways’; 100% means ‘split completely according to means’; anything in-between is a balance of the two). Then put in each cost and who paid it (Eve paid the rent, Alice paid for this week’s shopping, Bob paid for last week’s shopping, etc.) and it’ll tell you who owes money to whom in order to square everything up again.
It’s universal: You don’t even have to be a polyfamily to make use of this, I reckon. It works with as little as two people, and it’d work with any household of multiple adults, if you wanted it to. It provides a simple, fair, and slightly-socialist way of splitting up the living costs of a group of people who live together and trust one another.
Let me know what you think!
tl;dr: My polycule and I use a use a spreadsheet to divide up our monthly costs in accordance with our relative incomes, which then tells us who owes money to whom at the end of each month.
This link was originally posted to /r/MegaLoungeMars. See more things from Dan's Reddit account.
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[this was originally posted to a private subreddit]
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In 2023 I published an updated version of this blog post. See that post for the latest tips on managing polyfamily finances in a socialist manner.
For the last four years or so, Ruth, JTA and I (and during their times living with us, Paul and Matt) have organised our finances according to a system of means-assessment. I’ve mentioned it to people on a number of ocassions, and every time it seems to attract interest, so I thought I’d explain how we got to it and how it works, so that others might benefit from it. We think it’s particularly good for families consisting of multiple adults sharing a single household (for example, polyamorous networks like ours, or families with grown children) but there are probably others who’d benefit from it, too – it’s perfectly reasonable for just two adults with different salaries to use it, for example. And I’ve made a sample spreadsheet that you’re welcome to copy and adapt, if you’d like to.
After I left Aberystwyth and Ruth, JTA, Paul and I started living at “Earth”, our house in Headington, we realised that for the first time, the four of us were financially-connected to one another. We started by dividing the rent and council tax four ways (with an exemption for Paul while he was still looking for work), splitting the major annual expenses (insurance, TV license) between the largest earners, and taking turns to pay smaller, more-regular expenses (shopping, bills, etc.). This didn’t work out very well, because it only takes two cycles of you being the “unlucky” one who gets lumbered with the more-expensive-than-usual shopping trip – right before a party, for example – before it starts to feel like a bit of a lottery.
Our solution, then, was to replace the system with a fairer one. We started adding up our total expenditures over the course of each month and settling the difference between one another at the end of each month. Because we’re clearly raging socialists, we decided that the fairest (and most “family-like”) way to distribute responsibility was by a system of partial means-assessment: de chacun selon ses facultés.
We started out with what we called “75% means-assessment”: in other words, a quarter of our shared expenditures were split evenly, four ways, and three-quarters were split proportionally in accordance with our gross income. We arrived at that figure after a little dissussion (and a computerised model that we could all play with on a big screen). Working from gross income invariably introduces inequalities into the system (some of which are mirrored in our income tax system) but a bigger unfairness came – as it does in wider society – from the fact that the difference between a very-low income and a low income is significantly more (from a disposable money perspective) than the difference between a low and a high income. This was relevant, because ‘personal’ expenses, such as mobile phone bills, were not included in the scheme and so we may have penalised lower-earners more than we had intended. On the other hand, 75% means-assessment was still significantly more-“communist” than 0%!
When I mentioned this system to people, sometimes they’d express surprise that I (as one of the higher earners) would agree to such an arrangement: the question was usually asked with a tone that implied that they expected the lower earners to mooch off of the higher earners, which (coupled with the clearly false idea that there’s a linear relationship between the amount of work involved in a job and the amount that it pays) would result in a “race to the bottom”, with each participant trying to do the smallest amount of work possible in order to maximise the degree to which they were subsidised by the others. From a game theory perspective, the argument makes sense, I would concede. But on the other hand – what the hell would I be doing agreeing to live with and share finances with (and then continuing to live with and share finances with) people whose ideology was so opposed to my own in the first place? Naturally, I trusted my fellow Earthlings in this arrangement: I already trusted them – that’s why I was living with them!
We’ve had a few iterations, but we eventually settled on a system at a higher rate of means-assessment: 100%! It’s not perfect, but it’s the fairest way I’ve ever been involved with of sharing the costs of running a house. I’ve put together a spreadsheet based on the one that we use that you can adapt to your own household, if you’d like to try a fairer way of splitting your bills – whether there are just two of you or lots of you in your home, this provides a genuinely equitable way to share your costs.
The sheet I’ve provided – linked above – is not quite like ours: ours has extra features to handle Ruth and I’s fluctuating income (mine because of freelance work, Ruth’s because she’s gradually returning to work following a period of maternity leave), an archive of each month’s finances, tools to help handle repayments to one another of money borrowed, and convenience macros to highlight who owes what to whom. This is, then, a simplified version from which you can build a model for your own household, or that you can use as a starting point for discussions with your own tribe.
Start on the “People” sheet and tell it how many participants your household has, their names, and their relative incomes. Also add your proposed level of means-assessment: anything from 0% to 100%… or beyond, but that does have some interesting philosophical consequences.
Then, on the “Expenses” sheet, record each thing that your household pays for over the course of each month. At the bottom, it’ll total up how much each person has paid, and how much they would have been expected to pay, based on the level of your means-assessment: at 0%, for example, each person would be expected to pay 1/N of the total; at the other extreme (100%), a person with no income would be expected to make no contribution, and a person with twice the income of another would be expected to pay twice as much as them. It’ll also show the difference between the two values: so those who’ve paid less than their ‘share’ will have negative numbers and will owe money to those who’ve paid more than their share, indicated by positive numbers. Settle the difference… and you’re ready to roll on to the next month.
Now you’re equipped to employ a (wholly or partially) means-assessed model to your household finances. If you adapt this model or have ideas for its future development, I’d love to hear them.
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This self-post was originally posted to /r/MegaLoungesArmy. See more things from Dan's Reddit account.
A few months ago, when the MegaLounges were fewer, I drew a map; censored parts of it so as not to reveal secrets, and posted it to several levels of the MegaLounge structure: e.g. in Mega3, in Mega6, in MegaX. I exposed a complete map of my understanding at the time (which turned out to have a few errrors) in the separate stream /r/MegaManLounge, and received two pieces of criticism:
I keep promising to remake maps – improved maps, with lots of new knowledge as well as information about “side” lounges (like this!) that aren’t part of the main MegaLounge track but are relevant to their history. But if I do:
I’d love to hear people’s thoughts.
Update: I’ve now updated my map – you’ll find fresh copies in Mega3 and in a handful of other, higher lounges. Happy exploring!
This self-post was originally posted to /r/MegaLoungeV. See more things from Dan's Reddit account.
[this was originally posted to a private subreddit]
It’s a bit cruel to /u/Greypo that we’ve got these special threads for that he’s not allowed in. So to even the score, ONLY /u/Greypo is allowed to post on this thread. Everybody else should stop reading now.
I’m serious. This is /u/Greypo‘s space to talk about the rest of us behind our backs, if he wants to.
I’m a big fan of pizza. I use it to celebrate people moving house back to Aber; I use it to bribe people to help me move house; I’ve been known to travel into the next country over in search of the “right” one; over the course of the 300 or so Troma Nights I hosted between 2004 and 2010, it got to the point that our local pizza place would bring our food in through the front door and directly to each consumer; and once we got as far south as Naples, finding the world’s best pizza was among the first things on Claire and I’s minds. I like pizza: you get the picture.
More-lately, I’m also a big fan of making pizza. I’ve always enjoyed making bread, but over the last five years or so I’ve become particularly fascinated with making pizzas. I make a pretty good one now, I think, although I’m still learning and periodically experimenting with different flour blends, cooking surfaces, kneading techniques and so on. Those of you who know how capable I am of being a giant nerd about things should understand what I mean when I say that I’ve gotten to be a pizza nerd.
In pizza-related circles of the Internet (yes, these exist), there’s recently been some talk about pizza cake: a dish made by assembling several pizzas, stacked on top of one another in a cake tin – ideally one with a removable base – and then baking them together as a unit. Personally, I think that the name “pizza cake” isn’t as accurate nor descriptive as alternative names “pizza pie” (which unfortunately doesn’t translate so well over the Atlantic) or “pizza lasagne” (which is pretty universal). In any case, you can by now imagine what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is an artery-destroying monster.
Not wanting to squander my dough-making skills on something that must be cut to size (proper pizza dough should always be stretched, or in the worst case rolled, to size – did I mention that I’d been getting picky about this kind of stuff?), I opted to go for the lazy approach and use some pre-made dough, from a chilled can. That was probably my first and largest mistake, but a close second was that I followed through with this crazy idea at all.
I didn’t have as deep a cake tin as I’d have liked, either, so my resulting pizza cake was shorter and squatter than I might have liked. Nonetheless, it came together reasonably well, albeit with some careful repositioning of the ingredients in order to provide the necessary structural support for each layer as it was added. I eventually built four layers: that is, from bottom to top – dough, tomato, cheese, pepperoni & mushrooms, dough, tomato, cheese, pepperoni & mushrooms, dough, tomato, cheese, pepperoni & mushrooms, dough, tomato, cheese, pepperoni & mushrooms. As I went along I found myself thinking about calzone.
Using a cake tin with a removable base turned out to be an incredibly wise move, as it proved possible to separate the food from its container by simply running around the outside and then tapping the tin from underneath. It had the weight and consistency of a cake of similar size, and smelled richly like freshly-based bread and cheese: exactly what you’d expect, really. I sliced it into six wedges, “cake-style”, and served it with a side salad to my courageous test pilots.
Ultimately, though, the experience wasn’t one we’re likely to repeat: the resulting dish was less-satisfying than if I’d just gone to the effort of making four regular pizzas in the first place. It was impossible to get an adequately crispy crust over the expanded surface area without risking burning the cheese, and as a result the central bread was unsatisfyingly stodgy, regardless of how thin I’d rolled it in anticipation of this risk. Having toppings spread through the dish was interesting, but didn’t add anything in particular that’s worthy of note. And while we ate it all up, we wouldn’t have chosen it instad of an actual pizza unless we’d never tried it before – once was enough.
But that’s just our experience: if you give pizza cake/pie/lasagne a go, let me know how you get on. Meanwhile, I’ll stick to making my own dough and using it to make my own regular, flat pizzas. The way that the pizza gods intended!
