My boyfriend and I have been together for a long time, 11 years to be exact, and we always split all of our expenses 50/50. We earn approximately the same salary. However, I work in finance and a significant portion of my income is commission based. Therefore, in the last couple of years his income has been greater than mine.
The only time we don’t split our expenses 50/50 is when one of us wants something personal that the other person does not also want. A perfect example of this is our cell phones. My boyfriend always has to have the best new phone with the most expensive monthly phone and data plan. I on the other hand, have a very basic monthly cell phone plan and I never go over my monthly minutes. Therefore, we don’t share a family cell phone plan; we pay for our cell phone individually.
Another expense (and hobby) that I don’t share with my boyfriend is his love of sports, specifically NBA basketball and NFL football. From August to January my boyfriend orders the NFL Sunday Ticket sports package, this adds approximately $55 onto our monthly satellite bill. Since this is not a shared luxury, it is not a shared expense. I do not pay half of the monthly expense for NFL Sunday Ticket because I feel that football is a total waste of time.
This past week I had an extra $100 of disposable income and I did not tell my boyfriend about it. Honestly, I feel guilty about keeping the secret from him. I don’t know why I didn’t tell him, he wouldn’t have cared. Usually we don’t feel bad about spending our own money on ourselves. We work hard for our money, so if one of us wants to spend some extra money on ourselves it is ok.
I think that I didn’t tell him about the extra money because I didn’t want to share it with him. I wanted to spend it on myself. Is that totally selfish of me?
If I spent the money on takeout food I would also have to buy food for my boyfriend, because I would never eat out and not offer him some food. But when I pay for my boyfriend’s dinner it more than doubles my bill. I could eat out 3 times alone, or I could eat out once with him. I know it is probably selfish, but I just really wanted to spend the money on myself. Even as I write this I still can’t explain it. I did it, it’s not a big deal, but for some reason I feel bad about keeping this money secret.
Do you and your boyfriend/girlfriend keep your money separate or do you merge it all together?
Photo By Scented Mirror
Tahnya is 30 years old and lives in Montreal Quebec. She graduated in 2005 from Concordia University, and she currently works for a major International Financial Institution. She recently launched http://www.mediamadam.ca/. You can follow her on Twitter @TahnyaP.