moving in with boyfriend.. any tales or advice
 

my boyfriend and i will be moving in together after he graduates law school in the spring. it will the first time for the both of us. any tales of cohabitation? any advice or warnings you guys care to share? i'm open to it all....

:) Don't expect things to be blissful and perfect all at once. It is an adjustment and can be a difficult one, so give it a few months after moving in, you'll relax into it and that's when it gets fun!!!

Make sure you each have your own hobby or place to get away.

I was ready to kill my girlfriend after just a week b/c I couldn't get any space! Obviously if you are moving in together you like being around each other, but no two people can be together 24-7 without butting heads.

A hobby is a great idea, especially if he will be working at a large law firm, because he will always be at work and you will never see him. ;)

sign the shortest lease that you can in case it's not what you decide later that you want.

I know of some AGD sisters who each have their own cell phone. That way someone won't get stuck with unwanted phone calls on the "apt." phone.

Also, put in writing who will have what utilities in whose name and how the bills will be paid.

Just to remember to think like a lawyer, he will! Get it in writing!

I told my boyfriend that I don't plan to live with anybody before I get married. Not at this stage of my life. I believe that if marriage is in the offering, then I would rather wait until the vows. Otherwise, I believe that living together would create too many expectations as to when to get married, why get married, etc.

I've had a few friends that moved in with their boyfriends. I think the most important thing to do while living with a bf is to still maintain a life outside of him. My friends who are still happy with their current living situations are the ones who went out with their friends every week, had lunch with friends, did all that fun stuff WITHOUT the boyfriend being there. Seeing someone too much can cause a lot of annoyance even if it's someone you love. The friends who ended up breaking it off with their boyfriends are the ones who ditched their friends once they moved in with their boyfriends.

I'd have to agree with some of the other posts. Make sure you decide on who is going to get what bills in their name. My advice would be to stay by yourself and wait until marriage, but whatever works for you.

thank you all kindly
 

some of you made a great point and i think i should clarify... my boyfriend and i are planning to get married. he has given me a promise ring, promising that when he graduates from law school and gets a job, he will adorn my finger with an engagement ring. right now i happily wear my promise ring though.

so we do plan on getting married. it just made more sense to move in together because i have found a job as a copy editor at a newspaper and he will be working in the same city with me.

i'm moving out of my mother's house after a year of "staying home after college" and it didnt make any sense both of us getting and paying rent for two apts. when we will probably spend more time in one of them. so how do you do the bills/utilities thing.

and thanx so much for reminding me about thinking like a lawyer... my man still has a couple of months to go before graduation and still has to pass the bar (he will) but he thinks and acts like a lawyer already... haha

I moved in with my husband after we got engaged. It was a good thing... we learned each other's bad habits :) and what it was really like to live with each other before we made the commitment of marriage. And I think our marriage is stronger for it.

Finances... That's something you will have to work out for yourselves. In my case, we were moving into grad student housing, and my then-fiance got a higher lottery pick than I did, so the rent showed up on his bursar's bill. I just gave him half the rent $ every month. Utilities were all included (whew!) except for long distance, where we each paid our own. Over time, we merged our finances as any married couple would do.

If you're moving into non-university housing, get the lease in both your names if you can, and split the utilities - you pay the electric, he pays the gas, etc - so that it works out fairly evenly.

I also moved in with my fiance after we got engaged. Be sure to put both your names on the lease, discuss how you will split the bills before hand, and also don't forget about chores! It's suprising how one or both of you may just think the ohter will take care of the dishes or the garbage, and it can be a point of contention if you don't just tell the person you both have to do it. Like everyone has said, maintain a life outside of your apartment. Visit your parents, go out with friends, have a movie night, but take the time to get away every so often.. I know my mom still takes a day off from work every now and then just so she can have some time to herself. It really helps to have your own space.

moving in...
 

my boyfriend and i just moved into an apartment with a year lease this past week and allready he is having second thoughts because it doesnt feel like "home", ive tried telling him that it takes time to build a home, and memories to go along with it, he says the house is "boring" and "theres nothing to do and all we do is work, come to the house and sleep"..but he obviously he wasnt ready to live on his own without his parents or siblings... and doesnt know too much about responsibility...i dont know what is going to happen.. both of our names are on the lease...im still trying to talk him into staying, but who knows what will happen!
my advice is to make sure that both of you are ready to live on your own!!! make sure both names are on the lease & sign a 6 month lease if possible! ;)

Suze Orman (sp?) suggests that finances be split by how much each person makes. So, if one of you makes 60% of the total income of the household and the other makes 40%, then rent, utilities, etc. would be split 60/40.

You REALLY have to be sure that the couple is able to "handle" such an uneven division, though - for some, 50/50 is better simply because it is, well, simple.

Some people run into problems where the 60 "half" feels entitlement, because he/she "paid for (most of) that" or something similar. Also, if one of the bills (say, internet) is used primarily by the 40 "half", the majority payer may develop issues with paying for the majority of something they don't use.

I realize these issues seem petty, but I've known a few couples who started off paying by wage difference and wound up just splitting necessities 50/50 because it ended fights . . . non-essentials generally wind up paid for by the higher earner somewhat more frequently anyway, barring an extreme case of "macho man syndrome", so it somewhat works out.

I don't get the whole "split 50/50 or 60/40"...I mean, I understand the concept, but for us, all of our money goes into a joint bank account, which I pay all the bills from. It's also what I use to go grocery shopping and buy things for the kids. I keep a list at all times of things coming up to pay, and know how much money we're going to need for the future 45 days or so (unless I know of a major purchase coming up farther down the line) and approx how much both of our checks are going to be. We have a safety net amount of money that we keep. Anything outside of that is our spending money, and we've hardly ever had a problem just sharing that, without putting limits on who can spend what. I buy shoes and he buys his silly wrestling gear and DVDs and it works out well. I put my foot down, however, at the Bowflex.

Yes but you're married...joint bank accounts aren't a great idea for a couple who is dating without any legal ties/protection.

Maybe that's the advice if you are not married and are "just" cohabitating? Splitting the bills 50/50 doesn't sound fair if one person makes significantly more than the other- especially if the house/apartment was selected based on the higher income earner.

And pooling money if are not married can get really tricky- what do you do if you break up? The higher income person might want a bigger piece of the pooled funds, even though they spent more of it.

I guess, to me, if you're willing to live with them, you should be at least invested enough in the relationship to trust the other person with finaces, with or without legal protection...but I guess that's being too optimistic.

Does anyone know if there's such a thing as a legal contract between persons living together should a breakup occur? Something like a pre-nup, only for living together/joint finances instead of marriage?

I know my sister had a domestic partnership agreement that was put together by an attorney and when the relationship tanked, they ended up in arbitration and the agreement was enforced. Granted this was in California, so I don't know how it would work other places.

I wonder how it worked out?

You still have pretty OK legal protection if you're living together, obviously dependent upon your state - but yeah, this is exactly what the deal is . . . a combined bank account can quickly become a mess, no matter how 'invested' you want to be in the relationship. Just saying "throw all the money in and pay out of that" doesn't work all the time.

Quite a few married couples do the 3-account thing - most goes into the joint account, then each has a "fun fund" that their money goes into. It's like an allowance for grown-ups . . .

When we first got married, we were going to do that, and then we decided the allowance thing is silly. However, that's what my coworker and her husband do, and it seems to work well for them. Although, things are a little more cut-and-dry for them, since they don't have kids. They don't have to decide whether things like going iceskating with the kids should come out of the general fund or whichever parent is going, etc.

That's what we do, except that we have 2 joint accounts -- one is the household account out of which all household/family expenses are paid; the other is what we call the charity account. It is purely for church pledge, charitable contributions, memorials, etc. We set up the second account as a discipline to make sure that money for charity was coming off the top of the paycheck and not relegated to whatever might be left over after the bills were paid and the groceries bought. It does make life easier at tax time, too.

That's never been a problem with us. It comes out of the household fun, usually at least. But from time to time both my wife and I will want to do a little something for/with kids, and then we might use our "fun" accounts. We've never really talked about it, but kind of as a general rule if I'm simply doing it as a familiy outing or to have something to do in the afternoon, then the family account pays for it. If I'm doing it as much for my own pleasure as for the kids' (I want to surprise them or treat them to something), then I pay for it.

As for legal protections and rights for co-habitating couples, that's one of those things that can vary greatly from state to state.

We do this and it works very well. the "fun" money is usually spent on golf (for him), hair (me), and going out to lunch. If something involves both of us, then it is money from the joint account.

As far as kids things go, that comes out of the general account- however we usually get a zoo pass and a children's museum pass so we only pay for those once a year. We don't do a whole lot of kid activities that cost too much money.

Before we were married, we lived together but since we made comperable salaries, we split everything 50/50. My husband paid the rent and I paid everything else (and tracked it) and then gave him whatever the difference was (or he would give me the difference).

I <3 that.

Yes. Breaking up and being stuck in a lease = unfun.

We do things a little different. I make a bit more than my wife, so the deal is that she buys all of the groceries and most of the meals out while I pay for everything else.. rent.. utilities.. etc.

When law school is over and the real money starts to roll in, we'll do something different I'm sure.

I agree that the 60/40 arrangement gets tricky. My boyfriend and I have lived together for 5 years, and at the beginning, he made so much more than me that we thought this would be the most fair...and it really was an argument about who used what utility more, etc.

Luckily, I now make the same as him, so we can split everything...but now that we have joint accounts, we tend to not stress it...if I remember to pay a bill first, I pay, otherwise he does...I know that if I need money, he'll give it to me, and vice versa. We're pretty lax about it, trusting each other with "our" money.

I have lived with my boyfriend for nearly a year now. When we first moved in together everything was split 50/50, even though he makes more than I do. It was just easier for us that way. We later decided to get a joint account. It's worked for us really well. I have my own savings account, with my money, which we have both used for vacations and such, but it's all under my control. I like having my own money, whether it be for fun or for, god forbid, emergancies of any kind.

We're looking at purchasing a house in the next year or 2, and have decided that if we're not married, we''ve both agreed to get a cohabitation agreement dealing with the division of property.

I don't think you can say one way or the other, which works best, it all depends on the couple. Things have worked out great for us, but that's just our relationship.

Geckos, keys and other surprises
 

I've seen practical posts so far on this. Now for the odd and insane. My younger brother's girlfriend, and my buddy waiting for his girlfriend to get back from Europe have all contributed to the following. TV is reruns, or once the game was over or Army Wives was finished, it's boring and hot here. Yes, this is an old post topic, oh well.

The kickoff for a friends/and family conversation on warnings/advice began after:

I received a telephone call yesterday from my younger brother's girlfriend. A waa waa waa sound was blaring in the background. She was unpacking, moving in, while my brother is off hiking. Yes, he knows, it isn't a surprise.
The girl needed to go online to check air schedules, and hadn't unpacked her computer. So she decided to use my brother's laptop. She quickly learned it is equipped with security software/anti theft, hence the waa waa waa. The poor girl wanted to know if I knew the security code. She'd obtained my number from a mutual friend, as everything in my baby brother's life is in his computer. No, I didn't know the code. So we tried: sports teams, pro and college, anything Star Wars related, the name of his gecko (see below), etc. Nope. A neighbor finally did something to turn off the machine or he killed it. I don't want to know.
advice/warning: if there are security codes provide them, or post warnings: don't touch.

Nice puppy/bad puppy and geckos. Pets are part of the package. An ex/former live-in had a Doberman that hated me. The feeling was mutual. I
also was not a fan of Wally the Gecko, reptile room mate of my younger brother. From crashing at my brother's when I was in town, I shared a room with Wally, and Wally's crickets. Gross: Animals/reptiles needing live food. And the chirping through the night, annoying. For my brother's girlfriend to move in, Wally had to find a new home, with an old room mate of his.
advice: pets should be part of the move-in negotiation process.


Errands. Yeah sure. For unknown reasons, I agreed to pick up the guy with the Doberman's shirts at the laundry. This was before I'd had any coffee and was half awake. I recalled the name of the laundry and headed to the one between the condo we shared and his office. Wrong. The laundry was part of a chain, like several stores. Dumb me, the shirts were at the one near his gym. Of course.
Advice: Clear instructions regarding errands are very appreciated.

Keys. It's great a set of keys was provided, but who else has one? Being surprised while getting dressed by your buddy who has a set from when he'd stay there when he couldn't drive home wasn't funny.
Advice: Determine who has keys, and if need be, change the locks and start over.

Your mother. :eek:What do you mean she's in town for a convention and wants to meet me for the first time a "nice" late lunch today? This needs major prior planning; time to wash/blow dry hair, get the nails done, shop.
Advice/Warning: To avoid inflicting trauma, mention such visits well in advance.

Cooking: A skill somewhat foreign to my sister and I. If you haven't been treated to a "home-cooked" meal before the move-in, don't hold your breath.
Advice: If a home cooked meal is that important, perhaps plan on being the cook.


My younger brother's girlfriend/new room mate and probably soon to be fiance says she hopes to break the curse on relationships in my family. A good start would be not assaulting his computer.:)