Moving in together? Have this money conversation first

Most of the planning that goes into moving in together is about furniture and floor plans. The money conversation tends to happen by accident, in pieces, usually starting with “so who's paying the deposit” a week before the move. It goes better answered on purpose, before the lease, than worked out in real time while boxes are already in the hallway.

Four questions worth answering before the lease

• How will rent and bills split — evenly, by income, or by room? Deciding this once, in writing, avoids relitigating it every time a bill arrives (see the piece on splitting rent on different incomes for the actual math).
• Whose name goes on what? The lease, the power bill, the internet — whoever's name is on an account is the one a collections call reaches first if it ever comes to that. Worth choosing on purpose, not by whoever filled out the form first.
• What happens to the security deposit if one of you leaves first? Decided upfront, this is a formula. Decided after somebody has already moved out, it is a dispute.
• Joint account, or not? There is no single right answer — the honest options and what each one actually solves are covered in the piece on whether couples need a joint account — but it is worth choosing before move-in day, not defaulting into one because a bank teller suggested it.

The one thing worth doing in the first week

Write down the actual numbers before either of you forgets what you agreed to feels obvious. Rent, the split ratio, the bills you know are coming, what each of you already pays elsewhere. Two weeks after move-in, most of this is remembered slightly differently by each person — not out of dishonesty, just because nobody wrote it down while it was still fresh.

💡The couples who report the fewest money arguments after moving in are not the ones who agree on everything. They are the ones who wrote the agreement down somewhere both people can see it, so “that's not what we said” has an actual answer.