The money conversation before you move cities
Agree what happens if only one of you has a job at the other end. That is the question underneath every other one, it is the one couples skip because it sounds pessimistic, and it decides how the money works for the first six months — which is usually longer than either person imagined the gap being.
The costs that arrive before the first pay cheque
A deposit, a first month, sometimes a last month, a broker or agency fee, and the physical move itself. In most cities that is several months of rent, paid before anybody has been paid, and it is the part that gets planned last because the conversation is about the monthly figure.
Where it comes from — savings, split how, or one person fronting it — is worth deciding while it is still hypothetical.
One salary moving and one not
If one of you is moving for work and the other is starting again, the split that was fair before is not fair on arrival. Couples handle this in two ways: a temporary proportional split, or the person whose move it is carrying more of the fixed costs for an agreed period. Both work; drifting is what does not.
The things that quietly change
State taxes, whether a car is now necessary or now pointless, what a commute costs, what health cover costs. None of these are the reason anybody moves and all of them show up in the monthly number.
Write the new month down before you go, with estimates. It will be wrong, and it will be far less wrong than not having one.
Put a date three months after the move in the calendar to redo the numbers. Everything estimated in advance turns out differently, and the first realistic month is the third one.
Easier with the numbers on the table
Money talk goes better when nobody is guessing.
Pairly puts what leaves, what is left and who has covered more in one place both of you can open. It never grades anybody's spending, and it never calls a purchase a mistake.