We’ve been together for a couple of months now and he pays about 3/4 of the time. I am going through some employment weirdness (I took another job at a lower pay rate while I look for something better because my last job was eating away at my soul) so he is very sweet and tries to pick up the check most of the time. I won’t let him pay for everything though and I make sure to thank him properly whenever he does pick up the check. I also pay for birth control pills and buy condoms and stuff so I like to think we are pretty close to even. When I get my job situation taken care of I’m sure we will try to split stuff 50/50.
In general, he pays when we go out, and I pay for groceries and make most of our home meals. We go out fairly often, so I do try to pick up the tab at restaurants sometimes, but he never expects me to. He makes a lot more than I do, and I think he also enjoys picking up the tab, treating his woman to dinner or brunch or whatever. And he’ll sometimes pick up stuff at the grocery store if we’re out of something and he’s the one with free time to get it done. We think it’s fair. I check in with him every couple of months since I moved in, to make sure the system is still satisfactory. So far, so good.
Been together 3 years and living together for 6 months.
Before we got married, Mrs. Giraffe and I split most restaurant bills unless one of us was taking the other out for something. After we got married, we combined finances, so now I “pay” for everything (i.e. I put my card down), but it’s both of our money.
What he said. I have to admit, I think it’s kind of weird to be married or in a very long-term relationship and still have separate bank accounts. But we know a LOT of people who do that. I just think it would be a bigger hassle, but hey, whatever.
I’ve been with my boyfriend for three and a half years. He lives in my house. He owns two businesses which are both… young. I generally pay for dinner because he wouldn’t go to the places I like to go to if he had to pay. It was a big discussion back when we started out, and it made him really uncomfortable, but he’s gotten over it. He pays when we go to Subway.
Before we were married and when the finances were pretty equal, we’d just alternate who pays. It worked out pretty even, though it probably tilted toward whoever was making more money at the time.
Now we each have our own money but I take care of most of the joint expenses, so I pay when we go out. The exception might be if it’s my birthday or if we go someplace that requires cash and (as is usually the case) I don’t have any on me.
I’ve been with my fiance for 7 years, 9 months. I usually pay since I’m not paying off student loans (parents paid for my college). He has his student loans which he incurred because he transferred to my university to be with me. I figure it’s only fair to pay most of the time when I can! But on the flipside, because he works from home, he does about 75% of the dishes, laundry and other housework.
It works for us, but once he pays off the loans and starts making crazy money compared to my paltry salary, he said he’d like to pay for more things because he feels slightly effeminate doing the housework while I take care of the ‘guy stuff’. Uh, we’ll see about that buddy. I hate doing laundry. 
This applies to us, too. My husband is more likely to have cash on hand than I am, so if the restaurant is cash only or we just feel like paying with cash, it comes out of his wallet.
Smeghead- we each have personal bank account as well as our joint. Our wages go into the personal accounts, the bills come out of the joint. Each month we put an agreed amount into the joint account and into savings, the balance in our personal accounts is then ours to dispose of as we see fit. I earn more, so I put more into the joint account and buy the groceries.
It works for us as a system, as we each have some financial independence and the bills still get paid. I’m quite happy not knowing what is in irishfella’s account, as long as I know what is in mine and the joint.
It’s really not complicated at all with online banking.
It comes out of the same account. Whoever pulls the card out pays for it.
We’ve been together about 3.5 years now, and we’ve almost always split the bill, barring a few special occasions where one of us felt like picking up the whole tab as a nice gesture or to celebrate a special occasion. This was mostly at my insistence, because I would feel awkward sponging off him… I make a reasonable salary, after all, so why let him carry the entire financial burden of having a relationship?
We now own a house together, so restaurant bills get charged to our joint account, along with all of our household expenses. We contribute equal amounts each month to that account, and the rest stays in our personal accounts to be spent as we choose. If he decides to buy a shiny new iPod with his money, that’s his business… and same if I decide to buy a $200 pair of shoes.
I think you two may need to sit down and talk finances, because her behaviour is a serious red flag.
If your girl is playing the “old fashioned” card now when it comes to going on dates, what will happen down the road if you decide to start living together? Will you be paying the rent and most of the bills because that’s “old fashioned”? If you get married, will she want to quit her job and play housewife while you become sole provider because that’s “old fashioned”?
Well, she is cheap. She doesn’t think she is, but she is.
She likes to bring up the fact that when she goes out with her guy friends (she has mostly guy friends), they almost always pay for her. Not only food, but any entertainment costs associated with the food (movies, comedy clubs, etc.). And, I always tell her they pay for her because they are trying to get into her pants. She, of course, just brushes off that notion and thinks I’m being silly.
I’ll pay for dinners. She’ll usually pay for lunches.
Hubby pays, I pay, we go dutch.
Depends on who is in what mood. If he really, really wants to go to the fancy french bistro (which runs us up to about $100 when we go), then he pays because it was his choice. If I decide we’re going out for dinner, I pay. Sometimes we both put money on the table because we both just didn’t feel like cooking at home.
I do all the grocery shopping, but he gives me money out of his paycheck every week to go towards bills and shopping so in effect we both pay for the shopping.
Ivylad and I have separate bank accounts for our financial sanity. I balance to the penny every two weeks, he rounds up his entries and if he’s within a couple of bucks with what the bank says, he’s happy. :eek:
That said, we don’t eat out a lot, but when we do, whoever says, “Hey, who wants pizza/Chinese/Italian/whatever” pays, the assumption being whoever made the offer has the cash to cover the bill.
We have the same bank account so it doesn’t matter. I’m actually kind of amazed at how many married people apparently have separate finances. Why get married if you have so little trust in the other person?
We have joint accounts, though he also has a little pin money. Mostly we pay from the joint accounts. A few times a year, he’ll pay from his pin money.
When we were dating, I paid a lot more often because he was living below the poverty line and quite underemployed and simply had more money. Him paying was a huge treat for me.
Now that we’re married we have completely co-mingled our finances and whoever remembered their wallet pays. I still like when he pays with his card, because it makes me feel like I was taken on a “date” rather than just “Lunch with the husband”.
We’ve been married a little over 13 years and share all our money; we have separate Visa cards because we had them before we got married and are too lazy to consolidate. (We pay all our bills in full every month, so we aren’t dealing with interest rates.) When we go out and pay cash, he usually pays because he has more opportunity to go to the ATM than I do (proximity to work). When we pay with plastic, he usually does that too, because the server usually puts the check in front of the man. It’s not an issue.
I do all the grocery shopping and pay all the household bills. He absolutely hates doing those things.
Before we got married, we alternated paying for meals. He made, and still makes, twice as much as I make, and was very understanding about that. I cooked him many homemade meals to compensate for being unable to treat him to restaurant meals.
Dio- it’s not about trust. It’s about sanity.
If we could see every niggly little thing we each spent our money on there would be lots of “you spent how much on a [insert object here]!!”
Really I don’t want to know how much tricking out his PC cost- if he thinks he can afford it, well, it’s his money, he worked hard for it and it’s his business how he spends it.
Likewise, he gets to say “nice haircut” or “you look pretty” and not actually know in detail how much I’ve spent at the hairdresser/beauty salon/boutique.
Our deal is that any single purchase over £300 is discussed, but if you want it and can buy it without going into the red or using a credit card, you can make it even if the other person isn’t keen. Anything smaller than that doesn’t require discussion.
We both trust each other to spend responsibly, pay the bills and not to eat into the overdrafts unavoidably, we also trust each other enough that we don’t have to know the fine details.
I’m the child of a financial advisor and the grandchild of a book-keeper, my parents don’t have a joint account and I’ve grown up with that model of marital finances.