I should begin this post by disclaiming that I have yet to combine finances with anyone, but it’s a question I get a lot (and one that I anticipate doing at some point in the not-so-distant future), so I figured now was as good a time as any to start fleshing out the options.

Key word? Options. Because there’s an infinite spectrum of personal situations out there, I won’t attempt to offer every single possible scenario – but what I will do is offer three courses of action that you could use as a starting point with your significant other.

In all three scenarios, the thing to keep at the forefront of your mind is what feels fair to you and your partner. An innate sense of fairness is a vestige of our animal brains, and when one person in a relationship feels that something isn’t fair, it creates resentment – which is a relationship killer, as anyone who’s ever dated someone to the point of not being able to stand them knows.

The total combination: “What’s Mine is Yours.”

This is probably the most “traditional” of the choices; combining everything both of you bring into the relationship into “one pot,” so to speak. Joint account city.

Historically speaking, this was the most popular (and sometimes only viable) option, because women couldn’t or didn’t work. The man’s salary had to support the entire family, so it was really the only way to go.

If you’re in a relationship wherein you don’t participate in the traditional workforce and earn an income, this is probably the only choice that makes sense (but even as I type that, I’m like, So how are you supporting yourself now if that’s the case? but anyway, I digress). Of course, plenty of people who DO have dual incomes set up their marital finances this way, too: Both incomes go into the same checking and savings accounts, and are used to pay the bills and fund the investment accounts.

The pros of this solution are that it’s about as simple as you can get: There’s no math involved. You merely dump everything into the same place, and it can create a real sense of teamwork: We’re working together to build this nest egg that we both benefit from.

The cons of this situation are a little complex: If one partner makes a lot more than the other, there can be resentment and control issues that affect how the spending happens (not always, of course; this is highly dependent upon individual personalities and the relationship itself), but if all your money is going into the same place, it might start to feel like every purchase decision has to consider the other person in the relationship: If I’m buying something that’s just for ME with OUR money, it makes sense that I should consult you first, right?

At the risk of sounding like a Holistic Psychologist meme, this arrangement probably requires the healthiest, most open communication in order to work, because expectations have to be crystal clear ahead of time.

If both partners in the relationship are raking it in and you’re both fairly frugal, it might not be an issue: $300,000 to split between two people who don’t spend very much probably won’t make waves. But if you’re collectively pulling in $80,000 and one partner is a spender and the other is a saver, you might find that the “one pot” solution is causing more headaches than the initial simplicity was worth.

The opposite end of the spectrum: “What’s Mine is Mine and What’s Yours is Yours.”

This is the opposite approach, and it involves both partners maintaining separate finances – this is probably akin to how things go when you’re dating before the relationship becomes legally official. Each partner is responsible for making and managing their own money, and things don’t get combined.

This option became more popular in the 21st century when people began getting married a lot later, and therefore supporting themselves for longer before partnering up and sharing the same HBO GO password. It’s not unusual for both people in a relationship to come into the union with six figures in assets (or six figures in debt) prior to coupling up.

It can make the idea of combining accounts scary, because the financial pictures may be pretty far along already. Sometimes it feels safer to just maintain separate financial lives within a relationship.

The pros of this scenario are obvious in that your money is fully yours, and your partner’s money is fully theirs. You can make completely independent decisions about how you save, spend, and invest. Most of the time, people who choose this path split common expenses down the middle. This scenario represents the way I’m currently “in relationship” to another person financially: We live together and share common expenses like rent, groceries, etc., but we maintain completely separate finances and split expenses 50/50.

The cons of this scenario are that it can make you feel as though you’re not truly a team – there can be psychological distance as a result of being completely separate in money, which can create some sense of separateness when it comes to how you’re spending. There’s something to be said for a common goal, financially.

It’s also possible that one person will substantially out-earn the other, which can create feelings of guilt if you’re splitting something 50/50 and the person who makes a fraction of what their partner makes is putting their entire paycheck toward rent. And guilt aside, the higher earner might want to do things that are more expensive (because they can afford it), and the partner who makes less might feel like they’re unable to save because they’re spending in a way that has to keep up with someone who makes twice as much as they do.

Broken record alert: The open communication comes into play here, too. Fortunately, most couples where this is the case adapt naturally. The high earner usually offers to pay or treat the other for the expensive stuff, because they (hopefully!) recognize that their champagne taste shouldn’t have to be subsidized by their partner’s beer budget.

The middle ground: “Yours, Mine, and Ours.”

Personally, I think this is the most attractive option, and there are two paths within this one: The Proportional Path and the Nominal Path (stick with me here – I’m literally naming this shit as I go).

Predictably, this path is a hybrid of the two extremes: Each person contributes a pre-determined amount to the “ours” bucket, but maintains separate individual accounts as well.

The “Proportional” path works really well for couples with a really extreme difference in income (due to the reasons we touched on above wherein the person who makes more might want to spend more than the person who makes less): In that scenario, the incomes will determine how much each person contributes to the joint account.

For example, if you determine that your joint expenses are:

• $2,000 rent

• $500 groceries

• $500 travel

• $500 dining out

• $250 pets

That’s $3,750 per month that you two deem your life together costs, separate from your own individual expenses that the other person may not be interested in paying for.

If one person makes $50,000 and the other makes $100,000, then your total income is $150,000, and one partner accounts for 33% of the total and the other accounts for 66% of the total. The person who makes more would contribute 66% of the joint money, and the person who makes less would contribute 33% of the joint money.

In this example, the person who makes more would pay 66% of $3,750 ($2,475) and the person who makes less would pay 33% ($1,238).

This levels the playing field a little bit so each person is only responsible for spending the same percentage of their income on joint expenses, rather than a 50/50 split (where each person, regardless of how much they’re making, would’ve contributed $1,875 in this example). It puts a little bit more of a burden on the higher earner, but guarantees that each person is able to save the same amount of their income proportionally.

The cons here are a little more nuanced; obviously, someone who wanted to take advantage of this situation could. The person who makes less is getting some of their life subsidized by the higher earner – but that’s the point of being a team, right? You carry the weight you’re able to carry. Ideally, you wouldn’t want to take advantage of your partner.

This scenario does, to some degree, solve for the situation where the person who makes more might want to spend more. The partner who earns less can still benefit from the nicer stuff, but is only on the hook to pay for a proportional percentage of it, which lessens the burden on the person who earns less while still enabling them to enjoy nice things.

How to choose what’s best for you

Of these options, what feels the most fair and feasible to both of you? What money conversations do you still need to have? A few things that might determine how you move forward:

• Attitudes toward money: A spender and a saver probably don’t want to do a full combination of finances, because the spender will stress out the saver and it’ll cause unnecessary, recurring friction.

• Assets and existing debt: If you both are coming into your relationship with comparable amounts of money or debt, it’s a little easier to combine everything or do a hybrid approach. If you’re not, it might create some tension, and a path that favors a more individual approach might be less stressful.

The great thing about relationships is that true love can transcend math. I’ve worked with couples in the past where one partner was a much higher earner and effectively paid the other person’s student loan debt for them so they could start saving more quickly, together. There was no resentment or control at play; it was merely “We’re a team, and I have the means to help get you to breakeven so we can start investing together.” In that case, it actually was more efficient for them (as a team) to work together. It would’ve taken the partner who earned less a LOT longer to pay down that debt.

That was a beautiful and healthy relationship, and we all interact with money differently. There’s a lot of emotion wrapped up in money. If both people feel like the solution is truly fair and makes sense, then it’ll work – regardless of which path you choose. But “fair” feels different to everyone, and money has a way of creating real issues in relationships. Between 29% and 41% of divorces happen because of a disagreement about money.

Hopefully one of these three options will serve as a starting point that you and your significant other can tweak to fit your needs and unique situation. The most important thing is that you sit down and talk about it – with an open mind and a beverage, preferably.