I'm 37 and my husband is 32. As of 2 years ago we both made around the same amount (me, $60k, him $40k). We contributed 60:40 to all bills and household expenses, while not really keeping very close track of small things (i.e. if one of us ran to Target for a household thing or bought something for the other person it wouldn't necessarily be recorded. Our system has been the most simple and effective way we could come up with.
However 2 years ago, I had a major career breakthrough and I started making ~$120k/year. I also have the resume to get a job elsewhere at the same pay level if needed. My partner's job doesn't provide benefits and his plan is to possibly start freelancing at some point although the timeline isn't clear.
Situation 1: Partner doesn't have, and may not eventually have, any kind of retirement savings available through work. Currently I'm maxing out my 401k, which I have every year since I got a job, and we also both do $5500 into a Roth IRA each year. My partner has also bought some stocks (~20k worth) and I have an annuity (~20k) but it's low yield at 4%. Part of the plan thanks to some other redditors' advice is to work on our investments; however, this complicates our finances. Before it was x dollars in x out; now we're going to be including profits and interest and loss from investments. How should we split up the profits/losses and compensate us both equitably? I.e. one person could invest 5k into a stock that tanks, so how can we factor that into the ratio? We want to keep earnings and losses at the same rate as what we each put in.
Situation 2: Our housing expenses are really low for this area because we basically don't think it's worth it to buy a house currently. 1 bed condos start at $400k and 2 beds start at $500k. Our rent is $2000/month and our expenses are really minimal otherwise. We are saving for a downpayment for when either we have enough to make the mortgage costs justifiable (i.e. we have $200k saved) or the housing bubble deflates. We are also considering potentially moving to the suburbs which are cheaper. We had saved a lot for a downpayment prior to this job situation - he saved ~1/3 of the downpayment and I did ~2/3. Again, looking for advice on if we do decide to buy and then sell in several years, how the profits would be adjusted at this point to factor in the different inputs. Partner would now be contributing 1/3 of a downpayment but potentially 25% or less of the mortgage.
Submitted December 26, 2017 at 02:36PM by TheChoiceIsMine123 http://ift.tt/2zAfhO0
