How Much Should Your Girlfriend Pay If You Live Together?

Some things to consider to determine what your girlfriend should pay if you live together.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a viewer who is Persian and so is his girlfriend of almost 2 years. They live in California where everything is expensive and he says it takes about $250,000 per year to live comfortably. She is old fashioned and thinks the man should pay for everything. He thinks it should be 50/50. She says she will break up with him if he doesn’t pay all the bills and asks my opinion. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

Hi, I’m Coach Corey Wayne and this is my Video Coaching Newsletter. And the topic of today’s Newsletter is going to be, “How Much Should Your Girlfriend Pay If You Live Together?”

So this particular email is from a guy. He’s Persian, his girlfriend is also Persian. Obviously they’re both from Iran. I think was born in the UK and then eventually moved to the United States. She was born in Iran and has since moved here. And so they’ve been together almost two years. They live in Commiefornia, California. And what he says is that it takes about a quarter million a year, $250,000 a year to live comfortably in Commiefornia, because everything’s expensive there.

And so this particular girl, she’s old fashioned and she thinks the man should pay for everything. So I don’t know that he’s living with her. Or maybe they’re talking about moving in, but she’s pretty adamant that, because they’re both 39 years old, she’s adamant that the guy should pay for everything. But I don’t know how much she makes. And so his attitude is like, it should be 50/50.

And she’s basically saying that he should pay for everything. And if he doesn’t agree to this, that she’s going to break things off. And so he’s going, “I don’t think this is fair or right. What do you think, Coach?” So it’s a good email to discuss this because typically in most cases the guy is going to make more than the girl. And so with that said, let’s go through his email and try to see what the exact situation is.

Viewer Email:

Hi Coach Corey,

Hope you’re doing well man. Give me your input on this whether it’s in messages or in a future video My Lady.

Which he’s obviously I don’t think English is his first language, so the sentence doesn’t really make any sense.

Which I’ve been in a relationship for 2 years in this coming October 2024 she believes that a man should take care of all the financial means she’s old-fashioned per what she says. We both live in California she’s a psychologist and I’m a broadcast engineer for the NFL, Super Bowl & NHL.

So I assume he makes pretty decent money. Also, it means he probably has to travel around a lot for different games and things. So he’s probably on the road, makes good money.

Even though I can easily take care of everything I don’t feel that is necessary or fair. As you know California is very expensive and you need to make a minimum of a quarter million dollars a year in order to even be able to buy a house let alone take care of your spouse. My question is this, is it wrong that I feel she should pull her own weight? Is it bad that I think everything should be 50/50? Of course, when we go to dinner, I take care of that.

Well, I mean, if you’re inviting her to go out with you, then, yeah, you should. If you invite your parents to dinner, you should pay for the dinner. That kind of thing.

And a few other means, such as shoes and clothes once in a while for her. I just feel that if we get married (not that I’m pushing for it). And I pay for everything and years pass by and then she decides to move on because she doesn’t love me anymore for whatever reason well that means I was a sucker all these years and I’m left with nothing and she benefited everything.

So from this, we can look at it from this perspective. Let’s just imagine he makes multiple six figures. Let’s say he makes 300 grand a year. And let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that his psychologist girlfriend also makes 300 grand a year. So if that’s the case, then I would say, yeah, they both should pay everything 50/50. Now, if he makes 300 grand a year and she makes 100 grand a year, well then he should probably be paying like 66% and she could pay 33%. And so if you’re thinking about moving in, you have to look at proportionality in your income in the means.

If you’ve got a guy making 300 grand a year and you’re dating a woman makes 50 grand a year, well, you can’t expect her to pay 50/50 because she’s just not going to be able to afford that. And on top of that, if she becomes a stay at home mom or something like that, then she’s going to have no income. And so then you’re going to be paying for everything. It’s just, because she’s not going to be having an income, she’s going to be a stay at home mom. And so it should be proportional based upon what she makes. It’s definitely unfair.

And I agree with what this guy is saying that imagine he makes 300 grand a year, she makes 300 grand a year, and yet she expects him to pay for everything, and then she’s just going to save all of her money and not give any of it to him. And then if they break up, he’s been paying all their bills the whole time they were together, and she leaves. In essence, she’s like on a scholarship. She has no expenses. And so like for me personally, typically the way I’ve always done it because my girlfriends always end up living with me is that I pay for all the bills and she could buy food, she could buy me clothes or whatever.

You know, it’s not really a big deal to me. It’s like because we’re just always together. And the nice thing about that is that we’re always together. We we live together. We spend a lot of time together. It’s not like she’s going to a 40 hour a week work job, slaving away, trying to make her half of the rent or things of that nature. It’s just, that’s just me. And typically has always been my situation. And even when I had girlfriends that made really good money, they typically had their own place, but they were always at my house for the most part. Or sometimes I’d be staying at their place, but most of the time they live with me.

And it’s nice dating a girl that has a decent income because she’ll buy you things. She’ll buy you shirts she’ll buy you shoes, she’ll buy you a nice comforter set and bed set for your your bedroom. She might buy some towels for the bathroom or the kitchen or if you’re going to have dinner, she’ll stop by the grocery store, buy a bunch of food and ingredients and stuff and just make food for you. She’s not going to be asking you for money, and vice versa. It’s nice when both people co-create the relationship together.

It’s definitely not fair if you both are making equal income, to think that the man should just pay for everything and the woman gets to pocket and save her money, I wouldn’t agree to that at all. And if that’s your girlfriend’s attitude, just like, “well, let’s not live together, we can continue to date and I invite you out to go on dates or I take you places, obviously I’ll pay. But if your attitude is that you make comparable income to me and you expect me to pay for everything, and you’re going to save all your money and keep it in your personal bank account, it’s like there’s no reason to live together.”

So these are things that especially if you’re going to move in, you got to have these discussions and they can be uncomfortable and they can be unpleasant. And you really have to kind of look at it from a perspective of, well, if you’re going into business with somebody, what is the first thing you’re going to do? Well, you got to come up with a partnership agreement, a legal partnership agreement that’s legal in your state, your city, whatever country you happen to live in. I live in Florida, so the laws in Florida are going to be different than the laws in California.

And so you have to have legal counsel in your area that can advise you of what the local state federal laws tend to be. But in a normal partnership agreement, say there’s three business partners like, you know, I had two business partners when I was in real estate. And the way we split things up is that me personally, I took care of, in essence, running the business, paying the bills, keeping all of the licensure updated, continuing education, and all that stuff, made sure the taxes were done, the bills were paid, the payroll was is done. The lawn was cut. The landscaping was done. The landscaping fertilizer was done. All that stuff.

The parking lot was clean. The office was clean, you know. So, I mean, I was like the office manager in addition to being an acquisition agent, in addition to running the advertising for my side of the business. My partner James was like the sales guy, but he sucked at running businesses. He didn’t want anything to do with that, which made it nice because I like doing those things. We all had access to the bank accounts so we could always look. We could see what money was being spent and who spending what. And then my other partner, Paul, he kind of ran the mortgage, wholesale mortgage side of things, made sure the deals got funded that he and my partner James did together.

He was an acquisition agent for foreclosure properties. I was an acquisition agent for foreclosure properties. And so it was all a performance based type of partnership. So if I found a property, I got an acquisition fee. If Paul found it, he got the acquisition fee for it. James would sell both the properties that I found and the ones that Paul found. And so we adjusted our commission split. James earned less on each deal, but he had two people feeding him deals, so it kind of worked out. So it was performance based sales business, but it was kind of made equal just because I was doing a lot of things that James didn’t have to do, and that allowed him just to strictly focus on sales and maintaining the relationships with our dealer customers that bought the foreclosure investment properties from us.

And so we each brought a skill set to the table, and we each got to work in the things that we really loved. We really enjoyed that were our core competencies. But it was a performance based business and so therefore, if you didn’t work, you didn’t get paid in essence. And so we agreed to all these things up front and how we were going to split things up. We also agreed and how much money we were going to contribute to the company. Like every time we had a closing, there was a certain fee that we paid to the company to pay for overhead, to pay for rent, to pay for the copy machine, the faxes, the internet, computers, tech support, MLS fees, services, occupational licenses, all those kinds of things that you got to pay. And then the rest was split up based on a commission split.

And if we would have never been able to agree to those things, we would have never gone into business together. And so if you’re going to live together, you got to sit down and you got to agree who’s going to pay for what and how things are going to be split up. And if you can’t come to a meeting of the minds, a win win deal for both of you, then you shouldn’t live together. And like I was saying earlier, it’s definitely not fair if you’re both making the same amount of money that the guy pays everything and the girl gets to save all her cash. But like I said, more than likely, I assume he probably makes more than she does. And so you just have to adjust the percentages.

I mean, it’s pretty simple. You take all of the income, you add it together, and then you divide it by what percentage or what she put in, and that gives you a percentage. So if she makes 30% of the total income for the two of you, well, if she pays 30% of the bills, if it’s 20%, then she pays 20% of the bills. And you agree to those things up front. Then you also have to figure out how much you know, because you guys aren’t getting married, but you both want to be able to save money and put money into, and contribute to your retirement accounts and things of that nature. And obviously, if you involve the state and you get married, then everything gets co-mingled. And I’m not a fan of that just because the laws are just simply for the most part, most of the states are just unfair.

They’re not fair to the guy. And so it’s best just to have a civil type marriage and have kind of like a partnership agreement for any assets or things that you buy together, whether it’s cars or houses or businesses or investment property or rentals or whatever it happens to be. That’s the best way to split things up. And if your girl is just unreasonable and she just still wants you to pay everything and doesn’t want to contribute nothing, then I certainly would not move in with her because that’s not fair. So back to our emailer here.

This always runs in the back of my head which is the reason why I feel I shouldn’t I have to carry on her weight I mean she’s not my child for Christ’s sake. To give you a little background of her she’s Persian and I’m Persian as well but I was raised in America since I was one and I was born in London but she was born in Tehran, Iran and I know for a fact culturally they feel in what defines a man is when his pocket is deep.

Well, because for the most part, in that part of the world, the women kind of stay at home and the men are the ones that are the breadwinners. So, yeah, the man’s going to pay for everything. But this is the United States, and you live in California, where everybody is equitable, and it’s equal. That’s the way Communism is. And so everybody’s got to pay their fair share.

I completely disagree with this and I think it’s BS quite frankly. She absolutely loves me and she makes me happy but again I don’t think it’s necessary for me to run the whole entire show it’s not fair. And I think it’s ridiculous that a man is defined by how deep his pocket is that’s bullshit.

Well, at the end of the day, this is a negotiation. All of life is a negotiation. And even in this case. If you’re going to collectively move in, then you got to figure out who’s going to pay what, what the percentages should be. And so simple math is you take your income, you take her income, you add it together, that gives you a figure, and then you divide that figure into how much she makes. That’ll give you a percentage. And then if the percentage of the income that she makes is 30%.

Well, whatever the bill is, if you pay $3,000 in rent, she pays 30% of that. That’s $900 bucks for the rent. And then the same thing for the electric utilities, housekeeping, cable bill, internet bill. You join a country club, like whatever it happens to be, she’s going to pay whatever her percentage is, and that’s the right way to do it. And that’s the fair way to do it. And if she’s not willing to be fair, then, you know, it’s absurd, especially if she makes comparable to what you make that she gets to keep all her money and you got to pay for everything. I just wouldn’t move in with her in that case. She could stay over and spend the night. That’s it.

Let me know what you think. Because she is thinking of breaking apart if I don’t adhere to her once and first of all if she loves me why the hell would she want to break up?

Well, we’ll get later on in the email. And once you kind of see a little info about the dad, then you’ll kind of make some sense why she’s kind of got the attitude. Because dad got cheated on by mom and she was mostly raised by her father. Her father tends to be a little soft. So the daughter, his girlfriend learned that, well, if you just badger a guy enough and nag him enough and try to intimidate him enough, he’ll probably back down and go along with what you want. Because that’s what she’s been able to do her whole life with her father. So that’s another issue completely.

This clearly means that she’s after the money even though she says she’s not a materialistic. Yeah right. I think you see the entire picture let me know what you think Coach thank you.

This is like winning through intimidation. It’s like in other words, she’s threatening to impose a pussy embargo on you. In other words, she’s going to break it off. It’s like, “okay.” Like I said, it’s unreasonable. She needs to pay whatever kind of percentage that she can afford to pay based upon her income. It’s unreasonable to think she’s going to move in.

But again, if she makes a small amount of money or a lot less than you do, which has usually been the case in my situation, it’s, you know, she buys groceries, she buys me things, she buys things for the house or whatever. It’s like it was never really an issue. I didn’t really care about that because I usually made significantly more than the women I’ve dated, even the women that make good money. And the ones that made really good money they had their own houses anyways.

FYI I’ve read your book five times so far and I have 10 times left. Also a few more backgrounds about her. She’s been married once and divorced. Through my means of knowing people I pulled her divorce records and found the ex-husband’s phone number and called him and spoke to him and he said she’s a good woman. When I asked him why did you divorce her? He replied saying they weren’t compatible. Her father is a wimpy nerdy but nice guy her mother cheated on her father while she was I think 8 years old and the father raised her this entire time and right now she’s 39 years old and I’m 39 as well.

She does see her mother quite often now since she moved to the U.S. ironically even though the mother wasn’t in her life throughout her teenage years and adult years she respects her mother more than her father and I know what you’re thinking coach dad did a bad job I don’t deny that actually I agree with you. I think she has a high body count too because she’s pretty loose down there in both holes. I know TMI.

So she got the balloon not. She got both the love tunnels blown out. That’s nice. Well, you also have to know that as women get older, they tend to get a little looser, especially if they have had kids.

We’ll leave this part for another time but what do you think about this whole financial category I brought up?

Thanks Coach sorry for blabbing on.

Best Regards,

Bob

Well, like I said, I think it should be comparable based upon, take her income, your income, add the number together, and then you could take the total number and then divide that into her income or yours for that matter. And you’ll get a percentage. You’ll get a percentage of what she brings in for the household, and what you bring in for the household. And therefore, if it’s 70/30, say you earn 70% of the total income of the household and she earns 30%, well, you pay 70% of the bills. She pays 30% of the bills.

That’s just a simple, fair way to do it. And like I said, unless she makes just a real small amount of money, then it’s not really gonna matter. But she’s a psychologist, so I would assume she probably makes at least a six figure income or more. And so that should be fair. And if she doesn’t like that, then just say, “well, you’re not gonna live with me. You can stay over, but I don’t want to live together.”

And she’s like, “well, I’m gonna break up.” I was like, “okay, well, I’m sorry you feel that way, but, you know, we gotta have a meeting of the minds and for you to expect me to eat all the expenses and you save all your money, and then I’m going to be broke as a joke so you can become a millionaire while I pay all the bills? It’s like, I don’t think so.

That’s not a partnership. That’s you taking from me.” You’re not going to say this to her, but it’s like, you know, it’s almost like you have a live in hooker. You pay her to. You pay for all of her bills. In essence, she gets to keep all of her money. It’s like, that’s not right. So you guys got some discussing to do, and fair’s fair. And if she’s not willing to be fair, then I definitely would move on. And you can give her the gift of missing you permanently if she’s threatening you. I mean, you’re 39 and you’re reading my Book. It’s, quite frankly, you should be dating a woman ten, 15 years younger than you anyways, so you’re doing her a favor by dating her at 39.

Plus, if you know both the love tunnels are blown out from excessive use, and it’s like, hey, man, whatever floats your boat, I don’t judge. That’s on you. But obviously, looking at how she was raised, that the fact that dad is soft and a doormat, she’s basically learned that women are able to walk all over men. It’s clear that her mother walked all over her dad didn’t respect him and went and fucked another guy behind his back and cheated on him. So that would probably mean that your girlfriend might not be a very loyal person as well. It’s like you don’t really know what you don’t know. But her ex-husband did say she was a good woman, but they just weren’t compatible.

And so maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe your girlfriend is just too stubborn. She’s too in her masculine because her dad taught her that all men are soft. And so she believes that even though that’s not going to be true. And if you were to accept something that’s an unfair deal, you’re going to resent the hell out of it. And as time goes by, it’s going to come out and you’re going to get pissy and you’re going to get irritated. And on top of that, she’s going to probably rub it in your face like, “well, you agreed. You agreed to this before I moved in. You agreed that you were going to pay all the bills.”

So a deal has to be a win win for everybody, especially when it comes to an intimate relationship and especially when you’re living together. It has to be win, win or no deal. And if you don’t like the financial terms of the deal, then there’s no reason to live together. It doesn’t benefit you. And if her attitude is, “well, I’ll just go date and fuck somebody else.” It’s like, “okay, well, I guess I’ll have to date somebody ten, 15 years younger and with a better attitude, and whose father did a better job.” You probably shouldn’t say that to her, but for us guys talking here, it’s, you know, that should be your mindset.

You’re doing her a favor, Bro. You’re getting to the point where you’re in the peak earning years and you got the most leverage. And it’s like you’re really doing her a favor. Because if it was me, I would definitely be dating girls that are 10 or 15 years younger. Because I don’t I haven’t dated anybody my own age I don’t think ever. I can’t even think of anybody. That every girl I’ve ever dated has always been younger than me, especially as I gotten older. They all tend to stay in the same age range. So you got all the leverage.

So don’t be agreeing to a bad, shitty financial deal because you’re going to resent it, and then you’re going to end up taking it out on her in different ways. And that’s just going to cause problems in your relationship down the road. So only agree to it if it’s win win. Win win or no deal. Pretty simple. So if you guys haven’t already signed up for our paying Members Only Content. In the video description of this video, there are links to join on YouTube, to join on Spotify or on our Website, UnderstandingRelationships.Com and on the website, you get a seven day free trial.

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