FAMILY
How should a couple split expenses and money after marriage?
There is no single correct structure. There is a correct process, and most couples skip it because the conversation feels unromantic.
THE SHORT ANSWER
Proportional splitting, where each person contributes the same share of their income rather than the same rupee amount, works for most couples with unequal earnings. Whatever structure you choose, both people keep individual accounts, both retain independent investments, and both know what the household actually owns and owes.
The three usual structures
Everything joint. Simple, and it works where incomes and spending habits are similar. It fails quietly where one person earns much less, because contribution starts getting counted.
Everything separate, with bills divided. Preserves autonomy. It creates friction over every shared expense and tends to leave the lower earner with less disposable income after an equal split.
Proportional, with a shared pool. Each person contributes the same percentage of income to a joint account covering shared costs, and keeps the rest. If one earns ₹1,00,000 and the other ₹50,000, and shared costs are ₹60,000, they contribute ₹40,000 and ₹20,000. Both give the same share of what they have, and both retain their own money.
What must stay individual regardless
An account in your own name that you operate. Investments in your own name. A credit card in your own name, so the credit history is yours. Your own health cover if the family policy is through a spouse's employer. And an emergency fund you can reach without a conversation.
None of this is about anticipating a marriage failing. It is that a woman with no independent financial identity has no options in any situation, including illness, job loss, or a partner's business going wrong.
The unpaid work problem
Where one partner steps back from paid work to run a household or raise children, the household benefits and only one person's retirement savings keep growing. The provident fund, the pension contribution and the compounding all attach to the person still earning.
The fix is a deliberate one. The earning partner contributes to the other's investments in the other's name, in an amount reflecting the work being done. It needs to be explicit, because it never happens by default.
The annual conversation
Once a year, sit down with every account, loan, policy and investment listed on one page. What we own, what we owe, what is insured, who the nominees are. An hour.
The reason is simple. In a great many Indian households, one person knows all of this and the other knows none of it. That arrangement works perfectly until the person who knows is the person who is unavailable.
ONE MOVE THIS WEEK
Ask your partner one question this week: what would I need to know if you were not here tomorrow? The answer tells you where the gaps are.
