I have been in a long-distance relationship for more than a year, and my girlfriend (Koo) will be moving from Long Beach to San Francisco to live with me in January/February 2011. We're excited about planning a life together! We are planning out many practicalities of budgeting once we share a home: how we will divide costs based on our unequal incomes, how we will save for our joint projects (vacations and home improvements), how we will pay for grad school, how we will secure our futures in retirement.
Right now we're planning a budget using a spreadsheet template provided by Galia Gichon of DownToEarthFinance.com, as featured on DailyWorth.com. The focus is on Q4 2010 (pre-moving saving, holiday gifts, paying off my student loan, and starting my 401k contribution) and Q1 2011 (moving in together!, her finding a new job, starting to save for grad school, budgeting daily and monthly expenses for 2 instead of 1). We're going to be completely transparent about how much money we earn and where it all goes.
We DO exist, we responsible young people. We want to do it right (without going into crazy credit card debt!). Koo and I want to do it together -- handle our income, savings, and debt -- and we might as well share the story.
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