Couples Budget Merger

Take-home pay, after tax and payroll deductions. The shared expenses you enter are paid out of net income, so mixing gross income with net expenses inflates both Person 1 Remaining and Person 2 Remaining into money that does not exist. Gross figures do land in roughly the right place under the proportional method, since that method only cares about the ratio between the two incomes — but the remaining-money outputs, which are the point of the exercise, only mean anything on a net basis.

A 50/50 split divides every shared expense exactly in half regardless of how much each partner earns, while a proportional split scales each person's share to match their percentage of total household income. If one partner earns twice as much as the other, a proportional split has them covering roughly twice the dollar amount of shared bills rather than an equal half.

Personal spending stays entirely separate from the shared expense pool — it's subtracted only from that person's own income, never split between partners. This keeps discretionary spending like hobbies or personal shopping under each person's own control rather than treating it as a joint household cost.

Many couples with a significant income gap find the proportional method feels more equitable, since it ties each partner's dollar contribution to their earning power rather than dividing costs identically. That said, fairness is subjective, and some couples prefer a straight 50/50 split or a custom percentage that reflects other contributions like unpaid household labor.

Yes — if a person's income doesn't cover their assigned share of shared expenses plus their own personal spending, their remaining figure will be negative, signaling that either the split method, the shared expense total, or that person's personal spending needs to be adjusted for the budget to be sustainable.