How to split household expenses based on income.
Updated
Add up everyone’s monthly take-home pay. Each person’s share is their pay divided by that total. Apply those shares to the costs you all share, like rent, utilities, groceries and internet, and leave personal spending out.
So if you take home $6,000 and your partner takes home $4,000, you cover 60% of the shared costs and they cover 40%. On $3,000 of shared bills that is $1,800 and $1,200, instead of $1,500 each.
We Both gives the house one shared ledger for bills, groceries and everything else, so once the shares are agreed, everyone sees what has been spent and what is left.
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Work out your split in ten seconds
Our free calculator does the math for two incomes and one shared cost, and shows the difference from a plain 50/50. No signup, and nothing you type is saved.
Open the split-by-income calculator →Step by step
- Use take-home pay, after tax, not salary. Taxes take a different bite out of each paycheck.
- Add the incomes together to get the household total.
- Divide each income by the total. Those percentages are the shares.
- List the costs you would have living together no matter who spends more elsewhere: rent or mortgage, utilities, internet, groceries, insurance, shared streaming.
- Multiply the shared total by each share. That is what each person puts in each month.
- Check the numbers again when anyone’s pay changes, not just once a year.
Split by income or 50/50?
A 50/50 split is simple and works when incomes are close. When they are not, the person earning less spends a much bigger part of their pay on the same rent, and has less left for everything else. Splitting by income means everyone gives up a similar share of what they make.
| 50/50 | By income | |
|---|---|---|
| Works best when | Incomes are within about 10% of each other | Incomes differ a lot |
| What each person pays | The same dollar amount | The same share of their pay |
| Upkeep | None | Recheck when pay changes |
| Feels fair to | The higher earner | Usually both |
What counts as a shared cost
Anything the household uses together. Leave out anything personal: one person’s car payment, debt from before you lived together, subscriptions only one of you uses. Agree on the list once, out loud, and it saves a lot of arguments later.
Or skip the math: one pot
Many households stop splitting altogether. Everyone pays their share into one shared account (or just pays bills from it), and the house tracks spending together instead of tracking who owes whom. That is how We Both works: one ledger for the whole house, with bills, budgets and what is left this month on every phone.
Questions people ask
Should you use gross or net income?
Net, the take-home pay that actually reaches your account. Gross pay ignores taxes and retirement contributions, which can differ a lot between two people.
Does splitting by income work for roommates?
It can, but roommates usually split evenly or by room size, because they do not share finances. Income splits are most common for couples and families.
Does We Both split expenses between people?
No. We Both keeps one shared ledger for the house rather than tracking who owes whom. Use the free calculator to agree on the shares, then log shared spending in one place.
Get the whole house on it.
Download it free, then invite everyone you live with. They see the same list, the same calendar and the same money.
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