Unmarried Couples-How do you run your trip finances?

Greetings. My gf and I are getting ready to go to South and Central America for a year+. We've both been saving well and are in good enough financial shape, as well as being equal partners on this trip.

My question is this: Since so many trip expenses are shared, and we don't want the "my turn/your turn" or "I got the last check" or "I owe you/you owe me" hassles, how have you gone about equaling the bottom line while on a trip? We are considering using PayPal as a middleman, having one of us pay for all the housing, transportation and food, and then transfer a sum from one person's account to the other every so often to even up. How have you done it? What do you think of my idea? Any suggestions please.
Thanks in advance. H

Just make her pay for everything!
Actually, just go Dutch. Split all shared expenses down the middle. When my wife and I went to the UK and Mexico before we were married, we just split the costs. Piece of cake! Why make it so complicated with Paypal?

I'd agree with not making it complicated.

Personally I've just split the 'bill' so to speak. its not hard or complicated. Quite frankly after the first week or so it seems to become second nature to track expenses without even thinking about it.

Good call on splitting it down the middle. dont waste time with paypal. Whenever you pay for something the other should just pony up the dough either right then and there, or whenever they have cash next.

For us, I put most large purchases on my credit card whenever possible and she pays me back on the spot. Then I always have cash and dont have to frequent the ATM so much.

The one thing you need to make sure you avoid is one person feeling like they have put in more money than the other. That leads to resentment, which leads to suppressed feeling, which leads to getting drunk weeks down the line and getting shouty at the other. Then it all comes out and you learn to enjoy your new solo trip around south and central america.

Cheers,
Mike

When my wife and I went on an extended trip before we got married we just put all our money into a single account. That way you're automatically splitting everything down the middle. She didn't want to deal with the cash so we put it into my account but I got her an ATM card so she could access it if she wanted. If that doesn't work you could open up a joint account.

Just get a joint bank account and out equal amounts in it, then you don't have to worry about it at all when on the road. We found it helpful to have two cards for our travel account anyway, in case one gets lost/ stolen.

Interesting topic as I might be traveling with my twin brother on my next rtw. Though honestly we haven't worried about this much- somehow as siblings whenever we're together we keep a good "you're getting the room? ok I'll buy dinner and drinks until it evens out" intuitive sense that doesn't even require discussion. A twin thing maybe?

(No really, went around with my sister a few weeks last year as part of rtw #1 and it worked out really easy, in part because our Africa money was primarily a pool of USD so we used it until we ran out. Not really practical in many parts of the world though I realize.)

I concur with the "split down the middle" idea, as well as the joint bank account one (my gf and I just returned from a RTW trip where we split it all, though in our case I put a certain amount of money on her account... which could also work for you, dependent upon your degree of trust).

The important thing to remember was to keep good track of our expenses, so by the end of the trip we knew if any money was owed either way (we saved a lot, so I actually got some back ). In any case, I would forgo making multiple PayPal transfers - just start with a lump sum and keep track of what you spend.

Oh, and don't forget to have fun!

The joint trip account is probably the easiest method of splitting down the middle, but it's not how my wife and I handled our trip (before we were married).

I'm not sure why we didn't go for the joint account, but we didn't. So I had a tally sheet. Any time one of us made a cash withdrawal or paid for something on credit card (on our trip, credit card use was rare, and cash withdrawals were only 1-2 times per week, so this wasn't too onerous), I wrote it down and updated the tally. Whichever one of us had spent less at that time was responsible for the next withdrawal.

It was a little more work, but it worked for us. It also meant that if there was something that we didn't feel comfortable asking the other to pay for, we could subtract that item from the tally sheet. Pretty rare, but it happened from time to time. In the end the whole process was mostly moot since we started integrating our finances as soon as we got back (which had its own set of complications), but I did get a lot of interesting information about what we spent and where during the trip. The tally sheet made it easy for me to update my budget spreadsheets and see how we were doing.

If you do go the joint account route, set up two accounts - an interest bearing savings account and a daily use account. I'd use a different bank for the savings account to make sure that if your card is compromised that it's untouchable. ING or Ally are good for this.

One benefit to having separate accounts is that things aren't linked together. If a wallet gets stolen or cards are otherwise lost, you have a backup that's completely independent and won't be cut off while you wait for replacement cards from the bank.

On our upcoming trip (aswell as trips in the past) I just ask that my gf contributes what she can. We own a house together and I pay for most of it but we broke up the mortgage payment as a percentage of our income, its the only fair way to do it as I make almost 3x as much as she does. I cant ask her to pay 50% of the mortgage and bills.

As long as she is contributing along the trip I don't really care about how much just as long as she is contributing. That way I don't feel like I am paying the whole shot. Works well for us but we are not materialistic people and money is just a means to travel for us, we dont own fancy things or care to.

If you start splitting penny's it will lead to a lot headaches and arguments, what if she or you dont have the same amount when you leave home, what then? "Sorry dear but your outta money I guess we will stick you on the first flight home and I will meet up with you in a few months when I am done spending my money."

Sounds like a breakup waiting to happen. I am sure if you google "divorce rate" a large percentage is based on finances.. why bring that short fused bomb on a trip?

I started out travelling solo on my trip, but have since started a relationship with a fellow traveller I met on the road. We have been travelling together for a year now, obviously don't have joint bank accounts - we have been either taking it in turns at ATMs, or each withdrawing the same amount at the same time, then putting it all together, so splitting it equally. This seems to work well for us. For larger purchases on credit card, such as flights, we roughly keep track and take it in turns. Its going to get interesting soon as he has a steady supply of money coming in, but I am using my savings and my funds are depleting rapidly!

I strongly recommend https://www.billmonk.com - its a very easy way to enter shared expenses. My husband and I use it to record shared expenses when we go out with friends, I dont see why it wont work for two people.

You'll probably need to keep a running tally until you get to a computer, but after that billmonk does all the remembering. If you paid for 2 people and someone else paid for 3 people, the software lets you split the bill into 2/5ths and 3/5ths.

Happy bill splitting!

Me and my gf just get the same amount of cash out of an ATM as each other, and then when we spend it if one runs out before the other then we know who's not been paying!! But it does mean that we end up spending the same as each other.

I just returned from a 14 month around the world trip with my best friend and tried a couple ways to split everything equally. My turn-your turn worked ok for a while but got complicated when we changed countries (currencies), when we had large expenses, and finally when her sister met us and we had a third person who wanted/needed to split equally.

We found the easiest way was for each of us to take out the same amount (we used $100 usd as our standard amount and converted that to the currency of whatever country we were in) and add it to the "pot". We'd often take out a little bit more if we wanted our own "personal" money for clothes, gifts, etc., and had to keep that separate from the pot money. If your personal items will be shared, you don't even have to worry about this. One person can hold onto the pot money or you can each hold your share until it's all spent.

As for large expenses, we rarely used our credit cards, but we tried to "take turns" and always kept a balance book so we remained about equal on flights, etc. This was always kept separate from daily spending/pot money. We actually came home with her owning me a couple hundred $, but we had it all written down so no forgetting!

Good luck, and happy travels!

Oh also, we found splitting each bill equally so annoying, especially in cheap countries where the bills are small and you'll constantly be needing change, etc to pay your share. This way always ends with someone owing someone else and is too much to keep track of! The other nice thing about doing the pot is that you can take turns holding the money and being in charge of expenses so that one person gets to kinda "relax" on that issue and feel like they're really on vacation with someone paying for everything! Then you switch...

For our 7-month trip through Europe, my bf and I opened a joint account and each got a debit card for it which I highly recommend.

Before we left, we set up a weekly auto-transfer from each of our personal accounts (which held all the money we had saved up individually) to our shared joint account. That way, if our cards were lost or stolen, someone wouldn't be able to wipe out our entire budget. At any point, we had the ability to check our balance to make sure we weren't over-spending for that week. We rarely used our debit cards to make actual purchases but instead, used them to get cash out once a week for everyday expenses like meals, lodging, transportation, and sights.

We never had any issues with this arrangement and it was so nice not to have to worry about it. We're planning to do the same thing for our upcoming travels through South America... maybe we'll run into you guys!