How to share a budget with a partner or family
Sharing a budget works best when everyone agrees on a few things before the first entry goes in: what money is shared, who logs what, and what happens when someone goes over.
Decide what's shared
There's no single right way for a household to split money, but there are two common shapes:
- Everything together. All income goes into one pot and all spending comes out of it. It's simple, and it suits couples who already think of their money as joint.
- A shared pot plus personal money. Each person puts an agreed amount into a household budget for rent, bills and groceries, and keeps the rest. This suits people who want joint costs covered without explaining every coffee.
The second shape is easier to start with, because it only asks you to agree on the household costs. You can always widen it later.
Write down the answer, even if it's two lines: "Groceries, eating out together and the kids' things come from the shared budget. Personal spending doesn't." Then, when you're not sure which pot something belongs in, you have something to check instead of a disagreement.
Agree on the daily number
A shared budget gives you one shared daily allowance. Work it out together, from the income that goes into the shared pot and the bills that come out of it; How to work out your daily budget has the arithmetic. Then talk about whether it's realistic for the whole household. A number one person thinks is generous and the other thinks is tight will cause friction every day.
Agree on logging
A shared balance is only as good as the entries in it. Two habits make the biggest difference:
- Log your own purchases, as they happen. If one person logs everything from receipts at the end of the week, the shared number is wrong for six days out of seven.
- Use the same categories for the same things. If one of you files the weekly shop under Groceries and the other under Food, the category breakdown stops meaning much.
Agree on bills one person pays
In many households one person's card or account pays the rent or the electricity, even when the cost is shared. That's fine, as long as the shared budget records it. Add shared bills to the shared budget as recurring entries once, whoever actually pays them, so the daily number already accounts for them. Then the person paying isn't quietly subsidizing everyone else's daily spending, and nobody has to remember who covered what at the end of the month.
The same goes for income. If each person puts a fixed amount into the shared pot every month, record each contribution as recurring income in the shared budget, and leave the rest of each person's pay out of it.
Agree on bad days
With one shared balance, one person's expensive day lowers everyone's tomorrow. That's the point of sharing, but it helps to decide in advance how you'll handle it. One simple approach: whoever went over says so, and the household makes it up over the next week by spending a little less, the way What to do on a day you overspend describes. Nobody has to explain a $6 lunch, and nobody is surprised by a $200 one.
Check in once a month
Ten minutes at the end of the month is enough: how did the balance end, were there days that went over and why, and does the daily number still fit? This is also when to adjust the plan, rather than in the middle of a tense week.
Doing it in Daily Allowance
Budget sharing is a Premium feature for the budget's owner. Everyone else joins for free: while they're in the shared budget, they get the owner's Premium features too.
- Invite by email. In Settings > Budget & Sharing, choose Invite via Email and enter the address they use to sign in to Daily Allowance. The app opens an email to them with the invitation. Once they open the app, they switch to your budget from the same Settings screen.
- Or by QR code. Show your Share Budget QR. They scan it from Join Shared Budget on their phone, or type in the Budget ID, and you approve the request from your pending requests.
- Up to five people. You can share a budget with up to five people besides yourself.
Everyone in the budget sees and edits the same entries, the same Daily Balance and the same Kitty Bank, each on their own phone. Anyone who joins keeps their own personal budget too, and Switch Budget moves between the two, so personal spending can stay personal.
As the owner, you can see who has access and remove someone; anyone you remove goes back to their own personal budget. Someone who wants to leave can do it themselves with Leave This Budget.
If you save as a household, the shared Kitty Bank works for that too. How to save for a goal a little each day explains how to set it up.