<prompt> Human: EDIT 3: This thread has grown far beyond what I anticipated. To those that offered advice on the subject matter, thank you. To those that offered relationship advice, thanks but no thanks, I can head over to rrelationships, and some of yall need to stop with the negative outlook on life and relationships. It aint all that bad!Ill preface this by saying that Ive read some articles on the matter at hand, but I was hoping to get some opinions from rpersonalfinance on the matter.I have been with my SO for about 18 months now. Shes an all around great girl, sharp two bachelors and a great job as an ICU RN. She has an income thats about 2x the mean for the area, and im about 1.5X. I myself do alright as well. If we were to get married today, we would have a combined income of about 130K, plenty of income to pay off student loans, buy a house and live comfortably. But were not getting married today, instead, she is leaving the workforce for two years to attend an accelerated program in anesthesiology at a schoolhospital about an hour away. Its a stressful program that requires 60-70 hours a week of classroom and study time. We came to the conclusion that it would be best to live together. We decided on a cityneighborhood about 10 minutes from the hospital and 55 minutes from my office. Im OK with commuting for two years it currently only takes me 5 minutes to get to work!, we plan to move back to the area when she is done with her program as her field is in high demand and the company I work for is growing rapidly.We started preparing for this over the past few months. We came to the conclusion that buying out her auto lease was a good decision as it would be damn near impossible for her to get financing next year when her lease came due. We started putting aside some money, individually, for moving expenses. But we havent figured out how were going to divide the costs.What kind of options do the fine people at rpersonalfinance propose when it comes to a couple moving in together. She will have no income other than student loan money the program automatically budgets livingtravel expenses into the tuition as they do not allow students to work during the program, and we can manage anything else just fine on my 60Kyear. Do we get a joint checking account for common expensesbills? Has anyone had success with doing a 6040 or 7030 split on expenses? Our rent at our new place will be 850 and I have no problem covering up to 600 of it as that is what I currently pay thanks mid-west!. What about saving, new purchases?Im honestly pretty lost on how to join finances with someone, something Im not proud to admit at 32 years old. Maybe some of you with experience in this matter can provide some advice. edit: wordsedit 2: Just to be clear, Im hoping this doesnt turn into an rrelationship post. I was really hoping that I could just get some good ideas of how to make this happen. Were moving in together, thats happening. My commute is increasing, I signed up for this so I know its not ideal. At this point, Im hoping for different ideas on how to split costs when she will have a fixed income loans and I will have a salary.  <response>: My wife and I kept our finances completely separate when we were living together un-married. Looking back, we both agree that it was a wise move. Just avoids a lot of fights. I wrote her or she wrote me a rent check every month on the 1st when it was due, same for bills. We did buy a house together while we were engaged, not married, so that goes against some of the advice in this thread but oh well. Turned out fine.Although I would be very leery of funding most of her living expenses without being married or engaged first. That can really go south in a bad way. 