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Your First Apartment Together
Settle four things before you sign — the lease names, the rent split, who owns what, and where each of you gets space. Then merge your stuff before you buy anything, because the gaps are never the ones you expected.
Four conversations before you sign
None of these are romantic and all of them are easier now than in month seven. They take an evening.
Whose name goes on the lease?
Both, if the landlord allows it and you both have the income for it. One name means one person carries the whole legal liability and the other has no right to be there — fine until it isn't. If only one of you can qualify, write down what happens to the deposit and the notice period if the other moves out.
How are you splitting rent?
Straight down the middle is simplest and works when incomes are close. Proportional to income is fairer when they aren't. Pick one, say it out loud, and don't renegotiate it in an argument about something else.
Who owns the furniture?
Keep a shared note of who bought what and what was joint. Not because you expect to split up — because two years of merged stuff is genuinely impossible to untangle from memory, and the note takes four minutes.
What does each of you actually need from the space?
One of you probably needs somewhere to work, or somewhere to be alone. Say it now, while the layout is still theoretical. A first apartment with no retreat is where small irritations grow.
Merging two sets of stuff
- Two of everything is not a starter set — Between you there are probably two colanders, two cheap frying pans and no cutting board. Lay it all out before you buy anything: the gaps are always different from what you assumed.
- Keep the better one, not the newer one — The heavy pan from a parent's kitchen beats the two-year-old nonstick every time. Sentiment is fine as a tiebreaker; it's a bad first filter.
- Agree one shared aesthetic decision, not twelve — Pick a single thing you both commit to — a colour that recurs, or 'no black furniture'. One shared rule does more for a coherent room than a joint mood board neither of you fully agrees with.
- Each person gets one veto and one non-negotiable — One item the other can't bring, one item they can't object to. It resolves the gaming chair and the inherited armchair in about ninety seconds.
Do this on the floor of one of your current places, before the move, with both of you there. It is the single highest-value hour in the whole process: it kills duplicate purchases, surfaces the real gaps, and settles the furniture argument while it is still about objects rather than about the two of you.
Who pays for what
| Cost | How to handle it |
|---|---|
| Rent | Split as agreed. Set it as an automatic transfer on payday, not a monthly request. |
| Utilities and internet | One name per bill, split evenly, and swap who holds which. Two accounts in one name is a credit-file imbalance for no reason. |
| Groceries | Shared card or one person buys and the other settles weekly. Itemising a food shop is where couples go to argue. |
| Furniture | Joint purchases from a joint pot if you have one; otherwise alternate who buys what and keep the note. |
| The deposit | Half each, recorded, and remembered — it comes back at the end and it is the single most commonly disputed sum when a couple moves out. |
Whatever you choose, automate it. Money that moves by standing order stops being a monthly conversation, and a monthly conversation about rent eventually becomes a monthly argument about something else.
Then the practical part
The logistics — notice periods, address changes, the move itself — are the same as any move, and the moving in together checklist walks the whole sequence. Budget the real total first with the first apartment budget, since two incomes tend to make people skip that step, and split the running costs with the cost-split calculator — it works the same for a couple as for roommates.