While dating but living together, my now-husband and I kept things separate but split rent evenly and traded paying for groceries. We stuck all our grocery/household receipts on the fridge to figure out who spent what each month, and tried to keep it even. We did a very similar version to the hybrid approach when we were married and *renting,* but once we bought a house we couldn’t afford the allowances anymore. While we have talked about eventually getting back to a place where allowances are a thing, I think the year of operating with the hybrid system gave us some level of comfort into each other’s spending habits and we both learned from the other (I to be a little less uptight, and him to be a more prudent saver). Now, not having the allowances isn’t that big a deal — we are 100% joint, and it’s working because we talk about the personal expenses in the context of our overall financial situation.

Of course, buying a house generally made the rounds of golf and new shoes less practical overall, so maybe the best advice is to so inextricably tie your financial future to someone by taking on massive debt so that neither of you has the freedom to spend money on anything but food, utilities, and repairmen. KIDDING.