and I split

and I split most things 50/50. We're not married. No plans to get married. We bought a house together and we own it 50/50. We split the mortgage, home maintenance, utilities, groceries, 50/50. He is more of a restaurant person, so he usually pays out to eat. I would be like, I just want to go home and cook something. And he's like, I don't want to cook. So I'm like, okay, if we go to a restaurant, you pay. I pay for everything for our cats. And he pays for everything for our dog. We split vacation 50/50 as well. But if there's a situation where, like, I'm invited to a wedding for my friend, bringing him, I'm not going to make him split that because, like, not his trip. I just pay for the whole thing. We have our own savings, our own investments. We do not combine any of that. And we're probably not going to retire at the exact same time if we ever want something or want something for ourselves, we just buy it ourselves. Like I bought a steam mop cleaner for the floors and I didn't ask him, hey, is it okay if I buy this? You're going to have to give me $75 because it's not that big of a deal. I love that we have separate finances. We have never fought about money. I think it's so important to keep separate in a relationship. There's usually one person about finances. And for us, so if we combined our finances, I feel like he would just take a backseat and he wouldn't be clued into what is going on. And by keeping them separate, he's forced to pay attention to his own finances. There's no ignoring it. You have to pay your bills. I think it's so empowering because it is so easy to just hand things off to your partner. And doing it this way, literally cannot.