Ask HN: How do you and your spouse handle big income differences?
All shared expenses are divided based on salary % so expenses are more based on work time than salary<p>IE,
Expense share = My salary &#x2F; ( her salary + my salary)<p>To make this doable, we have a shared account, from which all shared expenses are paid (mortgage, food, holidays, anything that can be construed as shared)<p>So if one person earns 8000 euros a month and the other 2000, the split is 80&#x2F;20.
If we need 100 euros in the account, one pays 80, the other 20<p>That way, when we go for a nice dinner, it&#x27;s the same value for both of us. It costs us both 1%, or 1h of work etc.<p>Savings are private but property is in her name, to offset for gender inequality in general life security.<p>Context:
We&#x27;re not married, are reasonably young (40&#x2F;35), have been together a while (8 years, have good conflict resolution skills and plan to have a kid next year.
I get paid dramatically more than her but honestly she works harder than me. I work in tech she works in literature.<p>We plan to move to phase two soonish, of paying salaries into the join account and getting spending money in our checking accounts. 
Having private accounts is useful for making sense of finances, just in terms of I can double check my own spending list without having to run it by her.<p>I&#x27;m into the single pot idea, but need to figure out how to do proper checks and balances incase we separate at some point. There need to be guards in place working against systemic gender equality, but I also don&#x27;t want to screw myself over. 
Having a written agreement about what savings belong to whom is more important when we have joint savings. Things bias towards being in the guys name, so the danger of a simple shared pot verbal agreement is that there is large wiggle room for me to claim everything in a breakup. Hence putting property in her name.