{"id":50117,"date":"2025-07-31T13:28:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T13:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/50117\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T13:28:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T13:28:08","slug":"how-much-rent-should-i-charge-my-boyfriend-i-have-no-plans-of-putting-him-on-the-deed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/50117\/","title":{"rendered":"How much rent should I charge my boyfriend? I have no plans of putting him on the deed."},"content":{"rendered":"

Pay Dirt is Slate\u2019s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Kristin and Ilyce here<\/a>. (It\u2019s anonymous!)<\/p>\n

Dear Pay Dirt,<\/p>\n

My boyfriend will be moving in with me in two months into my home which I own. He plans to pay $1,000\/month in rent to me, which is slightly more than what he currently pays, until he pays off his credit card. Once that is cleared, he plans to pay more, but how do we determine a fair amount for rent? I have no plans to add him to the deed of my home.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also wondering, if we were to break up in the future, is there a fair amount of money he should receive when moving out, seeing as he will be paying rent to me without \u201cgetting anything in return\u201d? Or should we be looking at this another way?<\/p>\n

\u2014Boyfriend Buyout?<\/p>\n

Dear Boyfriend Buyout,<\/p>\n

You\u2019re smart to plan ahead for a big move like this. Money issues can seriously undermine even the strongest relationship, so it\u2019s wise to get this sorted out now.<\/p>\n

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Everyone does things a little differently, so what you decide is \u201cfair\u201d really depends on what you\u2019re both comfortable with. There are a few ways to approach it. He could pay less in rent, but pick up certain household expenses like groceries and utilities, for instance. Or you could add up the cost of the mortgage, utilities, property taxes and maintenance and split the cost proportionally based on income. Here\u2019s a calculator<\/a> that can help with that.<\/p>\n

On the breakup question, I do think there could be another way to look at it. He\u2019s not \u201cgetting nothing in return\u201d for his rent. He\u2019s getting a place to live, just like any tenant would. You\u2019re taking on all the financial risk of homeownership, building equity, and responsible for maintenance and repairs. That\u2019s why you get the long-term benefit of ownership.<\/p>\n

The most important thing is to have this conversation now and maybe even write down what you agree on. It doesn\u2019t have to be a formal lease, but having your expectations clear about rent amounts, household responsibilities, and what happens if you break up will protect both of you. Mixing money and relationships is tricky, but being upfront about it from the start will work out better than figuring it out as you go.<\/p>\n

\u2014Kristin<\/p>\n

More Advice From Slate<\/p>\n

Our son suffered from a brain injury after a car accident. He is independent but hard to employ, and my husband and I have long resolved ourselves to helping him financially. He met and married \u201cDeb\u201d three years ago. Deb had two girls from a previous relationship. We wanted to welcome her and her girls fully into the family, but Deb had a marked preference for her own family over ours. Despite many invitations, they only visited us a handful of times and never offered for us to visit them. My husband and I were dutiful grandparents\u2014we mailed gifts and cards on all the right occasions and asked about the girls on the phone, but we were never grandma or grandpa. Two years ago, Deb wanted to put her girls in a private school after they went through a series of serious bullying incidents and the public school did nothing. Their family couldn\u2019t afford it, so we stepped up and paid the tuition, along with all the other assorted costs. It wasn\u2019t cheap.<\/p>\n

The latest sex, parenting, and money advice from our columnists delivered to your inbox three times a week.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pay Dirt is Slate\u2019s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Kristin and Ilyce here. (It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[3005,28,147,530,3007,37512,6843],"class_list":{"0":"post-50117","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-advice","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-personal-finance","11":"tag-personalfinance","12":"tag-relationships","13":"tag-single-q","14":"tag-slate-plus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}