relationship advice — Posts — Purposely Ever After

How do you streamline household work? A case study on weeknight dinners.

A few weeks ago, Jason and I decided to move out to Park City, UT (I know!) Because of the pandemic, we’d been staying with my parents in Atlanta, and, eventually, we decided to break our lease in NYC. We also decided it would be fun to spend the rest of the summer and part of the fall in Park City, where there would be plenty of socially distant hiking available.

There was one problem I was worried about: in Atlanta, my wonderful mother had taken on all the cooking, so I had a ton more free time. I was able to work more (not only at my day job, but also this very blog!), and I was able to squeeze in a long workout and plenty of reading time.

How do you decide where you and your partner should live?

Right after Jason and I got engaged, I moved to the Bay Area for a job while Jason stayed in NYC. We were long distance for over 1.5 years, and, during that time, we had a bunch of different discussions about where we wanted to permanently live - NYC, the Bay Area, or possibly, LA. After much debate, I ended up moving back to NYC, and, until the pandemic, we’d both planned to live there long-term. Since the pandemic started and I’ve been working remotely, however, Jason and I have started discussions about whether we’d ever want to move somewhere different.

How do you merge finances with a significant other?

In my previous post, I discussed the different financial advice men and women get and finding someone financially compatible was a high priority of mine when dating. I got more questions about how we thought about combining finances, and I wanted to share some thoughts. Especially once we began to talk about moving in together and getting engaged, a specific set of questions came up: how do you merge finances with someone else? How do you talk about money and make sure you’re on the same page financially? Here were a few pieces of advice that helped us in our financial discussions: