What a shared household is
Most couples keep money in three places: what is mine, what is yours, and what is ours. SpendWe gives the "ours" part its own home. One person creates a household, the other joins, and from then on every phone in it, iPhone or Android, sees the household budget and every shared expense. Each expense shows who paid, and the Home screen keeps a running Who paid what.
It is built for two, but a household can hold up to 6 people, so it also works for flatmates or a family. Creating a household and joining one are free, and a shared household always stays in sync, on every plan.
How to share a budget with your partner
- Both of you install SpendWe. No sign-up is needed to start. When onboarding asks how you use the app, choose With my partner or With a group (flatmates, family).
- Create the household from the household screen in Settings, and share the one-tap invite link by message.
- Your partner opens the link. It always asks before joining, so nobody ends up in a household by accident.
- Answer "Your past expenses". If you already logged expenses on your own, SpendWe asks once: Keep my past expenses private (the default) or share your history. Past expenses never count in the settle-up either way.
- Add an email to each phone. It is optional, but recommended: without it, access to the shared household lives only on that device, so resetting or replacing the phone can lose it.
Not sure yet? See an example household opens a read-only household with two example members, who paid what and the settle line, before you invite anyone. It saves and shares nothing.
Splitting costs your way
The default split is 50/50. If you earn very different amounts, switch to a proportional split, by percentage or from your incomes. The incomes you type stay on your device; only the resulting percentages sync. While you edit the rule, SpendWe previews what each person would pay on a shared expense of 100.
A single expense can follow its own split: the household rule, all for one person (for example All for Sam), custom amounts, or custom percentages that must add up to 100%.
Turn off Include in shared balance for an expense your partner should see but that should not count in the balance. Or make it Private to me: a private expense is visible only to the person who created it, the server enforces that rather than the app, and it never counts in the shared balance. Only the creator of an expense can make it private.
Settle up, with suggested payments
Settle up shows who owes whom and the suggested payments that clear everyone's shared balance. Tap How it's calculated to see, for each member, what they paid, their share, the payments sent and received, and the net, so every line adds up to what the screen shows.
When someone owes you, Remind opens your phone's share sheet with one sentence: the name and the exact amount. The app sends nothing itself. The person who owes can tap PayPal or Venmo to open that app with the amount filled in; SpendWe never moves money, and Venmo works in US dollars only.
Each expense can also carry reactions (six emoji) and comments, so a question about a bill stays next to the bill. When the household gets started, you can also bring in past shared expenses from a Splitwise export or a file; see export and import. Choosing who each item of a scanned receipt is for is part of the planned SpendWe Pro; see the receipt scanner.
Leaving, privacy and what is free
Anyone can leave the household at any time from the shared-account screen. Future changes stop syncing between you, shared entries stay with the members who remain, and your private expenses are removed from it. A shared household is stored in a private, access-controlled cloud space; the Privacy Policy explains what is kept and where.
Creating a household, joining one, settle up, the split rules, reactions and comments are all free. A planned Pro Household plan would give Pro to every member of one household, but nothing can be bought yet; see pricing. Your shared spending also works with budgets, so you can see what is left for the month together.
For a step-by-step guide, read How to split expenses with a partner.
