Where will you live?

My husband and I rented an apartment together before we even were married. We got an apartment 6 months after making it official. Now that we're married, we're currently in the process our purchasing our first home together

FH lives with his parents, I live with my mom. We'll be renting an apartment once we get married. Definitely looking for something small, maybe a studio (which is still ridiculously expensive in NYC) cause we wanna save up to buy a house.

We rented an apartment together prior to marriage, and we continued to live there after marriage. You should have a plan. That plan, however, is entirely up to the two of you. As long as it is something feasible (and you're not just banking on winning the lotto and buying a mansion or something) and works for you 2, it's fine. Some couples live in an apartment together. Others buy a house. Others move in with a set of parents to save some money. I actually have friends who were in med school residencies in different states so they spent their first 2 years of married life long distance. Every couple's situation is unique. Just make sure it is something you can afford and works for both of you.

My fiance and I are just out of college and still looking for jobs. I don't think it's necessary to know everything before you get engaged. I definitely agree with you that most people tend to think you need solid plans before being engaged, and some even make rude comments about it.

My FH and I have been applying for lots of jobs in different cities that would be good options to live in. We decided that we will move to wherever we get good job offers from. We plan on renting a house when we get there to make sure we like our jobs and the city before we settle down and decide to buy.

I went to college 16 hours from home, where I met FI. I got a job sort-of nearby when I graduated and he moved in with me about 4 months later when he graduated. We lived together for a year and a few months before we got engaged.


We then moved across the country to where I grew up (he literally proposed the day before we left) and now we love together up here. We're both religious and didn't like the optics of living together, but there was no way we could afford to rent 2 different places and even though I love my parents, it would be difficult for me to live with them at this point in my life (I'm 25). I'm just used to being independent.
Once we get married we will live in the same apartment we do now, eventually we will move back to where we met. I very much want to buy a home, but since we are planning to move in a few years it doesn't make sense to.
I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at with asking whether couples should have that figured out when they say yes or why people think you're setting yourselves up to fail, but I will say I think you should at least live together when you get married. I know a couple who tried to start out with a long distance marriage and they ended up divorced within a year, although they were both rather selfish people.

We’re unsure right now lol. Kinda going with the flow, I guess.


I live in the Bronx and he lives 1.5 hrs north. We MAY stay in my apartment until we find a place but that’ll be 2 adults and 3 dogs squeezed into a 550 sq ft studio apartment lol.
We’re looking to buy but may rent for a bit until we find something. He loves living in the country and I love the city so we’re trying to find a middle ground. I also commute into the city so being able to have an easy commute is important (I used to live up near him and it would take me 6 hrs a day of commuting so never doing that again lol).
It’s stressful but trying to tell myself that it’ll all fall into place. Thanks for posting this cus it really reminds me that some times we all don’t have it figured out and that’s okay.

H and I lived together for 4 years in a townhouse we dually rented and still live there now. We will live here another year and then look for either a house to rent or possibly buy something small. We live outside of DC and to buy a house in our school district is ridiculous, homes start at 700k and we just are not to the point where we have that kind of down payment our would get approved. It's ok to not have it 100% figured out yet, no one does, especially right now. Keep communication open between you on what is best for your combined finances. I will also throw out there that living together first was so helpful to us and after we were married last month it feels like nothing has changed so it's one less major stress off our shoulders to take into our marriage.

I owned my own home long before I met my husband. He still lived with his parents. In another town about 40 minutes away.


After about 6 months of dating he got a new job closer to my house. He was going to have to rent an apartment. Financially it made sense for him to move in with me. We just bought our first house together about 6 months ago.
I think each couple reasoning will be different as each situation is unique. Do what is best for you.

We lived together In an apartment prior to being engaged n still live in the same apartment. Our next step is to buy a house

My fiancé purchased the home we live in & it’s paid off- didn’t make sense to rent/purchase another place. When I moved in, I wanted it to feel more like ours & not just a bachelor pad. We remodeled the 2 bathrooms & the master bedroom do far.

Such a good question. My FH and I have been long distance for two years of our relationship. We are both in grad school. He’s been living in other cities due to clinical rotations. We plan to wed in 2022, but we are both graduating that year. Where we live depends on his residency placement and tenure jobs for me. It’s a mess to even think about right now!🤦🏾‍♀️

My fiancé and I lived together while we were dating in a 2 family house, we rented our side from his sister. Our plan was to get married first, then buy a house, but his sister decided she wanted to sell the house to get a new home to start her family in, so we decided that instead of renting elsewhere we would also buy a house. We discussed it and said we’d push off marriage for the house because it seemed more important to have a place to live first. So we are living in our house.

I'm a firm believer that it's usually really healthy for adults to have had some experience living independently before marriage. It could be with roommates or with each other, but I think there is a significant amount of maturity and responsibility that often (not always...) comes with, as my daughter says, "adulting" -- paying all bills and maintaining a budget; managing responsibilities like insurance, healthcare, taxes, etc.; and running a "household" (e.g., cleaning, maintenance, cooking, etc.) -- no matter how small. There is nothing wrong with starting small and simple -- a household can be a studio apartment. Personally, I think going into marriage with a plan to live with parents or other relatives is potentially a huge risk to the couple's long-term success -- especially if any of the parties already has some boundary issues. I'd postpone the wedding if that is the only financial option and focus on building some independent financial security first. You don't have to be "rich" to have a happy, successful marriage, but I do think it helps tremendously if both parties are fully-functioning, independent adults.... But that's just my opinion! Good luck!

We live separately right now, but my apartment lease ends around tge time we marry and I'll be moving in with him. We have already started saving for a house

I moved into my husbands parents home before getting married because it made the transition easier for after we marry.

We bought a house a year and a half before we got married so nothing changed for us after the wedding.
I think having a plan and making sure you’re on the same page is good before you get married. But you don’t need to know specifically where you’re gonna live, if it’s living with parents for a few months while you find an apartment to rent or buy, that’s fine. You just need to be on the same page with your fiancé

I think you should have a general idea of what you want your future to look like. My fiancé and I were hit kind of hard during the pandemic; he lost his job and finding a new one along with thousands of others is challenging. Hopefully soon. Our original plan (pre pandemic) was to have our wedding, then buy a house shortly after in our current town. Now we are pushed back a least a year since we postponed our wedding. Hopefully in the next few months we’ll either rent a larger townhouse or house then buy a home down the road. OR if things don’t go well in the job search for my fiancé we might start trying to find jobs in Chicago (his home town). Only time we’ll tell. Good luck.

We fiancé and I had already lived together for a year before we got engaged. We had open discussions about finances and what we we were looking for in terms of location/size/amenities, then toured places and made the decision together.

My fiancé and I have lived together for three and a half years in various apartments. It's been great because we've really learned how to coexist and after a couple years we naturally starting discussing our finances together in in terms of us as a couple, rather than individuals. We don't have a shared bank account, but we set mutual financial goals and are currently working on saving for both a house and the wedding. I expect marriage will be a smooth transition for us since we're so used to living with each other and planning our lives together, which I'm grateful for.
We moved to a big city a year ago because we both got new jobs, but I've since switched to a fully remote job. We don't plan to stay in our current city forever, but me having location flexibility makes it easier if my fiancé gets a new job somewhere else. Our goal for now is to settle into stable jobs in a place we like and start searching for a house within a year of getting married.
I think having a general idea of what you want your life to look like in the future and where you want to live is a good idea, but if the past year has taught us anything, it's that you can't expect the unexpected. I don't think there's anything wrong with not having everything figured out yet, as long as you're flexible and open to opportunities!

My husband and I lived together for almost 3 years before getting married. We rented an apartment at the time. I do think it is important to be able to financially support yourselves before getting married. Finances can cause a lot of stress on a marriage.