Welcome to "Couples + Money" (opens in new tab). Forget about questions about your sex life. Let's talk about something more personal. Let's talk about what you and your partner do and don't do with your paychecks.

Every other Thursday, a couple sits down with MarieClaire.com to talk candidly about how they divide their finances. All the details of what each person pays personally, what they split 50-50, who pays the tab at restaurants, who fights over bank statements, and more.

If you and your partner would like to be featured in Couples + Money, please visit [email protected].

This week, we are joined by Aditi Shekhar, 35, an entrepreneur with an annual income of $86,000 ($7,166/month) and a $180,500 ( Dalmar Hussein, 35, a research manager with a monthly salary of $15,000; they have been officially married for 15 years and live in San Francisco, California.

Aditi Dalmar and I actually met in Ethiopia when we were in fifth grade. My parents both worked for the diplomatic corps and my mother worked for the United Nations.

Dalmar: We started dating a year later for a few months and then again towards the end of middle school. Aditi was unlike anyone I had ever met before: energetic, lively, opinionated, unique, and very confident in herself. She seemed larger than life.

Aditi, because of my parents' jobs, we ended up moving around the world.

Dalmar: We kept in touch from time to time. I happened to be at the computer in the library and opened an old account that I hadn't checked in a long time. At the top of the page was an email from Aditi, which read, "This is the last message I will send to you. I have no interest in maintaining friendships with people who make a habit of ignoring my messages." Had she waited even a day, she would never have seen it. She was in Tanzania at the time, looking for a school where she could study business. That is exactly what I wanted to do. I had a very good guidance counselor, so I sent her the list. And I ended up going to the exact same college in 2002.

Aditi We got married in 2015. We were not going to get married. One weekend we were hanging out and I said, "You know what, that's very convenient." So the next week we went to court. I wanted to know the rules of engagement and I wanted to sign a prenuptial agreement. My parents were divorced. So I was someone who planned for every possible scenario. We realized that each of us was usually represented by an attorney. But that cost $6,000 per person. So we downloaded a prenuptial agreement template from Rocket Lawyer or Legal Zoom. We went through it together, filled it out separately, and signed it. We joked that we weren't sure if it was a legally binding document, but it was the practice we found most valuable. We use this rule when we have economic conversations.

Dalmar: The idea for Aditi, which created [the financial app] Zeta (opens in new tab), came from our relationship. Many of these tools treat personal and financial decisions like a one-person game. But once we enter into a mature partnership, we no longer make such decisions alone. We realized that it was too stressful to have a conversation when we couldn't see everything. So we started treating the couple and money decisions like a multiplayer game

Aditi We now have two pets, and we were very careful when we got one. Dalmar and I discussed, not a pet contract: who would keep the dog if something happened to one of us, or if we decided to split up. But we would help out if needed."

Aditi Aditi: We started talking about money pretty early on in our relationship. We were college students. I believe I am going to Holland. So I said, "Well, if you don't mind, I'd like to split it all fifty-fifty." He was like, "Wow, I found a great girl." Then, when we started living apart, we started talking about it in earnest. We agreed that we would only do long-distance relationships if we actually saw each other at least once a month. Since it was sometimes easier for one or the other to come, we decided to pay each other depending on who was coming. That required a frank discussion. That's when we set up the joint account

Dalmar: We have a shared credit card. We have a joint savings account and several joint checking accounts for joint expenses such as the house. We each contribute the same amount. And we have personal savings and checks that we use for whatever we want to pursue individually. Zeta helps us stay current. I may have a big expense on my credit card. Zeta allows us to split it right down the middle and gives me a sense of what I owe her. The main benefit was to highlight all of them as well as help us coordinate them together.

Aditi The first thing we opened was a card. When the bill arrived, it was extremely expensive. I said, "What is this? I told him what I thought was the right solution: "Why don't you take ownership of the card?" But I still get the hefty bill. My biggest lesson was that I kept forcing Delmar to lean on his financial weakness instead of my financial strength. We are treating this relationship as a partnership so that Delmar can own the other aspects of it. Doing so has really, really changed the conversation.

Dalmar: Having a "money day" once a month is also a tradition she started as the CFO of the household.

Aditi: Aditi: We shift the common conversations that come up when something bad happens to a dedicated time slot scheduled on the calendar. This is one of the healthiest money muscles my husband and I have developed.

Aditi We don't talk about individual transactions or personal finances. My wife and I can be critical of each other's spending. We tell each other, "Spend as you please. We use Zeta to manage our finances, but we don't actually share credit card details. All we can see is the balance.

Dalmar: I don't think we have anything.

Aditi: My parents were very open with us as children. When we were very young, my parents opened a savings account for us and had a matching system in place. So we were highly motivated. My parents never went to a toy store and said, "I'm going to give you one of my toys." Instead, they were like, "Let's sit down and figure out how much we need to save." My parents actually spurred a great deal of entrepreneurial spirit. Whenever we wanted something and couldn't afford it, they always encouraged us to start a company to make money.

Dalmar: I think my parents had two main goals for us growing up. One was to get us the best education and the other was to stay out of debt; the first goal was to get us into schools we could afford. Other than that, they managed our finances. We never discussed money, finances, or savings. So I did not receive much education about money. This showed in the way I interacted with money. I spent and still spend relatively freely. My financial education began with our relationship

Aditi Two years ago, when I started my company and decided to get the backing of a venture capitalist, we decided to do estate planning. We had talked about this in our prenuptial agreement and thought it would be very simple. However, it also included a guardianship agreement for our future children and our current pets. It was not a straightforward process. We didn't fight, but we were shocked by each other's reactions. It took me a week to understand.

Dalmar: I decided to stay in North Carolina after graduation. She had a mattress. She's the kind of person who thinks about how to get the most out of what she has. So she was going to sell it. I said, "Let's take the mattress." She says, "I can sell it." I said, "What do you mean sell it? I thought she was going to get it, but I wasn't. In the end, I ended up paying for the mattress, but she gave me a little discount.

Dalmar: When it comes to travel, we plan ahead and allocate money. As for the little things we do locally, we just decide what we feel like doing at the time.

Aditi: What I like about him is that he tells me it's okay to splurge.

Aditi: We are architecture geeks and would love to build a house together. It's something we're both super excited about and we have 10,000 Pinterest boards.

Dharma: Aditi invests a lot of energy and time in her company. I just started a new business and I am doing the same thing. We have invested individually and we have talked about angel investing together. We have talked and not talked about having kids. We are in our mid-thirties, so over the past year it has become a much more active discussion.

Aditi We joke that our job is half finance, half marriage counseling. We talk to people, we podcast, we create guides, we write content. And we publish with partners like Business Insider and CNBC. It's a lot of fun. We're trying to be the Oprah of couples finance.

Interviews have been abridged and edited for clarity. Interviewing and editing by Katherine J. Igoe. Design and illustrations by Morgan McMullen.

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