The Cost Of A Breakup

There’s a lot of upside to having a partner: companionship, emotional support, and the whole fuzzy, feel-good sensation of being in love. And there are the financial benefits. With the average monthly cost of a one-bedroom as $1,494 (and much higher in expensive cities like New York and San Francisco), couples can save hundreds to thousands of dollars in rent and utilities each year just by moving in together. But if you break up, that cushion disappears.

The average cost of a breakup for Gen Z was $3,862 last year, according to data from the finance app Frich, which accounted for expenses like housing, travel, and post-breakup retail therapy. For long-term partners who share homes, assets, and pets, the costs can climb into the quintuple digits once you add up moving vans, new furniture, and fees for taking your ex off your phone bill (among other things).

We spoke with three women to find out how much their breakups hurt their bank accounts. They tallied up the immediate financial repercussions, plus up to a year’s worth of regular expenses such as rent and insurance.

Melanie*, 41, writer-editor, New York

Income at the time of the breakup: $145,000

• Rent went from $1,400/month to $3,000/month, plus an extra $5,600
• Utilities went from $0 to $250/month
• $3,000 for Ubers and Lyfts while moving and for transporting their dog to doggy day care
• Dog expenses were split 50/50, but solo custody came with $100/week for day care, $50/week for food, $150 every few months for grooming, and $300 in vet bills since January
• $5,000 on a new couch, bed frame, mattress, TV, and other household items
• Accidentally paid $1,500 in taxes for her ex’s health insurance
• Lost $700 on nonrefundable bookings for a joint trip to France (half the cost of the trip) but put the credited funds toward two Eat, Pray, Love-style trips to Europe ($900, flights and some lodging covered by points and credit) and Japan ($600, flights covered by points)

Total cost: $22,925 (and counting) since July 2025

“It’s more money than I’ve ever spent in one period in my entire life.”

Last summer, Melanie and her partner of 10 years — and legal domestic partner for five — split. The biggest sticker shock was the financial and emotional cost of moving in New York City. She and her ex had snagged a rent-stabilized apartment during the pandemic, but the rental market had gotten even more expensive since then. Adding insult to injury, after she moved out of their shared home in July, she was still on the hook for paying half that rent through November.

Living alone, she now pays more than twice as much in rent than before. While utilities at her old place were covered, she now pays $250 per month for electricity, gas, and internet. She also spent about $5,000 to furnish an entire apartment. “I opened up a 0% APR credit card, because I basically had to start from scratch,” she says. “It’s more money than I’ve ever spent in one period in my entire life.”

While struggling to find a new place she could afford, she was lucky enough to be able to store her belongings and stay with family in the area. But that meant spending thousands of dollars shuttling her dog — previously co-owned with her ex — back and forth from his regular doggy day care via pet-friendly rideshares. “This is going to sound insane, but I didn’t want to disrupt his life a ton,” she says.

She’s also spent months and a few hundred dollars unwinding her ex from her health insurance, which she’d enthusiastically added him to after they’d finalized their domestic partnership.

Melanie says that she wants people to think twice before giving up good housing situations to move in with their partners. “I have become the annoying friend who’s like, ‘Maybe sublease your place for a year or two,’ which is the most unromantic advice you could possibly give someone,” she says. “Love and real estate shouldn’t be combined.”

Laura, 37, copywriter, Los Angeles & New York

Income at the time of the breakup: $0

• Rent went from $1,200/month to $1,800/month
• $2,000 on a new bed, couch, TV, and other household items
• The total cost of her phone plan, car insurance, and streaming expenses went from $100/month to $200/month
• Full custody of her dog took her annual expenses from $1,000 to $2,000
• $300 on a post-breakup flight home to see family
• $400 lost on an abandoned Le Creuset serving platter
• $2,000 on what was supposed to be a post-engagement trip to London
• $50 for new birth control and an STD test

Total cost: $14,150 in 2018 (around $19,000 when adjusted for inflation)

“I’ve put so much time, emotion, and money into this relationship, I don't know how I could possibly get out.”

Three weeks after Laura got engaged, she got laid off. The next day, her partner blindsided her with a breakup. The experience wrecked her — not to mention her bank account.

After spending some time in the comfort of friends and family, Laura moved into her own apartment, taking on a rent increase of about $600 per month. She had previously relocated from New York to Los Angeles to be with her ex, so the only belongings she had were her clothes and a few pieces of furniture they’d bought together — now she had to stock an entire apartment, which turned out to be a $2,000 project.

“You know you’re going to need big-ticket items like a bed, a couch, a TV, but I didn’t have dish towels, I didn’t have a spatula — all these little things that kept adding up,” Laura says. The one that got away turned out not to be her ex but a high-quality serving platter. “The one thing that I’ll always remember leaving intentionally for him, because he liked it so much, was my Le Creuset. I did that to be nice, but that was a $400 piece of cookware. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

When she and her ex moved in together, they’d combined their phone bill, car insurance, and streaming accounts under a family plan. Setting up her own accounts cost her an extra $100 a month; there was also a small fee to remove him from the phone plan.

Like Melanie, Laura kept their dog, which they adopted a year before breaking up. Though she didn’t suspect that a breakup was on the horizon at the time, her cousin — who had gone through a messy divorce that involved two pets — had suggested some tips to avoid a custody battle just in case.

“I made sure when we adopted him that the payment was on my credit card and that everything was in my name so I could keep him,” she says. Her ex had worked from home and could walk the dog during the day, but post-breakup, she had to shell out for walkers and sitters on top of the basics, to the tune of an extra $1,000 annually. “Conservatively, in the last eight years I would say I have spent at least $10,000 on my dog,” she says.

There were travel fees, too. Immediately after Laura got dumped, she booked a trip home to see her family in New York, which cost a few hundred dollars. And then there was the canceled vacation: “He had actually proposed right before breaking up with me,” Laura says. “We had an engagement trip planned to London that I ended up going on by myself, because it was nonrefundable.” Her portion of the trip cost around $2,000. “It was completely great and completely miserable,” she says. “I did a lot of crying, walking around London by myself.”

Perhaps among the least fun expenditures of all time, Laura was concerned he may have given her an STI. She paid $50 for a test and new birth control. “It wasn’t the largest financial cost, but it was an emotional one,” she says.

Before the breakup, there were moments where, in her gut, she could feel the financial weight bearing down on her. “It was like, ‘I’ve put so much time, emotion, and money into this relationship, I don't know how I could possibly get out of it at this point,’” she says.

Today, she’s happily married — and has a personal savings account that her husband can’t access. “If anything ever did happen,” she says, “I want to make sure that I’m not going to go bankrupt trying to get out.”

Hannah, 31, Glasgow, Scotland, comedian

Income at the time of the breakup: $27,200 (all dollar amounts converted from pounds)

• Bought her ex out of their mortgage for $13,600, payments went from $340/month to $920/month, plus an extra $3,800/year in administrative fees
• Utilities went from $120/month to $245/month
• Cat food, litter, and vet visits went from $1,500/year to $3,000/year
• $680 and counting in lawyer fees
• $135 to tweak her matching tattoo

Total cost: $28,100 (and counting) since September 2025

“He keeps being like... ‘I’m not going to run away with your money.’ But I also didn’t think he’d sleep with his coworker.”

Last September, Hannah called off her engagement after discovering her partner of eight years had cheated on her with a coworker. The heartbreak was serious, she says, but the real nightmare began when she tried to keep the two-bed flat in Glasgow her parents had helped them buy in 2021.

Hannah’s ex works for a bank, which made getting the mortgage a breeze. But as a stand-up comedian, Hannah is self-employed, and she’s been struggling to get the bank to accept her as the sole mortgage holder — even after she decided to fork over $13,600 to buy out her ex. She’s also had to take on the council tax, building administrative fees, and utilities.

What’s worse: Hannah had been contributing to her ex’s share of the savings account at his bank and has been paying a lawyer to make sure she gets her half of the proceeds when he sells the stock at the end of next year. “He keeps being like, ‘I don’t know why you’re getting a lawyer involved, I’m not a bad person. I’m not going to run away with your money,’” Hannah says. “But I also didn’t think he’d sleep with his coworker.”

Utilities add up too, like an internet/cable package she once split that now runs her $122/month. Tweaking the matching tattoo she got with him — a lyric from what would have been their wedding song — by adding an upside-down heart around it cost $135. And she has full custody of their cat, which runs her an extra $250/month.

“In every other aspect of my life, I’m so good,” Hannah says. The breakup inspired her new comedy special, which has been doing well, and she’s in a new relationship. “But the financial stuff is the biggest roadblock to me living the life of my dreams. Having to say to a mortgage broker, ‘Hey, I’m a vulnerable woman,’ because of what this man has done to me financially, is horrific.”

*Name has been changed for privacy.