Linking with a partner

From your profile, enter your partner’s email address and send an invite. There is nothing else to configure, once it is sent, it shows up on their side for them to accept or decline whenever they get to it. Sending an invite is a premium feature, your partner does not need premium themselves to accept one.

You can only have one partner linked at a time, and only one invite out at a time, sending a new one automatically cancels whichever you sent before. There is no expiry on an invite either, if your partner takes a week to check their profile, it will still be sitting there waiting.

Before the invite sends, a confirmation step spells out exactly what linking shares, which is raw income and take-home pay, every deposit and commitment entry, your saved places, and every property either of you adds. It links straight to the full Privacy Policy if you want the detail before going ahead.

An invite shows up in your own profile once someone has sent one to your account’s email address, with a simple Accept or Decline. Declining just closes it out and no explanation is asked for. Accepting shows you the same sharing reminder your partner saw when they sent it, so you know what you are agreeing to before it takes effect, and then links the two of you straight away. A welcome screen walks you through what has changed, which is a shared property list, scores calculated from both your finances, and deposits and costs that are now pooled.

To smooth out the first few minutes together, accepting also copies whichever bill defaults (mortgage rate, mortgage term, gas and electricity, water, broadband, groceries) your inviting partner had already set, into your own profile, so you are not starting from two completely different sets of numbers on day one. From that point on you share those six figures rather than keeping separate copies of them, so either of you can change any one at any time and it lands on both profiles at once.

Once linked, you and your partner can each see and act on:

• Every property either of you has added, on the map and in the list.
• Each property’s score, calculated from both of your finances, plus a combined score for the two of you together.
• Each property’s status, viewing booked through to offer made. It is one shared tag per property, and either of you can change it.
• The notes thread on any shared property.
• Mortgage, bill, and commitment overrides, either of you can adjust either person’s figures on a property you share.
• Your bill and mortgage defaults, gas and electricity, water, broadband, groceries, mortgage rate, and mortgage term. These six stop being two separate sets of numbers and become one, so changing yours changes your partner’s at the same time.
• Premium, if either of you subscribes, you both get the benefits, automatically, for as long as you stay linked.

Because a shared property list, scores, and overrides all update from both sides, The First Move keeps what you are looking at fresh automatically, rather than only ever reflecting things as they were the moment you opened the page. If your partner adds a property, adjusts a bill default, or changes an override while you already have the map or a property open, you will see it appear within moments, no refresh needed.

Switching back to a tab you left open works the same way, coming back to The First Move after a while checks for anything your partner changed while you were away and brings it in immediately, rather than waiting for the next automatic check. The same happens the moment you accept a partner invite, everything you now share with them, their properties, their defaults, their premium status if they have it, appears straight away rather than only after a reload.

"Yours" here means yours to edit, not yours to keep private. Your income, deposit sources, outgoings, and ideal leftover target stay your own entries, and your partner cannot change them. Linking combines the numbers for scoring and cost breakdowns rather than merging your two profiles into one. The bill and mortgage defaults above are the exception, those you genuinely edit together.

What none of it is, is hidden. Your partner can see your income and take-home pay, every deposit source and the notes on it, every commitment by name and amount, your saved places, and your leftover target, and they get a notification whenever you change any of them. That is the deal linking makes, and the app asks you to confirm it before the link is created. If you would not be comfortable with someone seeing your salary and your debts itemised, do not link with them. They can also see your email address and profile photo, but nothing about how you actually sign in.

The one number you do control together is the bill split, what percentage of shared housing costs each of you carries. Either partner can change it at any time, it is not locked to whoever set it first, and it defaults to an even 50/50 split the moment you link. Like your mortgage and bill defaults, this split can also be overridden on a single property, without changing the default split you use everywhere else.

Say Alice and Bob are linked with the standard 50/50 split. Most properties they look at work fine on that even split, but one particular house is priced right at the edge of what Alice can comfortably take on alone. Bob offers to cover a bit more, just for that one, so they override the split on that property to 55% Bob, 45% Alice, and immediately see whether that shift is enough to make the numbers work. Every other property they are comparing carries on using their normal 50/50 default, untouched.

Either of you can unlink at any time, from the same place you manage the partner link. You will be asked to confirm first. You each keep your own properties, with every override and status exactly as it was. What changes is visibility, because once unlinked you no longer see any property your ex-partner added and they no longer see yours. Each of you is simply back to your own list.

Two things do get cleared. First, commentsyou left on each other’s properties are deleted on both sides, because once you can no longer see a property, you could never see or delete anything you wrote on it, so nobody’s words are left somewhere outside their control. Comments on your own properties are untouched. Second, your notification history, for both of you. Unlinking wipes the list of past partner activity from both accounts, including for whichever of you did not press the button. It is a running feed of things that have already happened rather than a record you need to keep, but it does mean anything sitting unread in there is gone for good.

If either of you was relying on the other’s premium, that benefit ends when the link does, you will see a notice explaining exactly what changes. Unlinking is not permanent in any other sense, you are free to invite the same partner again later, or link with someone else entirely, whenever you are ready.