Roommates and money

Hello folks! This week I am going to embark on some crazy adventures with a former roommate of mine, so I thought it would be fun to make this week roommate-themed. Today I'll give you some tips on how to keep living with someone from becoming a financial nightmare.

A lot of folks will be headed to college soon for their freshman year, and will be matched with total strangers for roommates. You probably won't get paired up with a slob who chain-smokes cigars, or a neurotic neat freak though. You'll probably end up with just another regular person just trying to make their way through their classes. No matter what your situation though, living with another person or multiple people can become very expensive if you let things get out of hand. Here are a couple of categories and tips on how to reduce the financial pressure on yourself.

Rent

In the case of student housing, every person is responsible for their own shelter costs. However, maybe you're going to be a junior this year and it's time to find an apartment you can split for cheap. If you move in with some other folks, you may be combining your money to pay a landlord one lump sum. In this situation, it's common for one or more roommates to come up short from time to time. Your first reaction would typically be to cover their share so that you don't get in trouble, but that's obviously a huge inconvenience to you, and not really fair either.

One temporary solution is to have a sort of roommate pool of cash that people can dip into if they are not going to have their share of the rent on time. It would then be up to them to replenish the funds as soon as possible. Another easier solution is to sign separate leases with your landlord so that if one of your roomies decides that they're not going to pay rent this month, you won't have to suffer needlessly.

Utilities

Things like gas, water, sewage, phone lines, cable TV, and internet bills should all be considered here. You can either wait until your first month of bills arrives and delegate one or two bills to each person, or split the sum of the bills into percentages so everyone pays the same each month. I prefer the percentage method because if you get stuck with the electricity bill and none of your roommates turn off their TVs or computers, you are feeling more pressure on your wallet than you should have to. Finally, the last category:

Food

Your roommates will eat your food, there's just no way around it. It'll be the middle of the night, they'll be hungry, they'll see your food, and they will chomp it down like there is no tomorrow. It can be tough to negotiate food costs, but there are several places to start. If you and your roomies all know how to cook, you can rotate on a cooking calendar. If you're up to cook Wednesday's dinner, for example, you would be responsible for buying all the ingredients for it. I never used this method because I flat out don't know how to cook anything. The method I used with my roommates was the shelf delegation strategy, where everyone gets their own shelves in the cupboards and the refrigerator. I also had a mini-fridge in my room to protect my coveted Vanilla Cokes and my Dibs ice cream.

I think it's also important to go grocery shopping WITH your roommates as much as possible. If you know that your roommate Bob likes to steal Rice Krispies treats from you all the time, you can suggest that he buy a box when you're at the store. This way you can also keep an eye on what your roommates are buying, how much they're spending, and whether they're getting enough stuff to survive on. If John is only buying a box of cereal and an apple, you can bet that the delicious chocolate cake that you're buying is going to be gone before the end of the day.

Well, those are all the tips I have for now! More exciting roommate banter is on the way this week, so stay tuned. =)

Josh

blog comments powered by Disqus