Ask the Readers: What if You’re Frugal But Your Roommates Aren’t?
Published on - June 28th, 2007 (by J.D. Roth) Eleanor wrote with a question that could test even the mightiest personal finance expert. “What,” she asks, “can you do when you want to save money and your roommates don’t care?”
I share a house with four roommates. This saves me at least $200 a month from what I would be paying if I lived in an apartment. But roommates raise expenses in other, unexpected ways. I have been trying to cut down on monthly bills and am finding it incredibly difficult.
For example, I live with roommates that want digital cable and high-speed internet bundle. I can live without the cable (I don’t watch TV) and don’t mind having a lower-speed connection. But because three of my five roommates want the more expensive package, that’s what we get, and instead of splitting a $60/month bill five ways we’re splitting a $100/month bill. I end up paying more money overall. While I can simply not watch cable and argue with them that I won’t pay for that fractional cost of the bill, there’s no way I can somehow use a lower speed internet connection without some serious technological finagling.
Another way I find it difficult to cut down on monthly bills is electricity usage. I try to turn off lights, appliances, the air conditioner, and my computer when I’m not using them. My roommates would prefer to leave their computers and air conditioner on and are not as vigilant as turning off lights. The electricity bill is higher, but it still gets split five ways. Again, I have no idea how I would go about dividing the bill by individual electricity usage — how would you even start to go about measuring such a thing, when no one remembers who left the kitchen light on?
But perhaps I’m being too nitpicky — as annoying as these extra expenses are, I doubt they make it worth moving to an apartment.
It’s been a l-o-n-g time since I lived with roommates — wife and cats notwithstanding — and I’ve forgotten some of the stuff that occurs. I certainly remember the passive-aggressive games we used to play out of spite, but I think that, in general, I never had a living situation in which splitting money was an issue.
AskMetafilter often has roommate-related questions. Many of them involve money problems, but none that I could find involve this sort of problem. Though it doesn’t address Eleanor’s specific concerns, UK-based iOWEYOU looks like a great little web tool for tracking roommate accounts:
iOWEYOU is an expenses sharing calculator. It is ideal for people living in a shared house. To use iOWEYOU, you log all the items you buy that you share with your group. This may be bills, food shopping, light bulbs, TV license, etc., etc. iOWEYOU then tells you how much you all owe each other.
What general advice do you have for keeping money matters between roommates peaceful but fair? What specific advice do you have for Eleanor?
This article is about Ask the Readers, House and Home, Real-Life
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Another great way to overcome this problem is to move into an apartment with roommates that has utilities included. I’ve always been the “energy nazi” turning off lights, and other energy using items that didn’t need to be on.
Now that I’ve moved into an apartment with utilities included the “stress” level of constantly maintaining a minimum of energy usage is gone as well as any arguments about utility bills.
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I have the same problem. I have not found a way to fix it. But I learned that when I was walking around turning things off after my roommates used them, it was stressing me out trying to keep up with them. My advice is if you cannot find a good solution, join them in their expenses. Don’t leave your lights on or computer running on purpose, but stuff like the A/C. You should not suffer when you are not actually saving money. You are paying for A/C, so use it.
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Boy have I been bitten by this on many occasions. Basically, you have to add it all up. Especially in a city, you will save $300-400 by living with roommates over living alone. She is not “losing” nearly that much money in the long run by thriftless roommate spending.
Areas I have found are easy:
1. Roommates should be ok with splitting cable separately, but the first time you sit in front of the TV you need to split it too.
2. Roommates may be ok with splitting the cost of CFLs. Since 5 roommates has a lot of coming and going, and lights are on a lot, this has saved us a ton of money. If you pay water bills, use the “jug in the toilet” trick to conserve water, and take shorter showers yourself.
3. Make a policy that nobody eats each other’s food unless it’s in a “free for all” area. This is what has cost me the most.
Other than that, you really need to just suck it up and await the day when you can find a frugal partner. If you find a person who shares your values, you may look for a comparable place to move to down the road that would be no more expensive. However, the pennies you’re losing due to roommates are more than covered by the savings you have by living with more people. Being the “spendthrift jerk” of the house is not a mantle anyone wants, so be cool and realize you’re not really losing money in the long run.
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I sympathize with you. I have the same problem at home, but I only have one roommate. She always leaves her light and fan on in the house when she leaves. Then, she suggested we buy CFL and change every bulb in the house because she complained that the electricity bill is too high. ?! I have decided I will just turn off the light and fan in the living room when no one is there. I do not go in her room to turn things off when she is not around, because I do not want to make war. It is a hard issue.
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I completely sympathize with Eleanor about the roommate situation.
Both of my male roommates are slobs and ignorant of energy conservation. I have to constantly turn the lights off in the hallway that are left on during the day. And my roommate likes to plug in all the appliances in the kitchen and when I unplug or remove some from the outlet, he plugs them right back in. It’s a no win situation. Just do the best you can and hopefully you can find roommates who are more in line with your frugal philosophy.
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[...] outside world, from the perspective of how you feel others might view you. However, I was reading a post thing morning from a young woman (Eleanor) who appears to be a bit of an ecofrugalist (I have no [...]
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Grow up. If you don’t like their living habits find 5 people that you do like. Don’t force your ideas about how long the AC should be on on the others. This is “the cost of doing business”.
Shared living is exactly that…things we dislike and all.
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About the electricity usage, it does make a difference over time. At 11 cents a kilowatt-hour, a watt-year (a single watt running a whole year) costs about a dollar. So leaving on a 120 watt gaming computer 24/7 costs $120 a year or $10 a month.
That doesn’t mean you should necessarily bother fighting over it though. There are probably other things you use more of, such as taking longer showers or something.
However, it may be a good idea to sign up for a site such as http://billmonk.com/ or http://slackerfactor.com/ , where you can share bills and it automatically does all the calculations. It makes it easier to pro-rate things such as cable, if that deal can be worked out.
Also, some people commented they thought they saved energy by not turning off the heater or AC, so it didn’t have to “work harder” to catch up when you returned to the house. That is wrong. If you learn to read your meter and try the experiment, taking careful measurements of how much energy it takes to get your house to the target temperature using the different strategies, you can see this for yourself.
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@Robr:
I don’t think the “leave the AC on” trick is wrong, but may not be the best in all locations.
For where I’m located during the summer, our desired inside temperature is 78 degrees and it is 110 degrees outside. If we completely left the AC off all day, the materials inside would absorb a great amount of heat and take quite a long time for the AC to catch up at maximum output.
If it’s 85 degrees outside, then it isn’t worth it to leave the AC on.
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Lighten up? Suck it up? You’re asking her to put up with it? Why? So she can continue wasting her money paying for her roommates’ gluttonous use of utilities? Eleanor, 4 months ago my girlfriend and I moved into a house with another couple who we’ve been friends with for a long time now. BIG MISTAKE!
While my girlfriend and I are VERY wise with electricity – CFL bulbs, computers off at night, only lights when you need them, hot water heater and major appliances off during peak hours, no unneeded luxuries – our new housemates are HORRIBLE – he falls asleep on the couch all night with the TV on, she MUST have hot water all ALL times of day, MUST have 1,000,000 digital channels, MUST have the T3 bandwidth, must have all three of her computers running 24/7.
Our electricity bill is OUTRAGEOUSLY HIGH and all of these little “luxuries” are an additional pain. My girlfriend and I politely tried to discuss getting rid of the luxuries and do you know what they did? They refused to listen and yelled at us and said “You should have expected it to cost this much.” WHAT? Why pay for luxuries when we are struggling to make rent each month! (A cheap 2-bed house in Hawaii goes for $1600 a month, apartments are worse.)
My girlfriend and I are moving out in a couple of weeks. If our “friends” can pay those bills, then fine, we won’t pay for their luxuries any longer. Neither should you.
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I can say that I’m the frugal one in my roommate relationship. I try to keep the thermostat on 70 in the winter and on 78 in the summer. My roommates would rather switch the temperatures.
I can understand where you’re coming from, since I can visibly see a spike anytime they are in charge of the thermostat, and it’s frustrating. I was gone for an entire month due to Christmas break, and the energy amount rose by almost 600 kw. And I wasn’t even THERE to bask in the warmth. I still paid a third however, just in case they decided to leave for a prolonged period of time, then they would do the same for me.
I am rooming with my long-time college roommate, and her boyfriend (whom I dislike). He was an addition after the lease was already signed. He does pay for a third of the utilities and rent, however, so I guess I can’t complain too much about that.
They love to wash the dishwasher every day, which I can’t complain too much about, ’cause my dishes need to be cleaned too. They also love to do at least a load of laundry a day. How they could possibly wear 5 loads of clothes within a week, I’ll never understand.
The boyfriend got a huge screen tv, which I can only imagine uses a lot of energy. Not to mention they like to leave it turned on even if they leave the room or the apartment for lengthy amounts of time (an hour or more).
I was happy to have basic cable and the cheapest internet, but they wanted the highest internet and a big cable grouping, not to mention DVR, which I do not use.
I guess I just needed to vent for a while, since I can’t really say anything to them.
And I do get a cheaper deal by having roommates, I understand that. It’s just frustrating that we could ALL have an even CHEAPER deal by just putting some stops on luxuries you can get by without.
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