Category Archives: Roommates

Housing Advice, Roommates, Student Life

How to Deal with Roommate Issues

Let’s be honest here:  You and your roommate(s) are never going to see eye to eye on everything.  Whether it is about doing dishes, who’s buying the paper towels, or whether they can have friends over at 12 am on a Tuesday night, things are going to come up that you just won’t agree on.  However, you certainly don’t want to end up in a bickering match or giving each other the silent treatment for the rest of the year.  This is why you need to be prepared before it comes time for you to have a talk.  In an article we read at MSN.com, they gave some tips on how to talk with your roommate when problems arise:

  • Avoid passive aggression.  The sticky note you leave your roommate detailing their wrong doings never goes over well (beware not get yourself on this site!).
  • Emphasize the positive.  Before you talk with your roommate, be sure to make a list of their positive qualities.   This will help to remind you what you like about them, and it will help keep you positive when you talk with them.
  • Consider how you could be contributing to the situation.  Usually issues in a relationship are never black and white.  Maybe your roommate never does the dishes because you never do.  You will want to consider how you could make changes too.
  • Be prepared.  NEVER GO INTO A SITUATION LIKE THIS UNPREPARED.  I repeat:  NEVER GO INTO A SITUATION LIKE THIS UNPREPARED.  This is perhaps the most important item on this list.  If you go into a situation like this with your roommate and you have not thought about what you are going to say beforehand, a myriad of (not-so-good) things can happen.  However, what will most likely happen is one of two things:  1) you won’t actually say what you meant to say, or 2) you won’t say it right and it will cause more friction between you and your roommate.  Be prepared!  Think about what you want to say and how you want to approach the situation.  You’ll also want to consider their possible reactions and how you will approach their responses.  You may even want to write down some notes and practice what you’ll say beforehand.  You don’t have to be afraid to talk with your roommate; you just have to be prepared.
  • Pick a comfortable location and time to talk.  You want to pick a time and place where both you and your roommate will be relaxed.  You may even want to set up a time with your roommate to talk with them.  This will help to prevent any outside influences (work, school, etc.) from affecting the outcome of your talk.
  • Be tactful, even-tempered, and clear.  Be clear about what you want to change, and make sure there are no “grey” areas.  You want to keep a cool head and be strategic about how you say what you need to say.  At least then one of you will be levelheaded.
  • Use “I” statements versus “you” statements.  Be sure to avoid focusing the discussion on what your roommate is doing wrong.  Instead focus on how the situation and their behavior makes you feel.  This way you’ll prevent them from shutting out what you are saying.
  • Don’t wait too long to talk to them.  Talk to them within a reasonable amount of time.  If your roommate had a party while you were away, you don’t want to wait 3 months after the fact.  Talk to them within a couple days of when you return.  This way it will be fresh in both of your minds, and it will prevent any future incidents.
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Finances, Roommates

Splitwise

If you don’t watch TV that often, but your roommate does, is it fair for you to pay half of the cable bill?  If you have the bigger room in the apartment, is it fair for your roommate to pay half of the rent?  Well, with Splitwise, you can make sharing expenses a more fair, and less awkward process.  Recently we sat down with Splitwise CEO, Jon Bittner, about what his company does and what Splitwise can do to make splitting the bill fun and easy.

What is Splitwise?

Spitwise is a great way for roommates to keep track of their shared expenses, make sure everyone pays their bills, know who owes who, and make living with room­­mates a harmonious and fun experience.

What is the philosophy behind Splitwise?

At Splitwise, we want to make it stress-free to split expenses with your friends.  One part of that is that it’s really fun and easy if people don’t have to be constantly paying each other.  It’s annoying to collect money from your friends because no one ever has the right amount of cash on hand and sending checks or e-payments around is all very annoying.  What we have created is a virtual account or tab for your group that makes it really simple to keep track of who’s paid for which bills, make sure everyone has paid their fair share every month, and then they can settle it up.

Another thing that we do, that might be helpful to students who are looking for apartments on JumpOffCampus, is to help you to figure out how you should split the rent with your roommate.  Our philosophy about rent splitting is that it is really awkward to haggle about how much each person should be contributing to rent.  As soon as you decide to share a new apartment, you can just put in the variables and our rent calculator will give a neutral recommendation for how much each bedroom should cost. It takes into account bedroom size, windows, whose sharing a room, and some other stuff like that. At Splitwise, we want to make it really fun and enjoyable to live with roommate.  Splitting up the rent for roommates is just one way to avoid a fight. We’re very excited to have JumpOffCampus feature it on their site.

How did Splitwise get started?

A few years ago I was living with my then-girlfriend, now fiancé, and we had a roommate named Tory who was wonderful.  We had agreed to split the rent equally (each person).  It was an expensive place in Boston; we each had to pay, I think, $800 a month for this really nice place. It seemed fair because we had a huge bedroom and Tory had a normal-sized bedroom.  It seemed fair to do it this way – we had a lot of space, maybe twice as much space as her.  But I started to think, was that fair?  Was I being unfair to my friend?  I thought about it, and so I created a survey and sent it to my friends asking a bunch of hypothetical questions about what would be fair for all these different variables.  Some of them were about the situation that I was in, and some were just in the abstract.  When I put it all together I decided to create a little rent calculator that would incorporate all of that data I had just taken.  I put that on the Internet and people have just loved it.  We’ve had over 100,000 people use it, even just in the first month, and hundreds of thousands more since.  It’s a great tool and I know that people get a lot of value from having some suggestions, some sort of neutral arbitrator or neutral third party, that can recommend something when you’ve never done this before, or even if you’ve done it before but you haven’t been in this exact situation.

What do you believe is the hardest part of splitting the bill?

There’s doing the math, having the cash on hand (the exact change which no one ever has), and the awkwardness of “Did you put in enough?”  “Why are we short? Did you have an appetizer?”  “Oh, there’s too much money.  Who does it go back to?”  That could be for a restaurant bill, of course (a common one), or even for like a utility bill when you don’t know why you’re paying so much for the cable and you don’t watch it.  The best thing to do with sharing is to make sure you know what you’re getting into, have a good sense of expectations. And it’s obviously good to discuss how bills are getting split in advance, even if you’re not going to have a formal roommate agreement.

What value do you place on providing people an easier way to split the bill?

I see the value in the relationships saved or in just having a more fun experience; where you feel like you have this little virtual bar tab or house account and you don’t have to think about money so much. It’s always fun to not to have to think hard about money and not have it be so transactional.  All of the people on our team were doing something like Splitwise before we came together and made an official version with the app and the website.

In general what factors would you say lead to a bad roommate experience?  A good roommate experience?

I think bad communication is always the root of it . . . or just terrible people.  If you have people who are very stubborn or unworkable then sometimes it will ruin everything.  Of course, people who are lazy and who don’t do their share are always the people everyone gets so frustrated with, and I think they make bad roommates unless everyone has the same attitude.  Mostly it comes down to picking people who you can communicate well with and those who have a shared set of expectations.  It’s also really great not to have to be explicit about your expectations.  No one really wants to sit down and make a roommate agreement.  I know some people do that and that’s a sensible idea, but it’s not necessarily very fun.  I’ve never made one. I think bad roommate experiences come from bad communication, people who don’t do what they say they do, or roommates who are just horrible people.

Good roommate experiences can be so wonderful.  Actually, it’s much nicer than living alone; living alone can be very isolating and roommates are like free friends.  So if you pick people who trust, people whom you think are fun or who are sensible (bare minimum sensible), I think it can be very pleasant.  Even if they’re not going to be your best friend, they could be really positive influence in your life.  We hear all kinds of good stories as well as bad; most of the bad stories come when people haven’t talked with each other and have started assuming what the other person is thinking.

How do you feel about best friends rooming together?

It can definitely work well; it’s certainly a risk.  I think that it’s a good idea to do it on a short-term basis first.  A good test is to go on a trip together.  That’s also a good test for people whom you want to work with.  When you travel you experience most of the same troubles.   How do we deal with the money?  How do we deal with the space?  “I want to go to bed now.” “I want to invite people over.”  Traveling is a good way to test it, but it’s definitely a risk.  I think it’s easier to make friends with your roommates than it is to have your friends become your roommates.

Can you share an experience you had with a bad roommate?

Fortunately I’ve only had one really bad experience with a roommate, but maybe it’s too colorful for the Internet, if such a thing is possible.  I probably wrote my best essay in college about how frustrating I found him.

Who can use Splitwise?

Splitwise is great for anyone who has friends, but it’s especially good for roommates and couples too.  The people who love it best are the people who have roommates that they’re really tight with and they share a lot of things with.  So people who are like, “Let’s all go out and I’ll get groceries for us” or  “We’re going to throw a party, and I’m going to buy all the beer this time.”  Or couples who are like, “Every time we buy plane tickets together, I just throw it up on Splitwise and I don’t have to try to move around big chunks of money.”  I know couples who are unmarried (who don’t have shared bank accounts), and roommates love it.  It’s great for sharing vacations too.

How can people access Splitwise?  How can they get started?

If you’ve got a room and you’re not sure how to split up the rent, check out our calculators (Splitwise.com/calculators).  If you’ve been living in a place and you’re trying to keep track of all the bills go to Splitwise.com or in the app store at Splitwise (the iPhone or the Android app store).  Just search for Splitwise.

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Roommates, Student Life

Choosing Your College Roommate: Why Rooming with Your Best Friend May Not be the Best Idea

When you head off to college, it is one of the scariest times in your life; you’re away from most of the people you know, you are living away from home, and you’re starting a whole new chapter in your life, all at once.  This may also be the first time you’ll be sharing a room with someone, and it can be an incredibly scary to think that you’ll be sharing a room with someone whom you don’t know.  You will immediately ask yourself “Who do I know that I could room with?”

In an article we read by Julie and Lindsey Mayfield on U.S. News and World Report, they explain that while it may be tempting, your first choice shouldn’t be your best friend.  While you feel like it may take a lot of the pressure off the situation, you may actually be putting more stress on the relationship.  This is because when you move away for school, you are not only trying to get used to living with someone else, but you are also just trying to get used to being away at school.  Considering all of this, it can end disastrously.

In another article we read by University Language Services, they explain that besides the fact that you may lose your best friend, there’s a myriad of other problems you can encounter.  First, your social life can take hit because you are often less likely to push yourself to make new friends.  Second, you may miss out on new experiences.  By choosing to room with your best friend you are less likely to seek out new friendships, and are therefore less likely to experience new people and new things. Third, your old habits will be harder to break.  When you live with your best friend you are more likely to hold onto your old habits and your more likely to stick to your old routine.  By living with new people, you could introduce yourself to new things that you might not otherwise have tried.  Lastly, your work ethic (and your bank account) are sure to suffer.  If you live with your best friend, you may end up spending more time socializing than you do on your schoolwork, as your room will double as a study and social area on a daily basis.   You will also most likely be going out more often, and so your wallet will suffer too.

Alternatively, many suggest that living with a friend (rather than a best friend), or even living with a stranger are better options than living with your best friend.  Not only will this experience expose you to new people and new things, but you friendships will remain in tact.

When you’re encountering any situation with a roommate, it’s always a good idea to set out a list of ground rules and expectations for the room beforehand.  In a previous post to our blog, we gave you a list of topics that may be useful to discuss with your roommate.  According to the Mayfields, you just have to realize sharing can get tricky, and that you have to open and honest when problems do arise. While you don’t have to be best friends, it is in the best interest of both of you to ensure that you can get along for at least the next year.

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Roommates

7 Topics You Want to Discuss With Your Roommate(s)

Whether you’re subletting this summer or looking to move into a new place in the fall, you are bound to run into some issues with your roommate(s).  However, there are some things you can discuss with them beforehand that will help you nip some of these potential issues in the bud.

Music/TV

According to an article we read on ApartmentTherapy.com, if you’re sharing a room, you will want to discuss your tendencies when it comes to listening to music and watching TV.   Some people would prefer listening to music or watching TV with speakers, and other people would be fine with headphones.  You’ll want to see what each other’s preferences are and maybe come to a decision as to what times the speakers can be used.

Even if you aren’t sharing a room you want to be sure that you establish the use of the TV and/or stereo.  How will time be divided up amongst the roommates?  Will you have quiet hours?

Shared Items

In an article we read by Missy Slink in Yahoo! Voices, she explains that you will want to determine what items will be for community use and what items will not.  Will you share food?  If so, what foods will you be sharing?  Will you be sharing things like a vacuum?

You’ll also want to determine how and if you will be sharing things like toilet paper, paper towels, and cleaning products.  Will you each buy your own?  Will you be splitting this, and if you do decide to split this, how will you divide the cost amongst the roommates?

Sleeping Habits

If you’re sharing a room, this is especially important to discuss beforehand.  If you’re roommate goes to bed at 10 pm and you go to bed around 3 am, you’ll want to establish how you will manage this.  Does this mean you’ll switch to a desk lamp to study?  Can you watch television when they go to bed?

If you each have your own room, you will still want to discuss this so that you can properly set quiet hours.  This way you won’t be disturbing someone while they are trying to sleep.

Guest Habits

When you’re sharing a space, you’ll want to figure out what the guest policy will be for your room/apartment.  If you plan on having a lot of friends over, or you have a significant other, you will want to figure out when they can come over, when they can’t, and when guests should go home.  You may also want to determine what the ground rules will be for guests in terms of using shared items.

Security

As someone who has had roommates who leave all the doors unlocked, this is definitely something you want to discuss beforehand.  If you are someone who likes to make sure everything is locked up when you run to get coffee, or when you go to bed at night, you will want to talk about that beforehand with your roommate.

Decorating

If you’re sharing a room, you’ll want to determine if you want to share room decorations, or you want to set up your own spaces.  If each have your own separate bedrooms, you will still want to establish decorations for the common areas.

Concerns

You want to establish beforehand how and when you will raise concerns with one another should they arise.  It may be a little awkward to establish this beforehand, but you don’t want to be that roommate who leaves passive aggressive notes around when they get frustrated.  That won’t end well.

By establishing some ground rules beforehand and making sure you can live comfortably together, this will help you have a better roommate experience.  Just remember:  the space belongs to both of you.

For tips more tips on how to ensure fairness between you and your roommate(s), check out Splitwise and their blog at http://blog.splitwise.com/

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