Moneysaving With A Flatmate In Your Rented Flat
Most people feel that the costliest thing about living right now is finding accommodation. You might need to leave your current home and move to another area for professional or educational reasons. When you do so, you will need to rent a home or buy it completely, which doesn’t make much sense. So renting is an option, but even that is not as cheap as one would think. The one way to make renting accommodations economical is to look for someone else who is sailing the same boat and you and invite them to becom e a flatmate.
These people you share accommodations with are called as flatmates. You can find them through placing advertisements in the newspapers and nowadays you also have the possibility of using the Internet to get flatmates. They could be people from your own school or college or place of work, or they could be in an entirely different league from you. The main thing is that these people will be sharing the house and its resources with you, which also means that they will be sharing the costs.
That is where the great benefit of having a flatmate sets in—you can split costs of living with them.
Now, what are the different ways can you split your living costs with your flatmates? Here we shall look at some of them.
1. You can split the rent of the accommodation. This is done according to the number of flatmates. As an example, if you are sharing your house with just another person, then both of you pay half of the rent. If there are 3 more with you, each will pay one-fourth of the rent.
2. Most utility bills can be split. This includes the electricity bill, the telephone bill, the Internet bill and so on. Here, some prior decisions might need to be taken. Now, electricity is something everyone uses and so those bills will be split in the right proportion. But, the Internet bills may be different. Suppose it is just you who uses the Internet and your flatmate doesn’t at all, then it is only fair that you pay the entire Internet bill.
3. It is also all right if you split the routine living expenses. Repairing expenses might also be split. Most repairs should be carried out by the landlord anyway but there are some small ones that you might have to bear, which you could split. Festival expenses are another thing that all flatmates usually share.
4. Then don’t forget the food. There are different ways to be fair here. All flatmates could take turns to buy the food, or could set a monthly budget for food and pay their share while one of them does the shopping. Related expenses such as those of dishwashers, refrigerators and water filters must also be split.
So, getting a flatmate could be very economical. Then there are also additional benefits like having more security around the house, having some company if you are the friendly sort and so on.
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