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Let's face it: Rent is expensive, and it's going up all the time. If you're having a hard time covering your monthly rent bill and swinging all your other expenses too, here's a time-tested method for slashing your bills in half: Get a roommate. The following tips can help you choose a good roommate while protecting both of you financially.
1. Compatibility is key. Conduct an honest self-appraisal by asking yourself how assertive, flexible, sensitive, able to compromise and able to communicate you are. Also reflect on your habits, quirks, interests and pet peeves. This should help you recognize what kind of roommate you could tolerate - and vice versa.
2. Ask important questions. Don't be too polite to ask your potential roommate questions such as: Are you financially able to pay your share of the rent? Do you consider yourself to be a responsible person? What kind of schedule do you keep? What kind of entertaining do you plan to do?
3. Put it in writing. It may seem like an awkward or unnecessarily extreme step, but it's important to clarify how your bills and chores will be divided. You can find a sample roommate agreement and a wealth of other advice by going to www.nolo.com and searching for the term "roommate."
4. Get specific. Specify who lives in which room, who handles which bills and chores, what must be done to get the security deposit back and how to proceed if someone must leave before the lease expires.
5. Your lease matters. Read it and understand what it means. Each of you probably can be held responsible for the entire rent, as well as any damage that occurs. What's more, if your roommate turns out to be undependable or irresponsible, you can't have him or her evicted.
6. Be upfront with your landlord. If a new tenant moves in, be honest about it. You might be tempted not to reveal that information, since the landlord might increase your rent or alter your lease terms. But if the new tenant damages the unit, you're the one who stands to be evicted - and the one who could lose your landlord as a reference when you need to move on to your next apartment.
7. Don't put all the bills in your name. If you trust your roommate to pay a bill that has your name on it, and he or she pays it late or doesn't pay it at all, guess whose credit rating gets damaged? Yours and yours alone. Put all the household bills in different roommates' names so you each end up paying roughly the same amount.
8. Watch the phone bill. It can cause huge fights and even wreck relationships among roommates. To prevent this, ask the phone company whether the roommates in the home can be assigned different codes for making long-distance calls. Or, each of you could get your own cell phone.
9. Figure out the food. Another common source of contention: fights over food sharing. It's easy to feel annoyed over having someone else eat food you purchased. To avoid anger and confusion, address this issue in your contract.
10. Keep your senses about furniture. It probably isn't wise to buy a whole bunch of furniture together. Instead, understand which piece of furniture belongs to which roommate upfront to avoid problems when you go your separate ways.
- Sources: MSN Money (www.moneycentral.com) "House Mates: A Guide to Cooperative Shared Housing," by Lori Stephens; Nolo: Law for All (www.nolo.com)