How to split bills when living with roommates

For some, living with roommates is a choice. For others, it’s a necessary evil due to rising housing costs.

Whatever the reason, living with others lowers the cost of living. It doesn’t matter if you’re moving in with your significant other, friends, or someone you met on Craigslist — more people means more ways to split up the mutual living expenses, like rent, cable/internet, utilities, and so on.

So, how can you and your roommates best split and pay these bills so everything runs smoothly?

Start by listing out all the bills you and your roommates need to pay as a group. Rent is an obvious one, but there are others, including cable/internet, gas, and electric.

Next, assign each bill to a roommate. For example, maybe you’re the person who pays the rent each month, while the second roommate takes cable/internet and the third gas and electric

Reminder: Being responsible for paying the cable bill doesn’t mean you control the TV.

By assigning each bill to a roommate, it splits up bill payment among the group rather than one single person. That roommate will become familiar with the bill’s due date and have less risk of forgetting about it.

Additionally, it allows each roommate the opportunity to show creditors their ability to make timely payments. That’ll help build up each person’s credit score. Another way it could improve your credit? Paying bills, when applicable, with your credit card!

Obviously, it’s easiest to split each bill evenly among all roommates. However, some living situations are a bit more complex.

Let’s say you live with your significant other and you make significantly more money than they do. Or, you make roughly the same amount, but they have a much larger student loan payment each month.

Is it better to split up the bills in a way that reflects each of your incomes or financial situations? Perhaps you could pay 60% of each bill while your partner handles the remaining 40%. This decision can be tough to come to; it involves a conversation that could be on the awkward side. However, if you can get past that and have an open and honest conversation, it could benefit the both of you in the long run.

When your bill’s due date is approaching, request the funds from each roommate using Zelle or another peer-to-peer payment method.¹

There are a couple of benefits to doing this:

• You don’t have to awkwardly ask your roommates for money
• Each transaction is recorded, creating a paper trail

Type out the month and bill when sending or requesting money from your roommates. For example, if you’re requesting rent money from each of your roommates for June, enter “June rent” in the description. That way, there’s an easy-to-understand record of who paid what bill and when.

When you’re requesting money for bills, give your roommates a proper amount of lead time before the bill is actually due. If cable/internet is due on the 15^th of every month, it’s probably best to request the money on the 8^th or so. That way, they have a chance to gather the money and send it to you in time, rather than requesting it on the 15^th, only to learn that your roommate needs to wait until their next paycheck to send over their share.

And if your roommates don’t send their money in time? You can either re-request the money from them or go to them directly. Let it be known right away that you’re just looking for an update on their share so they don’t think you’re accusing them of anything. They probably just forgot! And if that’s not the case, the roommate can explain the situation so you know how to proceed.

Requesting money from roommates might feel awkward, but it shouldn’t be!

Roommates make it easier to afford the cost of living. And by using the steps outlined above to split bills with roommates, you can handle all bill payments quickly and efficiently while avoiding potentially awkward conversations. You could even take this a step further and use this process to cover other mutual expenses, like grocery items, cleaning products, and others.

Want to make it even easier to pay your bills with roommates? Open a separate checking account for all bills, then set up automatic transfers from each paycheck to that account so you always have the money you need when rent or another bill is due.

• Learn how to set up this financial plan!