Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with roommate and money

No lease, moving howto?

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:48:23 -0800

I live in an apartment with no lease and pay rent to my (dishonest) roommate. How do I minimize my financial losses when I move out? I moved in June 15 and paid a full month's rent ($600). The next month and each subsequent month my roommate told me to pay $550 after I questioned how high the rent was. I paid that rent on the first of each month (or thereabouts).

In months that passed, I've found out that roommate has lied about how much the whole apartment rents for, and that he pays $50 less rent than he told me he paid. I've also observed that he generally lies and cheats people out of things whenever he has the opportunity to do so. We do not have good roommate relations due to related and unrelated conflicts, and he does not like me & vice versa.

I don't have a security deposit or a lease, the utilities are in my name (and I take the amount that he owes me out of the rent check each month), and what we'd (verbally) agreed upon was that I would give 30 days notice before moving out.

I am planning on moving out December 14. I am also planning on taking the utilities out of my name starting on that day. I am 95% positive that he will not give me what he owes me for utilities for the period of December 1-15 (the bill that I will get after I move out). This will be a non-trivial sum since we live in a cold area with high gas bills.

What I (and others I've consulted) see my options as being are to give him written and verbal notification on November 13 that I will be moving out on December 14 and:

A: Pay all of December rent.
B: Pay half of December rent.
C: Say that I've been paying rent from the 15th-15th of each month (since I moved in on June 15) and pay no December rent.
D: Pay half of December rent and subtract the utilities that he owes from that AND the utilities that I project he will owe for the final bill.

So, MetaFilter, what do I do? What is right? What is fair? What will screw me over the least?

How should I best handle bills when moving in with my boyfriend?

belau — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:44:11 -0800

How should I best handle moving in with my boyfriend? I haven't had a roommate for a long time, but will be moving in with my boyfriend soon. How do people handle bills and other expenses when they have a roommate, and especially when the roommate is your significant other? I'm a woman in her late 20's, would like to not get myself into a situation where I'm left with a gap in my own credit history, etc. Any other advice? I'm really looking forward to this, but want to make sure I'm handling it well! I've seen this question but am looking for input geared toward moving in with the future husband-type.

Roommate negotiations... ugh...

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:45:18 -0800

So, I have a roommate. We were friends before living together, and for the most part we get along fine. We've had some arguments, but we seem to have gotten past them. Now I'm just feeling frustrated by some nit-picky things she does and I want to know if I should address them at all, and how not to be insulting or irritating. Little things, like washing the dishes but neglecting to ring out the sponge (which breeds mildew and is unsanitary as well as completely disgusting-- I had been wondering why the dishes always smelled funky after she washed them) and then I find I buy replacement sponges once every two weeks. It's getting expensive and irksome, and even though I've asked her to ring them out she still leaves them and lets them rot.

She also has a tendency to stay at her boyfriend's house for days at a time, which wouldn't bother me except that it then falls to me to feed her cat. She doesn't really clean up after the poor thing either, which is simply not something I'm willing to do. Period. If I wanted a pet I would have gotten one, and when we moved in I established clearly that the pet-related messes would not be my problem.

And most recently the most irritating of all is that she eats my food. And I swear I'm not a stingy person, I actually don't mind at all that she shares food with me provided that she replaces any food that she eats the majority-- i.e. sure, make a sandwich or two with my bread, no problem, but if I buy a loaf and 3/4 of it are gone before I eat even one slice, replace it. This is not to say that she never replaces my food, and to that extent I acknowledge that she's trying to make things even, but here's where I sound like a big time female dog...

When it comes to clothing, cleaning supplies, and household stuff I don't care about namebrands. Whatever works will work for me, but when it comes to my food I am incredibly particular. I work hard to afford the brands that I choose because they taste better. She then replaces my expensive brandname food with crappy Kroger generics. I wouldn't buy those because I prefer the better brands and I'm willing to pay more for them. Clearly, she feels differently, so I end up with the short end of the stick-- paying more for the better brands but eating the crappy ones.

I've considered many things, not the least of which is letting it go-- we have only 6 months left on our lease and we know we won't be living together again after that. But is it really fair for me to put up with this for all that time? I feel like it's more and more money out of my pocket. I try to keep my special food that I really care about in one of the veggie crispers, but she still pilfers it from time to time. How can I express my frustration politely (in the form of a note preferably, as talking to her face to face has usually led to arguments in the past) without sounding like I've got a stick up my bum?

I'm so over this roommate drama.

wild like kudzu — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 09:56:27 -0800

So, I have a roommate. I love her, we usually get along just fine, but recently we argued over some financial stuff and now we're not really on speaking terms. How the heck should I handle this? (Long post, long story) So, it's a long story, but essentially I paid half of the bills last month with checks and asked her to mail them out. She had no problem with that, but she tried to mail them out of our mailbox at our apartment and the mailman didn't pick them up, so knowing they were slightly late she paid them in full online and ripped up my checks. I had no problem with that, and she said she would sit down and figure out how much I owed her. She said that a few times, but it never happened. Anyway, she let me borrow one of her pairs of sunglasses last week and I left them on the coffee table by mistake at the end of the night. Her cat knocked them off and broke them in the course of the night, and when I got up the next morning I actually stepped on the broken pieces and got a nasty cut on my foot. I cleaned it up, and told her about it when she came home. If I recall correctly, I offered to help pay for it, but there's a chance that I didn't offer anything at first.

Anyway, a few days later she and I went out and she drove my car home because she wanted to leave before I did. I had no problem with that, but when I went out to the car the next day the door was unlocked and my ipod was gone. I assumed she had left it unlocked because she's left our front door unlocked before, but I have no proof and have since let it go. Yeah, it sucks, my ipod is gone and I don't have the money to replace it, so when I saw her next I told her about it and asked if she'd be willing to help me pay for it. She seemed really irritated, and brought up the money I still owed her from last month's utilities (and here I am thinking she's going to tell me how much I owe her). I brought up the sunglasses, and how I was going to pay to replace them. She said she thought I was only bringing that up because I wanted money from her. She said she thought she locked the door on the car. She said if she let someone borrow her car she would have gone down in the middle of the night when she got home and made sure everything was locked, I thought that was ridiculous. Anyway, basically she said she was pissed off and so I went into my room. I thought about it for a while, came back out and apologized for not offering to pay for her glasses sooner, but she said "it's okay that we don't get along sometimes. I'm not mad" so I went back into my room and called it a night.

The next day I looked through our bills to figure out how much I owed her, and paid her in cash for all the utilities from the month before, plus $35 for her sunglasses. I left it with a note on her computer, asking to make sure it was right and whether this made us even. I was asleep when she got it, and she hasn't said anything to me about it.

So, I'm totally over all of this bull. I wanted to get us back to square one, with nobody owing anyone anything. Unfortunately, this was clearly not enough as I saw her last night and she barely looked at me, barely spoke to me. I tried to be cheerful and happy (I have not said anything at all about the ipod since that first night) and interact with her, but she just retreated into her room. Her phone is broken, so I can't call or text her at all. I've been trying to give her space and leave her be since that's what she seems like she wants, but I don't know why we're not on good terms at this point.

Here's the thing, too, I will honestly be a little upset if she doesn't help me pay for my ipod, just because I would help her pay for hers if the situation was reversed. I'm insulted that she thinks I would lie "just to get money out of [her]" and irritated that while her cat broke her sunglasses it's still up to me to replace them....

This all seems so petty, we're really good friends usually and we've only been living together a few months. I'm going out of town on Wednesday, and I'm probably not going to see her much before then, I'll be back a week later.

What the heck should I do here? Be an invisible ghost who hides in my room? Give her space? Stop her and confront her? I sent her a message online that she probably hasn't seen yet saying that I'd really like for us to sit down and talk. I guess I'm also just irritated because I feel like I have to coerce her into forgiving me for something I think I've made up for in other ways, including actual apologies. She has said in the past that she hates how quickly I bring up issues, but this difference is evident in the way that none of my aggravations with her ever turn into anything major because I bring them up at the time, when they're just a small problem. She, on the other hand, holds onto small annoyances and then when I talk to her about anything she brings up everything I've been doing to piss her off. They end up seeming way worse than they are that way.

Gosh! So irritating! Anybody have any thoughts?

Sublettee responsibilitee?

suedehead — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 22:45:02 -0800

I was supposed to stay a year, but am moving out within the first month. I gave my roommate/sublettor three weeks' notice that I was moving out. Do I have to find a roommate for him? I'm not leasing, but subletting the room. The contact (signed by both parties) stated that it was a month-to-month contract, and doesn't state anything concerning any amount of notice for moving out. I paid the first and last month's rent upfront, and would like to get the last month's back in a civil manner.

My roommate is out of town until the 20th. I emailed my roommate telling him that I was leaving, right after the first week (the 8th). The roommate responded by saying 'let's talk later'. Today, I got a very curt one-line email asking me if I could "please work on finding a replacement?"

Is this necessary? As a subletter, what rights do I have? (I'm in NYC.) I'm of the opinion that since there was no minimum length of contract and since it was month-to-month, and since I gave more than enough notice, I shouldn't be the person responsible for looking for a replacement. At the same time, I want to know if this is the kosher 'thing to do'. I don't want to be evil, but I don't have time to look for someone either. At the same time, I want to get my last month's rent back. What should I do?

Missing in Action, Presumed Deadbeat.

Imperfect — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 11:46:36 -0800

I live in a house where the rent is shared amongst five people. One of those people left for Vancouver over a month ago, presumably because she had a good job offer where she could work unlimited hours. This was to be a 2-week "working vacation" and she told us she was going to use those two weeks to save up some money for paying her variously-accruing debts. She hasn't returned. We need to know what our options are. A little more detail. We failed to get any sort of number where she could be reached, and feel a little stupid about this. She was supposed to be home well before rent was due for last month and wasn't. Supposedly we received a message on our machine from her, asking us to go in and pick up her cheque. We tried to call back this number, but got a business lines that hadn't heard of her.

Recently, I'd heard from one of her friends that she was supposed to be back last weekend, but she never was. And now, we've heard through the grapevine that she's supposed to come back this Thursday.

She owes us nearly $1300. She's two months in arrears on her portion of the rent, very nearly three now. She owes around $500 on her share of the phone bill. She's behind on utilities. She has two other "official" creditors that we know about. She's deeply in debt, and we're kind of worried about her simply coming home long enough to grab her stuff and leave us with her debt.

We're considering throwing a 2x4 over her door, preventing it from opening. She still has access to her room via her window, which she's used in the past when she's locked herself out of the house. This would mainly prevent her from removing her large, big-ticket items. Is this legal?

We're considering claiming her stuff, if we have any right to it, as abandoned and trying to recoup costs out of that. Is this legal, and if so, under what conditions?

We're considering renting out her room as quickly as possible to stop this cash hole in all our wallets. Is this legal?

We're considering calling the police and reporting her missing. While we are upset with her for debt issues, we are also genuinely concerned, as she's been gone a long while, and we only have anecdotal evidence to her welfare. Will the police be upset with us?

For reference, we're in Ontario, Canada.

Any more questions, I'll reply. We're kind of at our wits end, and none of us are in great financial shape ourselves. This is very nearly a make-or-break issue for each of us.

how do we share the cost of a ride?

cilantro — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 16:22:35 -0800

My roommate and I have the same job and we usually work the same days and shifts. Our workplace is a 30 minute walk away, so once or twice a week when I'm feeling lazy I call the local transit service for a ride. The transit van is three dollars per trip for one person and one dollar for each additional person. Here's the issue- my roommate never takes the transit van when we're not on the same shift and she is never the one to suggest taking the transit van, even when it's raining, but the second I do, she's all over the idea, crisp dollar bill in hand. I end up paying three dollars while she pays one. I once complained about how this is a little unfair, she said that it was my idea to take the van, I'm going to take it anyway whether she does or not, and I'm not having to pay any more, so she's not doing anything to hurt me. She also claims that if she decided to call for the van before I did, she would fully expect to pay three dollars to my one dollar. It's only a little bit of money, but I'm a student and three dollars is a half-hour of work.
Technically it almost seems like she's right, but I still feel like I'm being taken advantage of and it makes me irritable and bitchy towards her. Am I justified for feeling this way? Should I insist that she pay her two dollars, and if she refuses, should I avoid her before work and then sneak off to catch the van around the corner? Should I just shut up and pay my three dollars? Or what?

How do I get my money back from my ex-roommate?

thefinned1 — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 19:17:22 -0800

How do I get my money back from my ex-roommate? I just finished a one year lease with a roommate who never paid any of his share of the utilities. I asked for them every month but never got any of money out of him. Since I could afford it I paid both my share and his. The last month he didn't pay his share of the rent, and in the interest of keeping my rental history clean I had to pay it. Over the course of the year he ended up owing me $1,300.

I always wanted my money but now that I am out of the apartment I really want my money.

I have sent 2 or 3 letters to him, outlining what he owes me and when I want the money. The deadline for him to pay me was just the other day and surprise, surprise I didn't get my dough.

Initially I had planned on taking him to small claims court but though a mutual friend I found out that he (my ex-roomie) filed for bankruptcy on the last day before the law was changed.

So what are my choices?

Can I still take him to small claims court despite his bankruptcy?

Can I take him to bankruptcy court?

Should I hire a lawyer?

Cut my losses?

Are there other options?