House Fund for Shared Expenses With Your Roommate

One of the main problems that persists when you have a roommate is shared expenses. You can’t get away from the fact that you share living quarters, and are thus equally responsible for the expenses of living in said quarters. Rent, utilities, food, cleaning supplies and maintenance costs must be shared by all roommates, which is why you should create a house fund for shared expenses.

Even if you and your roommate found each other on a Web site, you should treat the relationship like a marriage in terms of financial responsibility. Sit down together over cups of coffee and design a budget that incorporates all shared expenses for the home. What you do with money left over is entirely up to the individual, but shared expenses should be deposited into a house fund.

The house fund can be a bank account under both your names (if you trust each other), or it can be a cookie jar in the kitchen. However you decide, the money for the house fund should be “deposited” before anything else so that there’s always sufficient cash to take care of business. Your budget should reflect both fixed costs (rent, maintenance, subscriptions) and estimated costs (utilities, cleaning supplies), with some extra padding for emergencies.

It is also important that you decide the purposes for which the house fund can be used. In other words, it isn’t acceptable to raid the house fund when you don’t have any cash for a beer run, nor is it permissible to make a “withdrawal” without the other roommate’s consent. This method of financial responsibility requires a degree of trust, so you might want to monitor its contents regularly until you’ve lived together for a while.

The house fund serves many purposes for roommates in addition to convenience. For one thing, you won’t be nit-picking over every receipt when one of you goes shopping, which can help with morale in the home. If you have to purchase cleaning supplies, for example, you can make a withdrawal from the house fund, then go shopping together or one of you can go alone. Receipts for house fund monies should be kept in a common location, such as a kitchen drawer or cabinet.

At the end of each month, add up the money left over in the house fund and apply it to the next month’s fund. Or, if you prefer, use the surplus money to do something fun for both of you, such as ordering pizza and renting a movie or going out to dinner. This allows you both to benefit from frugality. If you run out of money in the fund by the end of the month, split the amount of money you require for the rest of the month and make a new deposit, which doesn’t reflect on the next month.

Furthermore, it is important to agree with your roommate that the essentials always come first. Rent, utilities and groceries are the most important things in order to survive, so make sure you have sufficient money in the house fund to cover those expenses. If one of you eats more often in the home, you might have to make adjustments for groceries. However you work it out, each person needs to meet his or her obligations.