Find a Roommate to Help With Rental Costs?

Answer 1

If you are renting a home or an apartment alone, it can sometimes be helpful to find a roommate. You can rent out a single room of your home, or choose to share the space with someone equally. A roommate brings financial benefits as well as social and safety benefits.

Share Utilities

One of the most expensive aspects of renting your own home or apartment is paying for the utilities. If you find a roommate, you can split the utility costs between you. This makes it less expensive for each of you compared to paying the full cost on your own. The increase in usage will probably be less than the benefit if sharing the costs, since you will both use the same amount of heat, air, and lighting in many cases. If necessary, you can divide the costs considering who uses what appliances the most often.

Help With Housework

Having a roommate around can also help reduce the amount of cleaning that each of you has to do. If you were living alone, you would be responsible for cleaning, vacuuming, and dusting the entire apartment on your own. With a roommate, you can divide the labor so that each of you does some of the housework each week. This will allow both of you to spend more time doing the things you would rather do instead of spending time working on cleaning the house or apartment. Living with someone else can also provide motivation to do the cleaning instead of letting it pile up like you might if you were alone.

Extra Home Security

The fact that two people are living in the same home or apartment means that there is probably someone home more often. When you live alone, you leave the apartment or home unoccupied every time you go out. If someone is living with you, the odds are that you will not both be gone all of the time. With an increase in the amount of time someone is home, there is a decrease in the opportunities for someone to rob you. Having two of you in the home also provides extra protection if something went wrong or someone did try to break in.