Roommates & bills
 

i have a little squabble with one of my other roommates over how much I should have to pay for bills this past month. First of all you should know I was at my parents house for half of the month during the holiday season. My roommate Jenny thinks I should pay the same amount as the rest of the roommates who were all there for the whole month. Also Jenny ran up the electric bill all month with christmas lights (her idea) and an electric space heater she only uses in her room. The electric bill for this month was 3x what it normally is.

I feel that I should only have to pay half what everyone else pays because I wasnt even there. I am willing to pay my full share of the Comcast bill because the price doesnt fluctuate with usage unlike electricity and gas. My thinking is that since I wasnt there for half of the month, the electric and gas bills should be lower because its one less person using lights, hot water, cooking, etc.

What do you guys think?

You live there, so regardless of your travel plans, you should split the bills evenly. If someone if overusing water or electric, etc., set some roommate rules so that it doesn't happen again. And you have a right to speak up about unecessary utilties usages-- maybe next year she's allowed to have the Xmas lights on for 1 hour each day.

I live alone, and I was out of town for half the month of December. Does this mean I should only have to pay my landlord half the rent and the utilities necessary to keep my fridge running? No.

That's the point. The bills should have been lower because less people were there, but they were higher because of Christmas Tree Girl. If she is the one who ran them up, she should pay more. It would be the same if one person did 10 loads of laundry every day and another person did none.

If one person is running up the bill because they are using a space heater and insisted on Christmas lights, yes, they should have to pay more. The lights don't suck up that much power, but space heaters definitely do.

However, you shouldn't be absolved from paying utilities because you choose to be away.

So I guess in my opinion, you're half right and half wrong :)

Yeah, I don't know...on the one hand, if you lived alone, you'd still have to pay the regular amount of bills, so you should be responsible for your portion of the bills. But since your roommate ran up the bill, that complicates things...I don't really know what advice to give you, except that regardless of what you do, someone really needs to talk to that girl. It's not fair to run up a huge electricity bill (and yes, space heaters'll sure do it!) and then expect everyone else to have to pay more as well.

What is the average electric bill? If the average bill is $100, you guys should split $100 and have her pay for the overage.

Even when you're not there, you're still "using" electricity in the form of keeping the fridge cold, running the heat into your bedroom, keeping your clocks on, etc.

I recommend what ZTAngel said.

That you were not there most of the month is not an excuse, because you can't turn heat, fridge, etc. like she said. But if someone is running a space heater for no reason then thats a problem.

I would take average of the other months.. maybe go a little higher, then make her pay the overage bc her space heater use.

I would figure out the average cost of electricity per day and then find out how much it would come out to for the time you were there.

But then again, if someone takes a weekend trip in the future are they going to pay less in bills? You might have a snake on your hands here son.

I recommend living alone. No weird hair in the bathroom, no bill splitting, no worry about what to watch together on the tv...none of that.

-Rudey

Obviously if the bill is 3x higher and there's one less person there, she should know she's going to end up paying more!
The lights are one thing- first off, i don't think they make that big of a difference unless she left them on 24/7; Plus it sounds like she was doing it to make it nice for all of yall-and no one objected. As far as the space heater goes, she used it, she sucked up the energy, she needs to pay extra.

So I would definetely say just pay right around the average you normally do and hopefully she'll realize it's only fair.

I say you should bite the bullet on this one & pay your normal share. You still have to live w/ your roommate & arguing over something you didn't discuss beforehand could cause resentments. Next time you choose to go out of town/not be there for an extended period of time you'll have learned your lesson to discuss this kind of stuff before you go!

Broheim, I would just pay the bill and avoid drama.

Seriously dude. Plus, your roommate is a girl. You don't wanna fight with girls. They always cry and then you are will just be like " oooh ummm uhhhh ok here is 300 bucks :( "

we dont run the heat in our house, and keeping the clocks on???

well im at least glad that i have a bunch of different points of view. i dont know what our average bill is, but this one was about $150 higher.

I had the same thing happen to me when one of my roommates stayed over winter break and decided to keep the house heated to a comfy 85 degrees 24 hours a day for 3 weeks while she lived alone. When I walked in after break, I was nearly knocked over by the heat. The heating bill came in at a whopping $450 instead of the normal $100 to $125. There really was nothing we could do except split the bill evenly among the group, and keep the thermostat at 72 degrees or lower when the house was empty. I was not happy at all. Since then I have not lived with other people where we split the electric or gas bills.

Maybe you should consider living alone in the future.

HOLEY COW. How much drama is that!

I was thinking in terms of things you keep running through out the house no matter if you're home or not. Do you have an alarm clock that runs all the time in your house? Do you have a water heater that keeps water warm all day? Etc, etc. Home or not, you're always using electricity.

YUCK! Was she trying to turn your apartment into a sauna?