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Finances when sharing a student flat/house?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
For those of you who share a flat/house with other students, or in fact just anyone who shares a place with a few people, how do you manage your money when it comes to things like food, bills and so on?
When we first arrived here, my flatmates and I did a massive shop together and bought loads of store-cupboard items which lasted us absolutely ages and meant we had a few meals in reserve. This was great but then we inevitably started running out of stuff and had no time to do a big shop together again.
So if we ran out of bread and someone fancied toast in the morning, they'd have to pop down to the shop and get some. But then other people would end up eating it too, so we agreed to set up a sort of 'kitty' for agreed items like bread, milk, eggs, cheese, kitchen towl, washing up liquid and so on.
But now I'm getting quite annoyed because there are just occasional things which I buy personally, like herbal tea because I really like drinking it and if we run out I'll go buy some more. And I don't mind as it's not that expensive, but if two other people are drinking it too then I only get about a third of every box I buy.
And stuff like I'll buy something for my lunch, decide I don't want it then, and next day go to the fridge to get it only to find someone else has taken it.
I bought a bag of grapes the other day, my flatmate asked if she could have a few and when I actually got round to wanting some, there were about 6 left.
It's all so petty cos it's such little things, but I can't afford to keep buying things for general consumption! And I know it's not just my flatmates doing it to me and I'm sure I must do the same thing occasionally, but can anyone give any tips as to how to manage your communal finances without the spending becoming unevenly split?
When we first arrived here, my flatmates and I did a massive shop together and bought loads of store-cupboard items which lasted us absolutely ages and meant we had a few meals in reserve. This was great but then we inevitably started running out of stuff and had no time to do a big shop together again.
So if we ran out of bread and someone fancied toast in the morning, they'd have to pop down to the shop and get some. But then other people would end up eating it too, so we agreed to set up a sort of 'kitty' for agreed items like bread, milk, eggs, cheese, kitchen towl, washing up liquid and so on.
But now I'm getting quite annoyed because there are just occasional things which I buy personally, like herbal tea because I really like drinking it and if we run out I'll go buy some more. And I don't mind as it's not that expensive, but if two other people are drinking it too then I only get about a third of every box I buy.
And stuff like I'll buy something for my lunch, decide I don't want it then, and next day go to the fridge to get it only to find someone else has taken it.
I bought a bag of grapes the other day, my flatmate asked if she could have a few and when I actually got round to wanting some, there were about 6 left.
It's all so petty cos it's such little things, but I can't afford to keep buying things for general consumption! And I know it's not just my flatmates doing it to me and I'm sure I must do the same thing occasionally, but can anyone give any tips as to how to manage your communal finances without the spending becoming unevenly split?
Post edited by JustV on
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Bopz
With regards to cleaning products/toilet rolls; only me and 1 of the other housemates bought toilet rolls and the likes and now it's starting to run out so we're kinda waiting for the other 2 to get down to the shop!
Although some of the others are commies, so I get to eat their biscuits.
Bills are split between us equally (exept the telephone bill, which is itemised).
Forgot to say; bills are split. Not that we've had any yet. We have a gas card and all chip in £10 whenever it needs topping up. Landlord pays water bill, we don't have a phone line and had no other bills as yet.
So far, we've not bought much stuff as a house.
We have our own food but occasionally people steal stuff belonging to others like cheese, eggs etc. It all works out even in the end. We don't DARE touch anyone else's "nice" food, like yoghurts, cakes, crisps etc though!
With bills, there is luckily only electricity to worry about as we don't have gas, telephone etc. we have a key meter and just put on £10 each when it runs out so it's split evenly.
For things like toilet roll, washing up liquid etc we put in £1 a week each to a kitty which we then use to buy these things.
With food, we each have a cupboard and a shelf in the fridge and it is basically assumed that what you buy is for you only, unless someone actually asks to borrow something. It does seem kind of silly cos we end up with like 14 pints of milk in the fridge but it seems fairest cos then people aren't paying for stuff they aren't getting to use.
just depends if your housemates are filthy robbing bastards.
Food wise, we share stuff like squash, bread, eggs etc... and we take it in turns to buy cleaning stuff. Everything else we buy for ourselves. It just depends who bought it last.
Most normal people can work this sort of thing out no probs, but do you no hoard some of your treasured personal munch in your room?
The blokes i know keep food (crisps, cans of coke, etc) in their bedroom but that's because there's no room in their kitchen.
Money well spent i tells ya:D
Leaving computers on all the time for some reason or another.
Generally we go shopping as a group weekly (or more often fortnightly) and then go through the receipt marking off who owes what. This means that we share our main stocks of food and basics but also have our own food. We buy bread and milk whenever it is needed and just let it average out.
We have then made an Excel file to work out who owes what. I'll post the file up if anyone is interested.
The year before, we bought all our own stuff. Only divided thing was the utility bills.
oh comps, I see. I never use shortenings so I wouldn't understand unles you wrote out c-o-m-p-u-t-e-r-s. I thought you meant competitions. doh. just call me homer simpson