Splitting up household bills as a student

We all come into this world with a built in sense of justice. And when it comes to paying bills, the just thing would seem to be to split them fairly.

However, what counts as fairly? Does the person who uses much more water and electricity than anyone else (some people are incredibly high consumers of resources relative to others) pay more, or should everyone pay an equal share?

Well, with most bills they cannot be split in anything other than equal portions as individual consumption cannot be monitored.

Therefore if there are five people in the house then you should split bills like for water, electricity and gas into five parts equally. But get the rules sorted out straight at the start of your tenancy of a property so that everyone knows where they stand.

Now, in most student properties it is the case that there are some rooms that are larger than others. This is the one area that can cause a real bone of contention. Often those with the biggest and best rooms want everyone to have the same room rent, whilst others who have the smallest rooms obviously want to pay less.

So what should you do? Well, ideally at the stage of when you all move in together you should straight away set out that those who have the biggest rooms pay a little more - say £30 more relative to those who have the smallest room, this seems only fair.

But be sure to discuss all this sort of thing straight away as the last thing you want is arguments raging as you are forming the household... it is where you all have to live for a year so you don't want any atmosphere building up!

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