Room Mate

So you need to earn more money.

Get a room mate. Share some major expense or only offer a single room and limited conveniences.

You could solve all of your financial problems with this one decision and sacrifice. Here are some tips to get going.

Be careful how you advertise for a room mate unless you are prepared to do some serious vetting.

Word of mouth within a closed community of people who are like minded may work best.

First decide what you want to give up as far as privacy sharing and space etc. Make that clear from the beginning.

Considerations for a room-mate

You can figure out the details, but here is a handy check list.

Smoking - Allowed or not.

Noise - what is reasonable

Security - Do you lock the door all the time? How many keys are out there?

Space - What is your space and what is their space

Possessions - Can they use yours? Can you use theirs?

Music - What both of your tolerance level and opinions?

Guests - Definitely can be a big problem. Agree on the rules.

Garbage - Who will be responsible to take it out? Both of you?

Duration of residence - How long are they really going to stay for?

Shared food and paper supplies - Who pays for what?

Doing the dishes - Make an agreement.

Cleaning up after your or their visitors - Responsibilities.

Household chores - Define them first.

The mail - where to put it on a daily basis.

Breakage and responsibility for damage. Have an agreement.
Phone share - Have an agreement

Utilities share - Again make a deal for who pays what.

Parking space - Talk about availability if it is an issue.

There are more things and each situation may be different, but the main thing is to have an agreement on what is expected of each other.

Remember the golden rule.