Lifestyle: 5 Tips for splitting bills with your roommate

The benefits of living with a roommate include the ability to rent a larger space, share house chores and easily find friends to watch movies and interact with. Conversely, sharing a space with a roommate (s) is not always easy and can bring on some challenges, especially when it comes to money. So, to prevent any conflict, Jumia Travel, the leading online travel agency highlight ways to split bills with your roommate.

Agree on ground rules

One of the easiest ways to split bills is to agree with your roommate from the very beginning that both of you are splitting the bills. This and other ground rules will help ensure peace when the issues of paying bills arise.

Make a cost spreadsheet

After creating and agreeing to the ground rules, make a spreadsheet outlining each expense you and your roommates will need to pay. Each expense should show details such as due dates, the amounts owed, and the person responsible for paying.

Use apps

Using apps are perfect if you have large expenses. It can help you with the math and the payments. The app will automatically send reminders that payment for a particular bill is due. With this, there will be no excuse for not paying. Some of such apps you can download include Billr, Divvy and Venmo.

Keep certain purchases separate

It is not everything you have to buy together. This is because it may be difficult or stressful deciding who gets to keep some of the durable items you contributed to buy.

Carefully choose your roommates

You won’t want to live with someone who will never pay their share of the bill. Doing so could end up in a conflict. Hence, be careful with who you invite to split bills.