Should You Live With Roommates?

When you are deciding where you should live, you must consider whether you want to live by yourself or with roommates. There are certainly pros and cons to both living with others and by yourself.

For more about the costs you need to consider when deciding what the ideal rent would be, take a look at How Much Rent Can You Afford?.

Living Single

Living on your own has definite perks. You have all the privacy and alone time you need and there is no fighting over the remote.

However, living by yourself is generally more financially taxing then living with other people. You are solely responsible to cover all utilities, cable, or internet that you wish to have and have nobody to split the costs with. When you are looking for a place to rent, make sure that you take into account all charges that are outside of the simple rent number when budgeting.

Living with Roommate(s)

There are many benefits to living with roommates. Financially, you will usually be paying less rent that if you live by yourself and you will split utilities, cable, internet, etc. with another person as well.

However, there are some obvious drawbacks from living with another person or other people. You must consider other people a great deal if you are going to have a happy roommate living situation and may not get the same amount of privacy as you would if you were living alone. If you decide to live with another person, make sure that they are compatible roommates with you.

Making Your Decision

After you have acknowledged are the positive and negative aspects of living by yourself and with a roommate, it is necessary to do some self-evaluation. Are you the type of person who does better with alone time or do you like to always have people around you? Would your lifestyle and habits mesh with another person's or would it be better for you to have your own space? Think about whether you think it would be overall better for you to have your own place or whether you think that you desire some live-in company before deciding where to live.

If you decide that you would like to live with another person, HotPads' Facebook Application is an excellent tool for finding roommates. For more information about our Facebook Application and some tips for using it, take a look at our application page.

Once you have your roommates in place, it is often a good idea to draft up a formal or informal roommate agreement form that outlines some of the expectations and limitations that you would like to agree on when sharing a place. Doing this as soon as you move in will eliminate some of the problems that may arise from miscommunications later. Even if you don't officially draft a form and sign it, it is still a very good idea to go ahead and discuss some of the issues and guidelines for your shared living space.