Moving into a bachelor pad....

[mooseman]

Gday fellas,

My mates and I are looking at getting into a rental place. Im going to assume a few guys on here have done the same sort of thing before. I just don't really know the best way to go about things like bills and what not. Whats the average cost of water/gas and electricity bills? We aren't going to have a home phone connected as well all have mobiles but willl have foxtel. Do you reckon that about $200 a month would cover the utility bills?

Also I was thinking about using the coles/safeway online shopping to keep things organised. Anyone ever used this before it looks pretty nifty.

Any other tips? four 21 year olds moving in a house. Its not going to be an abused house though, we all work full time and respect peoples shit.

[Commando]

$200/month? Fark man you guys must chew through a lot of services...

While I haven't done share-housing before, I live on my own and my monthly phone/net bill is $50ish, quarterly electricity bill is $170ish (ie $50-60/month), no gas, and on tankwater. I'd say your electricity bill should be 2-3x mine with 4 guys assumingly using the net & watching TV heaps.

Since you're all working full-time, I assume you'll all have money to pay for the bills as they come in. When each bill comes in, split evenly, easy

[SnipeZ]

mate.
me and a mate grabbed a 3 beedroom for $140 a week.
we paid $150 a week for rent then $100 for food.
for bills we put $100 a week into a bank account. we currently have about $2,000 saved for bills.
being a rental you dont have to pay rates which makes it soo much cheaper.

hope that helps ya out

[mooseman]

yeh we are going to put money away weekly. I was just trying to work it out. Like rent is $350/mth and I get paid fortnightly so I had planned to put $200 a fortnight away and hope that covered my share of the bills and rent. Food is the big unknown really...

[SnipeZ]

$350 a month is dam cheap.
putting money away is a huge help.
atleast when the bills come along and they are more then exspected you have the money on tap

[Frost]

You would be safe with $200-$250.

I found. farrk having share food, buy your own, if you wanted something and its too big for one person share it, same happens back etc. EG pasta or stirfry etc.

[stav50]

are u talkin 350 a month total or each?
no chance for total mate, house costs all depends on where u wanna get into. and dont expect to find somewhere straight away landlords/agents arent going to wanna put 4 21 yr olds into a house. just gotta be persistent. but the costings dont sound too bad water will generally be done by usage, as said just when the bills come in all sit down and split it. if ur all working then it doesnt seem as tho there would be much trouble paying for it. good luck mate!

[mooseman]

woops sorry for me $350/mth. Its $350/week to rent the place.

[psychotic-angel]

need a cleaner lol jokes um i cant help you sorry I'm just interested in how it works out with ya.

in my area there are 3 guys sharing a place.Its never clean smells take away every night all tho the partys are awesome and staying there for a night is great fun id never live there stuff gets stolen broken or goes missing then is found in the strangest place.
btw "they lived there 6months then where kicked out"

having said that i stayed with my cus in melb a few times 4 guys place is spot less .There normal guys wear shoes in house have a dog a cat and fish but there's no mess they all get along there's a room that looks a high class gym.a pool room with pool table ps3,xbox 360,etc,a swimming pool decent size a few of the guys are swimmers so its no kiddie pool lol .They take turns in cooking etc its a pretty sweet set up they put 250 in each week having said that if one of them cant then they talk about it and the others put in for him then when he has the cash he pays them back it doesn't happen that often they all trust each other id be more then happy to live there its a safe clean environment

"this started as two fellas who wanted to live together looking for a place they broke up yet the guy still needed a place so he asked his strate mate could he move in with him from this its grown to 4 guys they didnt all know each other but wile i was staying there i thort they where school mates the newest guy has been there for a month over time they have built the hose up and now its a really nice place and no there not all fags only one is"

hope this helps kyle


hope that helps mooseman

[stav50]

that sounds about right, if it helps to work out monthly rental, u gotta multiply it by 52 then divide by 12. dunno if that helps or not but meh haha.
dont forget u will most likely have some larger up front costs e.g bond and first month rent and also furniture so factor that shit in. GL mate.

[mooseman]

Yeh we have worked out the upfront costs and furniture and whatnot shouldn't be a problem. We have all been mates for years and 3 of us actually lived together for 10 months previously but it was one of us that owned the house so it was a bit different. I guess we just have to wait and see!

btw Naz0 off here is one of the guys moving in...

[holmsy]

hey man at the moment im living with 3 other people
i also get paid fornightly.
fornightly i pay/ allow
180 for rent
200 for food and a slab
20 for bills (worked out perfect last time all the bills rocked up)

the rest of my money goes to any extra booze and fixing car

also. you prob have had the situation before.
but last time i lived with 2 single mates and a couple (5 total)
i pretty much spent 3 months drunk untill i moved out the booze bill was huge. and we had to run a 2nd fridge for my frozen pizzas and everyones slabs.

[Commando]

Regarding sharing food & stuff, yeah try to avoid that. Apart from say all chucking in for massive BBQs (buy a 4-burner, trust me, best investment ever). Fark all cleanup required, fark all dishes made, and you get to eat shitloads of meat every night.

Oh, that reminds me, buy some decent dunny spray, living of BBQs regularly makes you fair rancid in the pants.

[holmsy]

oh yeh i forgot.
i dont share any of my food either.
except things like sugar etc.

couple of the others share some meals n shit.
im to picky to be able to share meals.

[Frost]

And when moneys tight 2min noodles are also a good meal. Bad for bowel movement thou

[Gunns]

If you need flange supplied I am sure I can work out a monthly rate for ya.

[sphell]

I used to live with 2 mates, (now it's one mate and a chick). We found it easiest to share food......separating food is WAYYYYYY too hard, and it's even harder when other mates come over and raid the cupboard. Every week or so we would put $50 in a stubbie holder and just use that for food and cleaning products etc and when it ran out we'd top it up. We took turns to cook dinner each night and if one of us wasn't going to be home then they might make up for it another night. It' all evened out in the end. The only thing we keep separate is alcohol.

Bills cost jack shit, we've got a 50" plasma and air-con running flat out most of the time not to mention all the lights that get left on.....electricity would be the most expensive around $180-250 for 3 months. Gas and water is only about $60 each for 3 months. Divide that by 3 and it's not much.

[SnipeZ]

yea i was in the same boat as Sphell. we just did a massive shop every week and got the food we needed.
took turns in cooking and cleaning up.
worked well for the whole time we were there

[Gozza]

Sharing is good but also gay. Im lucky i have an awesome house mate.
**** sharing food and grocery shopping together right off. We take it in turns buying toilet paper and shit like that
If you have mad shit like tv's and stereos keep it in your room. Watching people capitilise on your mad shit when ever they feel like it will piss you off.
Make sure you set ground rules. Cleaning, Trash Days, etc etc

We all have the same bank account so we created a shared "bill" account doubled up with a spreadsheet with a running balance to pay bills

[SnyperEB]

$200 a month man thats heaps we barely go through $50 a month!!

[Rollin]

Water/gas/electricity/etc bills divide equally by the number of people in the house.

DO NOT share food etc - some kent is always going to eat like a horse and not buy enough food to make up for it. All do your own washing, prob obvious but I thought I'd say it.

Chores etc are a hard one - really you just have to all have a chat at the start about keeping your own shit tidy and then work from there.

Maybe have a week each per month where you have to empty bins or vacuume common areas or something.

[mooseman]

seriously we are all good mates and not worried about having to put in extra even if we dont use it as long as everyone puts in equal. Last time we were living together we were buying 2 slabs a week for the first 2 months and even though I was the only one working full time I still brought one when my turn came around. That way if a time comes where one of us can't afford something the others will happily chip in and help out. Another helpful side of things with all being mates is we can bag/belt/abuse any of the other guys if they aren't pulling their weight in regards to chores/meals/etc.
Most of the issues you guys are bringing up seem to be when sharing with people you aren't really friends with. Hopefully their won't be a shortage of flange around the place, thats the plan anyway!
I think the biggest obstacle is going to be finding a decent place that will take all of us without previous rental experience.

[Alesia]

i live with 2 boys at the moment , we pay our rent once a week my share is 120 and we each one big shop at month and if any of us buy extra stuff for the house ie meat milk etc we save the reciepts and split it all at the end of the month works out awesome
as for booze its a group effort there as well

[Russ.]

http://www.billmonk.com
I haven't used the above site personally (I always lived in student hostels, on my own or with just my mrs) but a few groups of mates who moved out into houses together after living together at the student hostels used the site to keep their shit organised. Basically the way it works (as I understand it) is that all 4 of you make an account and link them up as a single household. Then when you pay the $200 electricity bill, it will work out how much everyone else owe's you, i.e. will tell your 3 mates they owe you $50 each, then when one of them pays for the $100 gas bill, it will take $25 from what he owe's you, but will tell the other 2 guys that they now owe him $25 as well as the $50 they already owed you, so its basically a good way of keeping track of who owe's money too who, saves bullshit arguments over money etc.

I've had groups of mates who shared food and groups who didn't, the biggest thing I noticed was those who didn't share often had arguments about who owned what food or got home drunk and ate whatever they could find, but also they used to fight about dishes, because Person #1 would use the frying pan then leave it in the sink, but person #2 wanted to use the frying pan and didn't want to have to clean it first etc.etc.
My mates who all cooked seperately alays ate more shit food than the ones who had a designated chef for each night, basically because they couldn't be stuffed cooking properly every night, whereas if they only cooked 1-2 times per week, they put in more effort when they did have to cook.

Just my 2c.