How to split your bills with your housemates

When you live with others, it can be tricky to keep track of the crossover in your spending. Whether that's with dividing the rent, splitting your utilities or taking turns to pay for the next takeaway.

What is the best way to split bills with housemates?

There are several ways to divide bills fairly among housemates:

1. By usage: For utilities like electricity or internet, those who use more (like someone working from home) might contribute more.

2. By space: Housemates with larger bedrooms or private bathrooms often pay higher rent than those with smaller spaces.

3. Equal splits: The simplest approach is dividing everything equally, but this works best when rooms are similar sizes and everyone has comparable usage patterns.

4. Proportional to income: If one housemate earns significantly more than others, you might agree they pay a larger percentage of shared costs.

5. By household makeup: A couple sharing one room might pay more toward utilities than a single person, as they're effectively two people using resources.

If you and your housemates haven't discussed this yet, you should sort it out sooner rather than later. These conversations can feel a tad awkward, but it's better to have them than to be out of pocket.

Try creating a simple housemate agreement that outlines who pays what. This helps avoid confusion and keeps everyone on the same page about expectations.

When you've reached a mutual decision on what you all owe each month, there are a few ways to keep track of your payments.

Free bill-splitting apps

There's plenty of free bill splitting apps that you can use to manage all your expenditure. These apps are great for dividing up bills between family and friends.

Some apps now connect directly to your UK bank accounts through Open Banking, making it quick and secure to send money or request payments from your housemates.

📱Splitwise is a free app you can use to create groups. It will then help you to track one-off or ongoing expenses between members of that group. This app is particularly great for splitting bills such as rent and utilities. Splitwise now offers receipt scanning features and monthly spending reports to help better manage your shared finances.

📱Monzo, a UK digital bank, offers a bill-splitting feature right in their banking app. You can create shared tabs with friends, request money, and see when everyone has paid their share.

📱Tricount is another option that helps groups track expenses and balances without requiring bank connections.

Using digital tools to keep track

If you're more of the spreadsheet type, you could consider using a joint expense tracking spreadsheet.

This type of spreadsheet allows each person to log any bills or expenses they've paid. The spreadsheet will then calculate it all and inform you how much each person has paid altogether. You can also split it into sections such as rent, utility bills, food shopping etc.

For those who prefer more modern solutions, tools like Notion offer free bill-splitting templates that are more visual and collaborative than traditional spreadsheets. These can be accessed from your phone or computer, making it easy for everyone to stay updated.

Setting up automatic payments

Most UK banks now offer standing orders and Direct Debits that can make bill payments automatic. Consider setting up a monthly transfer to a designated bill-payer or having each utility bill come out of different housemates' accounts to spread responsibility evenly.

For situations where bills vary month to month, you might choose one housemate to be the "treasurer" who pays the bills and then collects everyone's share through bank transfers or apps.

Keep some purchases separate

When living with housemates, it's probably a good idea to keep some expenses separate to avoid any friction.

Perhaps you could do separate food shopping to avoid any accusations of someone eating more than their fair share.

It's also a wise idea when buying things like shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. If you each take care of buying your own, you can avoid any issues further down the line.

For shared essentials like washing-up liquid, toilet roll, and cleaning supplies, you might consider a house kitty – a small pot of money that everyone contributes to equally for these common items.

Should all housemates split utilities equally?

It depends entirely upon the circumstances of the people living in that property.

If one member of the household lives there full-time and another only stays Monday to Friday for work purposes, it might be fair for the person who's there more often to offer to pay a little extra towards the utility bills.

With more people working from home, you might want to consider higher contributions from those who are in the house during the day using extra heating, electricity, and internet bandwidth.

If all bedrooms are a similar size, it's best to divide the cost of rent equally between all tenants. However, if there's a noticeable difference in the size of the bedrooms, the person with the smallest bedroom could be better off paying less rent than the person with the largest.

When sharing streaming subscriptions like Netflix, Disney+, or Spotify, consider using their family sharing options and splitting the cost, which is usually cheaper than everyone having separate accounts.

Dealing with bill-splitting disagreements

If disagreements arise about bill payments, try to have a calm house meeting to discuss concerns. Having a written agreement or house rules document that everyone has agreed to can help prevent misunderstandings.

It may be helpful to ask someone who doesn’t live in the house to listen to and mediate disagreements. This way you may be able to resolve issues faster with impartial advice.

If you're not sure what your rights are with letting and estate agents, you can find out here.