How should I ask my roommates to have their names added to bills?

Question

When I first moved into my house with my 3 other roommates, I was the one who moved in a month ahead of time, and while I don't have good credit, I did have good standing with utility companies, and I simply had to transfer utilities from my old place to me new one (so we avoid high security deposit fees).

My roommates all get paid by tips (I have a steady paycheck). Well, they wait until the day the bills are due to pay me. 2 roommates are pretty good, they will leave me the money the night before so I can deposit it on my way to work. Well, one roommate I actually have to ASK her for the money every month for every bill. She owed me money for the Verizon bill today-she didn't leave it for me before I went to work. I work with her at my part time job so I'm going to ask for it tonight, but it made me realize I really want someone else's name on each bill. It's too stessful to be the only one responsible for them.

How should I ask them to have a name added to each bill?

Answer 1

Try this ...open a bank account at a local bank, and have EACH roomate deposit 1/4 of the expected utility bills into that account EVERY WEEK and prove it by giving you the reciept.  Then when any bill comes due, you pay it out of that account.

They can deposit money without having any way to get money out ... banks don't care who is depositing. This evens out their cash flow by splitting up the bill payments and gives you a cushion.

If they don't want the hassle of making the deposits, collect 1/4 of the expected bills in cash from them every week.

EXAMPLE: If the average total for gas, phone, electric and water is $543 ... that's $136 per person. Round it up and collect $40 per week per person ... and don't let them get behind.

Answer 2

I'm not sure if adding their names to the bills will actually motivate your roommates to pay on time.  If they don't care about wrecking their roommate relationships, then they probably will not care about collection letters or calls from a utility.

You can set-up a large dry erase board and list the bills, date due, and amounts due & received by each roommate.  I've seen this done in other roommate situations.  Again, it may not guarantee prompt payment, but it keeps things out in the open and makes it hard for a roommate to claim they didn't know.

Otherwise, there's no way around it, you just have to say that you feel it's unfair to have to pay all the bills.  Ask to transfer a few of the accounts to other roommates -- which should be easy to do with public utilities.  Also, talk to the late payer and if she is still uncooperative, have the other two roommates talk to her too.

Answer 3

The way the accounts are held won't make any difference if the others are irresponsible.  The slow one will still wait until you ask her for the money.  

It's a pain to have roommates.  We had roomies when we were first married, my sister and someone else...we lived in NYC and it's really expensive there.  We had to chase that other roommate for the phone bill every month.  My husband had to get in his face more than once to get the money from him.  My son has been in the same situation when he shared a place with people from work.  

In other words...the person's sense of responsibility is what makes the difference, not whose name is on the account.

Answer 4

I've had both of these situations, i use to pay my roommate by check once a month for all the utilities and right now my roommates each have a bill in our names. either way works if the people are responsible. for me, writing a check became a pain so i set up my bank account to cut checks to my roommates for the same amount every month, for stuff like cable that won't change. see if your roommate would be willing to do that. Good Luck