Moving into a shared student house is an exciting time and it’s easy to get carried away with all the excitement, however it’s important to remember your bills! Look at arranging your utility services early doors, so that everything is set up when you move in.
This means having the gas and electricity supplied and billed in the tenants’ names and also for the water supply and TV licence to be set-up.
It’s always a good idea for those who are moving in together to get the ‘money chat’ dealt with early on – the sooner the better!
While sharing a home with close friends can be exciting, you will still need to arrange how the bills will be paid.
It’s important that someone volunteers to contacting utility providers and then organising how these will be paid.
An easy way of dealing with this issue is to give Glide a shout, we provide your utilities and split them evenly between you and your housemates so you spend more time enjoying your uni life and not stressing out and arguing about bills.
Tips to help those sharing a property
This is on top of everyone making sure they can meet the rent every month so here are some tips to help those sharing a property deal with what needs be done.
While it’s a good idea to have all of the tenants’ names listed on the bill, this means you will all be jointly responsible for paying it and you still need someone who will take charge for the bills to be paid.
There will also be a need to ensure that the rent is collected and there is spare money as well to pay for milk and tea bags for all the friends that will drop by for a quick cuppa.
Again, one of the benefits of using Glide as a bill splitting service is that the tenants are billed directly for their share of the bills and they are not responsible for the non-payment of other student tenants.
Consider a joint bank account
Some of those who are moving into a student property may decide that opening a joint bank account will be a good idea. This means that everyone will pay a set amount in every month or every week to help meet the rent and utility bills.
One of the downsides is that you may not be aware of how much your utility bills will be costing so there may be a shortfall in funds at some point.
One of the positives for using Glide is that they can use their experience to estimate what your utility bills are likely to be and then divide that amount every month with any balance remaining at the year-end being returned to the tenants.
Choose a bill
Some students may decide that each of the tenants should be responsible for just one bill so you may be the one responsible for paying the gas or the electricity.
You’ll need to keep track of who is paying what and when and then chase up those who do not pay.
The downside to having just one named individual on a utility bill means that non-payment of it is their responsibility and they will be held legally liable for doing so. They may also incur extra fees for late payment so they will need to be organised.
Discuss issues
There is no doubt that when one of your housemates does not pay on time, or at all, this will create conflict within the household but this is a situation that needs to be tackled, even if it is an uncomfortable subject.
Before this becomes a real issue, all of the housemates need to sit down and discuss problems and work out a way of resolving them.
Student broadband deals
Along with having your utilities installed, you will also be looking for quality student broadband deals that will meet your needs. Again, Glide can help in this instance with fast speeds at low prices.
Before signing up for any broadband deal, you will need to work out how fast the speed will need to be for everybody living in the property and it is best not to have a capped deal for data downloads because this could be used up in just a week or two – if you opt for a cut-price deal from some providers.
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