Starting your adulting journey is hard, especially if you're still looking for a job or are still in your low-paying first job.
So, for many, the best strategy for surviving life on your own is to find a roommate, especially if you are working outside your home province.
During my stay in Metro Manila, I always had roommates or housemates. They may have been friends, former schoolmates, or total strangers. However, that experience taught me more about dealing with others outside your family.
Though I also spent my college years with dormmates, having working adults living with you is far from the experience of living with teenagers your age.
In this post, let's look at the pros and cons of living with a roommate or housemate.
Table of Contents
- Advantages of Living with a Roommate
- Disadvantages of Living with a Roommate
- How to Assess Your Potential Roommate?
- How to Handle Conflicts with a Roommate
- Final Thought
Advantages of Living with a Roommate
1. Cost-sharing with rent and utilities.
The obvious advantage of living with a roommate is cost efficiency. You will have someone to share the significant expenses like rent and utilities (electricity, water, Internet, and subscriptions).
Living with a roommate is especially important when you're still starting in your career, have a lower salary, and can't afford the luxury of having your own place.
2. Distribution of household duties and responsibilities.
Since you share the same room or apartment, it's proper that you share household duties and other related responsibilities as well.
For instance, cleaning the house, throwing the garbage, fixing broken things, and more.
Failure to maintain your house at an optimal level for everyone under the same roof is a common cause of conflicts.
3. Shared furniture and common appliances
Living with a roommate means you don't have to worry about furnishing your house yourself, which can save you money.
You can share furniture, such as tables and chairs, a sofa, and organizers. You can also share common appliances, such as a refrigerator, washing machine, microwave oven, and electric fans.
4. Companionship
Having a roommate means you will rarely be alone, which can sometimes be a blessing or a curse. However, we all learned during the pandemic lockdowns that having someone to talk to is crucial for our mental health.
Having a roommate can also help. Knowing that once you go home, there is someone you can talk to. They can also be an excellent outlet for your work-related stress.
5. Added safety
Living alone can sometimes be scary, especially in a rough neighborhood. So, if you're with a roommate, you're less likely to be afraid of burglars (or ghosts).
6. Learning "pakikisama," but still setting boundaries
Pakikisama is not just companionship but the Filipino value of getting along with others.
Since you're living with someone who has grown up from a different background, you will have many potential conflicts, which will be a starting point on how you'll learn to live with others.
However, it's also important to sometimes compromise on small things rather than fight over petty differences while also standing firm and setting boundaries on values that you hold dear.
Disadvantages of Living with a Roommate
1. Missing payments
Since the primary benefit of living with a roommate is saving money on rent and other utilities, if the other party fails to fulfill their obligations to the house, it will be a big problem.
Missing rent payments will cause conflicts with the landlord while missing payments for essential utilities like water and electricity will be troublesome and a hassle.
2. Potential Conflicts
No one is 100% compatible with roommates, even if you're friends with them for the longest time.
In my experience, I was roommates with some of my closest friends, so I expected that we would get along 100% of the time.
However, there are moments when we get on each other's nerves, even for something that may seem petty to the other party.
So, it's more understandable to have potential conflicts with your roommates stemming from various issues.
Some of the usual roommate conflicts are household chores and messiness, sharing costs, bringing other people without prior notice, or just the typical differences in upbringing brought into the house.
3. Limited Privacy
Once you start living with a roommate, whether you have separate rooms or not, it can limit your privacy because you will still get together in the common spaces.
You will have limited time with your thoughts or decrease your preferred level of solitude. There will also be times when your roommate is an extrovert while you're an introvert when noise and chatting will be unavoidable.
4. Limited control over the house.
Since you're living with a roommate and splitting the check, you only own half of your house. Understandably, you can only control some aspects while living with others.
For instance, you want to buy appliances like a private refrigerator or aircon. Even if you can afford it, you should still consult your roommate because the electric bill is still split even if you own the appliance.
Another instance is if you have some large furniture from your previous house, you can't just occupy the whole living room space because it's shared.
How to Assess Your Potential Roommate?
1. Identify similar interests and habits.
One important consideration when looking for a potential roommate is that you should have similar interests. Though this is not the be-all and end-all reason, it can still be a good start.
This is why your close friends are usually the easiest people to live with. However, even if you're close, once you live with them, you'll still notice differences in your lifestyle and household management.
2. Find a roommate with preferably a comparable background.
It's also good to find a roommate with a comparable background, such as where you grew up, how many siblings you had, your work/educational background, and more. This means that you will at least have common ground.
For instance, if you are an only child and decide to live with a roommate with many siblings, you will notice differences in how you work inside the house.
Likewise, if you live with someone who earns significantly less or who has a very active lifestyle, there is a potential for payments to be missed.
3. Identify boundaries.
Setting boundaries early on is crucial to establish the ground rules of the house. This applies even to your closest friends because there are some things you will disagree with later.
For instance, you may have a friend for a long time, but since it's your first time living with them, you did not know they don't like talking in the morning or get easily irritated with the mess. In this case, you may want to know these things.
4. Look for red flags with finances.
You may want to talk about your potential roommate and how they manage their finances or just view their social media posts to see any red flags with their finances.
Though you don't need to drill them about the specifics, you must know if they like borrowing money (or how they pay their debts), if they ever miss rent and utilities, or how extravagant they can be.
Some red flags may be subtle, while some may be very obvious, which should prompt you to reconsider living with them.
How to Handle Conflicts with a Roommate
1. Communication.
The most important thing about resolving conflicts with your roommate or housemate is ensuring you can talk things out. You must identify the issues you want to address and change as soon as possible before things get out of hand.
2. Compromise.
Living with another human, especially from a different family background, will surely cause conflict. So, it is best to know how to compromise on small things and decide how you will move forward favorably for both of you.
3. Intervention.
Finally, if you want to resolve a conflict without leading to leaving the house, then you must find a common friend who can be an arbiter to lead the intervention.
However, it's important to note that an intervention is often uncomfortable, especially for those who are shy, anti-social, or passive-aggressive.
Final Thought
Living with a roommate has pros and cons, which you must learn to weigh. During the start of your career, living with friends and workmates is advantageous to save a few thousand pesos.
However, there will come a point when living with others is burdensome or you just want to try living on your own.