How Having Roommates Allows Me to Live a Frugal, Simple Life

 

An oft neglected strategy for both reaching FIRE (financial independence, retire early) and maintaining FIRE is living frugally by having roommates.

I understand some of the reticence. Within six months of finishing university I was pretty much done with having roommates. It felt more grown up to have my own place and living with people certainly has its challenges. But university house-sharing was some cheap living.

I pretty much fell into the roommate thing again in my forties. My brother needed a place to live and I had an extra bedroom. Since he’s nine years younger than I am and we have divorced parents, I hadn’t actually lived with him since he was seven or eight years old. But I loved him and we gave it a shot. It’s been great. We’ve become pretty good friends and living together has allowed us each to spend less on housing than we would otherwise.

When I was considering buying a house here, at first I was thinking of very small houses where I could live by myself. I didn’t think my brother would want to follow me here. And I knew there was a good chance my son wouldn’t either.

But then my brother indicated he’d want to see what living on the east coast was like. And then my boyfriend and I decided we could live together now that our kids are grown.

So, thinking that if my son ever needed a place to live we’d get along better in a duplex situation, and if he didn’t, I could rent it out, I bought this beautiful duplex. And my strategy has been to charge them only what would cover their share of utilities, property tax, and insurance.

So, here we are. My brother, boyfriend, and I live in the bigger downstairs apartment, and my son and his girlfriend live upstairs. And we are all able to live cheaply as a result.

This morning I did some calculations. Basic housing expenses (utilities, property tax, insurance, cleaning supplies, Netflix, Crave, TSN, and Prime) cost about $1000 a month. Dividing that by five means we have access to some pretty kickass living, but for only $200 a month each averaged out.

Of course, if I wanted to I could charge more and pay nothing for myself, but I love these people and want them to share in my good fortune of owning a house outright.

If I lived with non-family roommates, I could no doubt make off like a bandit financially. I am still more than happy to have really reasonable monthly housing expenses that are even cheaper than what I paid over 30 years ago when I was living in student housing. The cheapest rent I ever had then was $250 a month and even then I had other housing type bills to pay.

That was when I lived in the attic of this house in Hamilton and was in first year. While I had my own bedroom, kitchen, and living room I still had to share a bathroom with two other people. But that was 1989. And now I pay the same or less.