My current flatmate
As tight as tight can be.

He works from home, so all day everyday every light in the flat is on, as is the air con, TV, 2 computers etc etc.

Expects me to pay half the bills, i only ever pay the $60 or so i use which leaves him paying $200 which i think is fair, apart from he didnt pay it last month and it was cut off, my fault apparently. Balls to him.

Never buys food. I now refuse to also buy food as he always eats it before i even unpack it, so now we have a mexican standoff, i just buy my food daily and eat it as soon as im home. He hovers around like a hungry dog waiting for scraps.

Same with beer, i normally buy a case to last a week or 2, he will always have about 10 and then deny it, so ive bought a mini fridge which now lives on the balcony with a big padlock on.

Its petty i know.

He said i was being tight. We have lived together over a year and in that time he has bought 1 six pack of beer and thats it. The only reason its lasted this long is that he also works nights most of the week so we rarely see each other.

Im moving out in Dec with my lovely g/f and im not paying him a penny in bills.

In fact, am i the tight one?
(Lanceuppercut, Tue 28 Oct 2008, 1:19, 10 replies)

No
If half of what you say is true, you're living with a parasite.
(lolwhites, Tue 28 Oct 2008, 7:42, closed)

I hate this
You're not tight. It sounds like you were trying to keep it even, but he's just taken the piss. fight fire with fire.
(knackerz is skinning up, Tue 28 Oct 2008, 7:53, closed)

this guy sounds like a skank
you did the right thing, and if you weren't already i'd say move out and leave him with all the bills

hes the tight twunt
(jenko83, Tue 28 Oct 2008, 8:09, closed)

Leave some fish
in your mini fridge, unplugged, but with the padlock still on. That'll learn the tightfisted git.
(Strangechap I look normal on the outside..., Tue 28 Oct 2008, 8:26, closed)

I think you are being a bit tight with the bills
why didn't you negotiate the amount you were going to pay before you moved in?
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Tue 28 Oct 2008, 9:56, closed)

I work from home
I reckon that 75% of the bills are all the computers and lights I need to work from home. Computers are hideously power hungry, almost like having 3 100 Watt bulbs continuously on.

Maybe if the guy was working different hours it would help to take daily meter readings and before leaving and returning to see how much electric could reasonably said to be their fault. Then split the bill by the number of units each person used plus half of the remainder. That would be reasonably fair and might offer some evidence of who is responsible for what.

As for food theft etc., the guy should go to hell. If he is working then he should buy his own damned food.
(MagicMoose, Tue 28 Oct 2008, 11:05, closed)

If your PC is really power hungry
why not get a Laptop / small form factor PC?

I mean you can pick up a brand new 1.6GHz Intel Atom motherboard for £50 and a full Atom-based computer only takes 42Watts of power (according to my kill-a-watt).

Obviously, not if you need a huge amount of processing power all the time. But for office work it's certainly worth it!
( uberdeity Wondered why Owen Lars knew of the term "hell" on, Tue 28 Oct 2008, 11:42, closed)

Sounds like a strange arrangement
How did you find this person in the first place?

From his behaviour, it sounds like he obviously wasn't a friend of yours before you started living together - therefore he must have been a stranger.

So how come a stranger would be so bold and impolite as to impose upon his flatmate? Sounds weird.
(EuroSong I love horse meat: best of all the animals, Tue 28 Oct 2008, 10:57, closed)

cheers
I knew one of his mates pretty well before i moved in.

At first he wasnt working from home so we just said we would split the bills, but he has been working from home the past 6 months. He is just a massive pain in the arse, although i think he might have read this as there were 24 beers in the main fridge last night that i didnt buy. I wasnt going to have a beer but decided to have a couple, a couple turned into 6, he wont be happy but fuck him
(Lanceuppercut, Tue 28 Oct 2008, 22:15, closed)

Snap!
We should put my housemate and yours together as a battle of the tightwads!
She does the same thing-never leaves the house then wants to split bills in half to the penny
(AND has the cheek to complain that it costs her a fortune), steals my food from the fridge, doesn't buy communal things like washing up liquid and toilet paper (when she does she keeps it in her room) When my boyfriend moved in she upped our rent insisting that "couples always pay more" I agree but we actually have the smaller room and now we split the bills three ways rather than by actual usage.
Grrr. Sorry this story has touched a nerve I didn't know I had.
(Soy milk supernova has nothing witty to add on, Wed 29 Oct 2008, 15:17, closed)