Friday, September 20, 2019

AITA for making my roommate's girlfriend pay an equal share of rent, when she has a less employable degree

My roommate and I just moved. His girlfriend also joined us. She just got an arts degree and our new city, Burbank, is the best place for that. My roommate has a well paying job. I have a STEM degree, and I had a full time STEM job before we moved. However, the job was really affecting my mental health and I quit before we moved.

We knew the girlfriend would be moving without a job, so we agreed to cover her rent initially. We never agreed on the specifics of her paying after. I accept full responsibility for that, we should have agreed upon it firmly beforehand. So I brought it up to them. I'd expect her to pay 1/3 of the rent as soon as possible. He thinks his girlfriend should only have to pay enough so that he and I pay no more than our last place, roughly a 40-40-20 split.

Our disagreement had two parts.

  1. We disagreed that this was decided before the move. He thinks it was and says he talked about it. When looking for places he would sometimes mention how this place or that place would keep our rent the same if his girlfriend chipped in [x] amount. IMO this was always just casually used by him as a metric for how much a place would cost, and that perhaps it was mused about as a way for her to contribute while she finds an appropriate income source, but it was never a financial plan that I agreed upon for the entire duration of our lease. Of course from his POV it was more clear and I’m going back on my word. Frankly my memory is fuzzy because it was 4 months ago, but I’m fairly confident we didn’t nail anything down.

  2. We disagreed on how rent should be split fairly among three roommates, regardless of whether there's a plan beforehand. He said that rent should be split based on a progressive model like a tax bracket, where everyone pays based on their earning potential, and his girlfriend only has an arts degree and I have a STEM degree. I said that that isn't how anybody splits rent and even if it was you couldn't calculate someone’s earnings potential just from their degree, for example I don't think I can take another STEM job because it would be horrible for my health. As much as I don't want to play the mental health card.

Additional details: The logistics of the move costed about 2x rent. It put a huge dent in my savings. Since girlfriend’s gotten here she’s given each of us about 20% of a month’s rent from her savings but that’s all she has. Around the beginning of September, before we talked, girlfriend got a part time job, which won’t come close to covering 1/3 of the rent. He also mentioned that the girlfriend had initially wanted to pay a larger portion of rent but he told her before she moved that she only had to pay 20% because he thought that's what we agreed on. I also said that I'll let them think about it and we can keep paying as we are for another month but by then I wanted to have a concrete plan for how she would work up to paying 1/3.



Submitted September 21, 2019 at 04:56AM by sfdsonfuds https://ift.tt/32WiqGW

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