Turn your shared-living arrangement into a money-saving venture

Moving into shared housing comes with its fair share of excitement. For most, this will be your first time living in a house with friends rather than family. While this can be the start of the best years of your life, it also comes with added costs.

If you get on with your house mates, there’s a way to limit some of these. You can keep the monthly bills down to a minimum by sharing the cost of some of your key spends.

Here are a few ideas for uni-living essentials that get cheaper when you learn to share.

Source: Giphy

Music

You can’t possibly survive university without your trusty music catalogue.

Pretty much everyone will have their own favourite music platform, whether it’s Apple Music or Spotify. Each of these will cost you if you have individual subscriptions – but both offer family packages for up to six people at minimal cost.

Split this between all your house mates and you’ll barely notice the difference to your bank balance. Plus, it makes party playlists at parties so much easier to arrange!

TV

Most students wouldn’t be able to survive without Netflix or some entertainment streaming equivalent.

Rather than each of you having your own account, team up and split it between all of you. Each account will allow you to have four separate profiles so you don’t have to argue about losing your spot in a series!

Food

Food will, of course, be a major expenditure once you’re no longer getting every meal from your parents’ pantry or college canteen.

When cooking for just one, you’ll likely end up chucking a lot of food since you just can’t eat it fast enough. Bus some of the best supermarket deals are found when you buy in bulk – we’re talking buy-1-get-4-free type offers.

While you may never be able to eat five kilograms of porridge oats alone, it’s likely that your house mates will be able to help!

It’s even easier these days. With online shopping, you can easily compare prices and make sure the bill is split evenly between you. It also saves you having to lug bags of shopping back home.

Nom nom nom. Source: Giphy

If you can register with one of the big wholesale supermarkets – think Costco in the US and Makro in Europe – you can save even more and buy toilet rolls or cleaning products in bulk, too.

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