Hey there, first time poster, long time reader, all that jazz. I am posting on behalf of my boyfriend who has a roommate with 2 kids. One of them is his teenaged daughter who was only supposed to be here temporarily but is now here permanently, and the other is his youngest from a different relationship who comes only on weekends.
These two have lives together for 2, almost 3 and the acquisition of a daughter was about 4 months ago. Before she moved in, they split all bills evenly. I can’t be completely certain if exact numbers because I don’t live with them, but they split all rent and utilities evenly and split groceries in half as well. I tend to purchase my own food to cook there as I don’t want to overstep any boundaries with the roommate, and they will sometimes each purchase their own snack foods, but the majority of the time they split that bill right down the middle.
Since his daughter has moved in, though, food costs have gone up drastically. Other bills haven’t changed so much from what I understand, but she eats a lot, and currently they are splitting the bill in half, but my boyfriend is beginning to feel like he isn’t getting what he paid for. Since she has moved in, they have started going through almost 5 gallons of milk a week and significantly more snacks. My boyfriend is a bit of a snack fiend himself and often would get blamed for finishing off things his roommate might want, but he has proven to the roommate on numerous occasions that she is the one eating all of the food snacks.
This is becoming a real point of contention between them, as roomie is now doing the whole “my kid can do no wrong” thing and has been purchasing many groceries and keeping them upstairs, while allowing my boyfriend to foot half the bill. I no longer buy food to share with the house anymore because frankly, it’s not my job to feed the guy’s kids and anything I had bought and left, even writing my name on things, has gotten eaten. They now put their names on food, however. Roomie will also buy expensive specialty foods, like veggie burgers and out of season fruits for his daughter and son, but only on joint shopping trips when BF foots half the bill.
My thinking is that if they go shopping, roomie should foot more of the bill as he is feeding two more people, but they typically go together because he doesn’t have a license and can’t do big grocery shopping on foot.
It’s not an ideal living situation, but BF’s finances are pretty tight as it is and we can’t afford to move in together just yet. He and his roomie are not the best communicators, so that’s why I’m asking if there is a better way to go about this grocery business. I’m tired of them pussyfooting around this issue, and I’m tired of his roomie basically being a dick and accusing him of eating all of the good stuff and drinking all of the milk. I want to bring a couple of ideas to the table on how to make this a bit more financially bearable for him.
I’m really sorry about the wall of text, but I appreciate any feedback and will respond with as much information as I can!
Submitted January 28, 2018 at 07:06AM by Corporal_goldfish http://ift.tt/2DTkhTL
