I recently wrote a post about renting a room in your home to a complete stranger. My take on that is pretty much no, try to exhaust all avenues before that becomes a reality. But it occurred to me that you guys may wonder why I’m so set against having a roommate, particularly since many of you seem to think this isn’t a bad idea if there is a need for it. So, allow me to tell you my story.

Once upon a time I had a roommate. For the sake of anonymity, we’ll call this first roommate Fred.

Living with Fred

By far, Fred was my best roommate. I moved in shortly after his previous roommate up and bailed on him, so it worked out to our advantage. We were friends prior to the move, so we assumed it would work out as we got on well together. And for a while it was great. But, slowly things started to change.

He began dating a girl, let’s call her Alicia, and then he got all uptight about everything. He would nitpick if the apartment wasn’t cleaned properly or if I left my clothes in the dryer a tad longer than he liked. He would go on this cleaning and cooking binge where he demanded I be home for dinner by a certain time if I wasn’t working. It was a little odd and bit more oppressive than I cared for. When Alicia unofficially moved in, I knew things were going to get worse.

We both had cats, but kept separate litter boxes. I’ve always been one to clean my cats’ litter box twice a day because I’m not fond of the smell. But, when I’m working, there’s not much I can do about the litter box. Apparently Alicia didn’t like cats, nor did she like the litter boxes. She complained to Fred that she could smell the litter box coming from my room in the living room and kitchen and it was just plain disgusting. She demanded that he go in my room and clean it out. So naturally, when I got home, I got growled at by him to make sure I kept the litter box cleaned.

This type of obsessive, weird behavior went on for a little while until he met another girl, let’s call her Katie, and he dropped Alicia. He went back to his normal self for a time, which made my life a lot easier. I ended up picking up a second job at this point, so I really didn’t want to deal with his drama. Turns out Katie was probably worse for him than Alicia. He turned into a party-crazed loon – feeling the need to have parties every night with alcohol and weed a requisite to get in the door. Mind you, I’ve never been the partying type – though I didn’t mind the occasional one thrown on the weekend when I didn’t have to get up at 6 am for work.

Fred’s behavior turned aggressive and violent and we spent several weeks where we just didn’t talk to each other. Our walls; however, didn’t fare well during his tantrums. I invested in a pair of ear plugs and a lock for my door and that was that. One night though, one of the parties got a little too loud and someone called the cops on him. He naturally blamed me, despite the fact that I was passed out in my room awaiting the dreaded 6 am alarm. It caused the biggest fight we’d ever had and made it clear we needed to go our separate ways.

The split….and 4 new roommates

So Fred and I went our separate ways and I ended up moving in with four new roommates. I was quite poor on my own at this point and roommates were the only thing that allowed me the grace of not returning to my parent’s house. So, let’s give these roommates some names: Ginny, Demelza, Molly, and Draco.

The five of us decided to take on living in a 4 bedroom, 2 bath apartment. Ginny and Molly shared a room while the rest of us had our own rooms. Molly and I shared the bathroom off of my room because we had the most bathroom stuff, and the other three shared the other bathroom. That part seemed to work out just fine.

Then problems came shortly after our move. We all seemed to get along, except me and Draco. He was arrogant and a bit of a prick and I don’t have any qualms letting such people know that. He also happened to think he was God’s gift to women and was a little peeved that I didn’t find him attractive. So, there was tension between us for that. But, our first big problem came about three months in when Ginny couldn’t make her share of the rent because she’d spent her money on other things. Our share of rent was $250 each, so we were all angry and that brought on the first of our regular house meetings.

The rest of us divided up the $250 and made the rent payment with the understanding that Ginny would pay us back on her next check, which she did. This pattern continued for about 4 months when I finally said that I couldn’t keep doing it. I wasn’t making enough money to cover all of my bills, plus hers – she wasn’t paying much in the way of utilities either. So we had another meeting to discuss it. It was at this particular meeting that Draco confessed his plans to move out – he wasn’t on the lease, see. We only did it to make it cheaper for the rest of us and since Ginny and Molly were willing to share a room, we were happy to do it.

So, we have one roommate not paying up and another moving out. Great! As if things weren’t already tense between us all, Demelza and I come home from grocery shopping one afternoon to find Draco and his girlfriend going at it on Demelza’s fairly new suede couch. Needless to say, she wasn’t happy. The couch was ruined from body fluids and Draco was refusing to pony up the dough. So, we had another meeting and voted him out. He took the couch with him and Demelza bought another one, which put her in a bit of a tight spot monetarily. But, our problems with Ginny not paying her bills and rent only got worse as everything increased with Draco gone. Somehow we all managed to make it through the lease, but at the end, we’d pretty much decided we weren’t going to sign again.

My BIG Mistake

Demelza decided she was going to move back in with her parents temporarily so she could save up and rebuild what had previously been destroyed. Ginny had no choice but to move back home because none of us would live with her and she certainly couldn’t afford it on her own. But, Molly and I decided we’d sign another lease together.

As with the other situations, initially things were fine. But over time, things got bad. Molly was a relatively big girl – which is fine – except that she ate a lot. We had initially started by splitting the grocery bill down the middle, but as she started eating more than half of the food, I decided that really wasn’t going to work. So then we switched to buying our own food. Well she could only afford so much every month in food, so she started stealing my food. At first it was a few things here and there. I didn’t mind that, so I never said anything. But then it got to be a problem and when I brought it up, she got defensive and said I was being insensitive to her feelings on her weight issue.

Our next major hurdle was that she had a bit of a mouth on her and decided she was going to tell a customer at work to f* off. In a retail environment that doesn’t go over very well, so they fired her. Of course, the story I got from her was that she was being suspended with pay. Then it was they were cutting her salary while she was suspended and would have a little trouble meeting the bills. After two months of trying to help her cover things, I was fed up. I knew she was lying. I knew she had been fired and now her money was running out. I called up her old job and got confirmation that she no longer worked there, then I confronted her with it. Naturally, she was mad because she’d been caught in a lie.

That pretty much ended any amicable relationship we might have had. I told her she needed to find another job or she could find another roommate. I took my computer out of the front room and moved it to my room and told her she didn’t have to worry about the internet bill, but that I suggested she get another job quick if she still wanted to watch cable because otherwise I was cutting it off. And so began the sneakiness.

I started to realize some of my things were missing and I was getting credit card bills that were larger than normal, even for me. Then checks started missing. Finally, I got a call one day from my bank telling me I was $432 overdrawn. What?! Mind you, this was after my hot check lesson so I knew I hadn’t overdrawn my account. After going in and looking at the checks, the handwriting wasn’t mine and neither was the signature. It was Molly’s handwriting.

She was stealing my checks and using my credit cards, and she had stolen my CDs and some movies and was pawning them. All in all, between fees and interest plus the total of what she ran up, Molly cost me $957. By that time I’d had enough. I filed a police report pressing charges on her and she was arrested shortly after. The apartment complex signed me off the lease given the situation and I moved to a new apartment.

But, that’s not where my troubles end. Apparently, somewhere along the line, the apartment complex sent the file for the apartment to their collection agency because Molly was in jail and, technically, she had defaulted on the contract. But, since the collection agency couldn’t get in touch with her – what with her being in jail and all – they came after me. That single collection item in the amount of $2k showing up on my credit report as unpaid wreaked havoc with my credit report. I was having to pay extra deposits for rent and utilities, I was being turned down for new credit, and my interest rates on the credit cards I did have shot through the roof.

So, I disputed the charges and for five years it was one of the biggest battles of my life. I got threatening phone calls every day for a year. I was finally able to get that to stop and the $2k cleared from showing as unpaid. But, they still wouldn’t remove the collection item from my report. I called them, the property manager called them, and still they wouldn’t budge. When I disputed it with the credit bureau, their form letter told me that the collection agency was claiming it was a valid charge and so would not remove it from my credit file. I had no other options but to take this to court or to write a letter to attach to my credit file. I chose the latter. Thankfully, that falls off my credit report completely this year.

Does it ever end?

As you can see, I’ve already experienced a lot of headaches with roommates, some financial and some a matter of trust. When I finally squashed my ego and moved back home with my parents to help get out of debt and build up a savings, I faced a lot more challenges there, too. My 16-year old brother was also living there and he was into drugs and alcohol, despite my best efforts to seek help for him (my parents didn’t want to admit there was a problem). He slashed my tires, stole money from me, pulled a knife on me, stole food, broke my window, and countless other things that I just don’t even want to get into.

Given all these experiences, I simply choose not to have roommates. I stayed at my parents house a year longer than I needed to so I could make sure I had money in my emergency fund and that I was well padded in my savings. I sucked it up because I knew when I left I would NEVER do the roommate thing again. I haven’t looked back since, and that’s why I wouldn’t rent out a room in my home.

Related posts:

1. How to Get Perfect Credit
2. Group Writing Project: My Financial History
3. Six Ways I Don’t Set an Example
4. The Cost of Owning Pets
5. When the Collectors Come Calling