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Even the most perfect of flatting situations can be brought into disharmony when the sticky issue of money arises. We have some tips to make sure annoying things like bills don’t ruin your first living away from home experience.
Managing your money can be the hardest part of moving out of home for the first time. No one is going to pay your bills for you so it’s up to you to avoid a budget blow-out. To get the basics sorted follow these three steps:
Step One:
Allow for the fact that you’ll have to pay rent in advance (usually two weeks worth), as well as your bond (up to four weeks worth) before you move into your flat. This can be a huge amount to front up with so you’ll need to have some cash set aside.
Step Two:
Set yourself a personal budget and stick to it – Westpac has a great Budget Planner on their site to calculate your regular income, your regular expenses, and what you’re left to play with, click here to check it out.
Step Three:
Flatting works a whole lot better if you and your flatmates work together. Get your flatmates to agree on how to handle the finances (and also the cleaning!) before you all move in.
Paying the Bills... There are lots of good practical options available to help you and your flatmates run a smooth flat. The following are some suggestions that may help you figure how to sort everything out…
The Flat Account: One idea to manage your flat’s finances is to have an everyday account, just for the flat. All the flatmates can pay their share into the flat account to cover rent payments, food, power, phone, internet and other communal expenses, and all bills are paid from this one account. Sticking the flat account statements to the fridge is a good idea so everyone can see what's going in, and what's coming out (making it harder for anyone to embezzle funds for beer!).
Pay Your Rent Automatically: Forget to pay your rent and you could be out on the street in a cardboard box. Set up an automatic payment, so the rent always goes straight from your account to the landlord's account (or into whoever holds the tenancy agreement’s account) on time.
Pay Your Bills the Easy Way: If you want to make sure your phone and power don't get cut off because someone forgot to pay the bill you have a couple of options. You can set up direct debits with the company, and they’ll take the money from your account each month. Otherwise you can use your bank’s online service to make bill payments… much easier than getting the right amount of cash off everyone and trekking into the Post Office to pay them.
Spread the Load: Whether or not you have a flat account, it’s a good idea to have flat bills in the names of different flatmates – one person is responsible for the power bill only, while another gets the phone and internet bills. This way, when people leave, or the flat breaks up, no single flatmate gets lumped with huge debts!
Don’t Forget Insurance If you rent, your landlord doesn’t cover your belongings should something happen to them so you need some sort of content’s cover to protect your belongings from loss, theft, and damage. Banks often offer this service, for example Westpac has Renters’ Contents Cover which insures the contents of your home if you live in a rented property either by yourself, with other family members or with other tenants. It also covers you against any liability for accidental damage to someone else’s property (i.e. if you leave the oven on and burn the house down!). Find out more here.
Gemma
Need help getting on top of your finances this Christmas? Head to www.westpac.co.nz. They have heaps of great solutions to make your money work for you.
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into disharmony when the sticky issue of money arises. We have some tips to make sure annoying things like bills don’t ruin your first living away from home experience.
Don’t Forget Insurance
Need help getting on top of your finances this Christmas? Head to