We bought a couch! Well, sort of. My roommate convinced us to go in for a couch. It’s not a great idea, but it’s not awful either. We’re getting a $150 couch. It was on Craigslist for $250, but we talked to the guy down to $150. It’s a fairly nice, 4-year-old couch from Macys that was originally $1200. Instead of any one of us buying the entire couch we’re splitting it $50 each. I’d really prefer not to purchase any portion of the couch, but we figured that is the best way for us to get a couch that everyone will be happy with. A free couch would likely be somewhat gross… this couch is rather nice. We could probably resell it when we move out… we could prob sell it for $100 at least. So it’s not too big of a deal. The only problem is that likely one of us (me) will move out before the other two… so I’ll just “lose” my $50. Except it’s kind of like $50 to rent a couch for a year or so. At least. Not a bad deal. We need a couch. Our chair setup is getting so so old.
Tag Archives: roommates
To Couch or Not To Couch
My roommates and I get along really well, but one area of tension is that of a couch purchase. The three of us all agree that we should get a couch, but the question of how to get it and how much to spend on it are up for negotiation.
We’ve been living in our nice apartment for the past seven months and never had a problem finding a seat – because we have about 13 chairs of various sizes sprawled across our living room and dining room area. But it looks, howdoyousay, ghetto. And not even ghetto fabulous.
For me, I’m fine with just chairs. Then again, I’m fine with a pile of clothes on my bedroom floor about 2 feet high. My roommates are birds of a different feather. Well, one is planning to buy a fairly nice new couch at some point in the future, and the other wants a couch now, and is willing to buy one used, but she’s picky in terms of its quality. Me? I say lets get one for free off Craigslist and put some fabric over it and call it a day.
I’m pretty adamant about not going in on a couch together (that will cause a lot of unecessary drama) and I don’t want to buy one on my own because I’m probably going to move in a year or two. The other roommates both are willing to buy a couch, but neither can agree on when or what to buy. I kind of feel bad that I’m not willing buy a couch, but it would be silly to spend money on a couch when I’ll be moving who knows where in a few years. I already own a bed, a coffee table and bookshelf.
Baby It’s Cold… Inside
This is the first year that I’ve lived with roommates since 2004. My roommates have slightly differing points of view when it comes to frugality – most obvious when it comes to such things as heating costs this winter.
Roommate #1 is a graduate student, and sometimes frugal. She’ll buy a new dress for a night out, but when it comes to the heating bill she’s willing to bundle up in fleece in order to save. I have trouble sleeping when it’s cold (and yes, even in California it gets cold. Sometimes colder inside than out in my new apartment) so I tend to turn the heat on a bit at night. She’s not frugal to the point of turning it off, but she’d prefer to keep our heating bills down. So would I. But I also want to be able to sleep at night.
Roommate #2 is a teacher, so she makes enough money to live a fairly nice life – especially in our current 3-way apartment share arrangement. The other day, after roommate 1 requested that we use heat sparingly this winter, she told me that she grew up poor and spent most of her childhood with heat-less winters. Now that she’s working, she’s going to pay for heat.
For the past two winters my heating bill was included with my rent costs, so heat was not an issue. If anything, it was the summers that were painful – no one uses air conditioning in Northern Cali.
I would prefer our heating bill to stay low, but I’m not sure how low is reasonable.
How high do you turn the heat on in the winter? And how much does it cost you?
