Student Utility Bills

muddyfox470

Hi,

I will be choosing a house soon, and well we can have the bills inclusive or exclusive of bills.

It says everything is included (although i presume telephone bills are not included) including tv license.

However if we don't choose to have bills sorted for us, we would get £9.95 back per person per week; which is quite a bit, for a 5 bedroom place ~ £199 per month

So would it be possible to sort out all my bills for £199 per month, however the let is for only 9 months. ?

If some people could give me a rough estimate for things, water, electricity, and just think that students would probably use a lot of electricty/water etc.

I would say £25 (max) for broadband is decent enough for 5 people.

I think it is best to over-estimate than under estimate. I need to get everything (all utilities) with quotes so i can see about how much i would espect to pay, and see whether it is worth the hassle.

Few things: Detached House in Durham (DH1); 5 Students (all with computers);

Cheers

Ian

If you need more info ill see if i can assist.

PS. Obviously line rental is a must, for broadband, although i guess everyone would use their mobiles for calls instead!

jr666

to be honest you could do it for less than £199

but my advice, not really monysaving thou, is for the sheer convenience of it, go for all in. Thinking about the number of arguments i've had with housemates about paying bills, who pays for what and who used more than others gives me headaches. £10 a week each on bills does sound quite a lot though, is there any room for negotiation. £6 sounds better. Does this include internet?

jr666

go for telewest broadband then you dont need to pay the £10 a month (!) line rental to bt, and you get the tv channels as well (challenge tv is an essential for a house of guys!) nearer the time telewest will have student deals and things going on so check them out.

id advise you to read martins articles on getting the cheapest quotes for utilities etc.

but id still think hard about going for the easy option

freebie_junkie

with the bills it depends on how reliable you and your housemates are with money. if a £100 bill arrives, will you all have the ready cash to pay for it? if its included, you wont notice it going and none of your bills will ever go unpaid.

i go up to the post office fortnightly with my payment cards(you can get them from all of your untility companies- theyre different to meter cards these are more like debit cards the cash goes straight to the supplier- and collect a weekly fee from each person? e.g. i pay £7.49 water per month so you'd divide than into how many housemates), but my fella would wait till a huge water/electricity bill came in and everyone had already spent their cahs on beer!

i assume coz youre on thsi board youre good at money saving but id add up how good youre mates are coz it would be awful to fall out over money!

muddyfox470

Thanks for the great posts so far.

Telewest seems attractive, i shall look into it, but yes i would have thought that for convenience it would be easier for everyone to pay for everything.

However if i were to do it on my own, I don't think some of my house mates would be quite so 'fair' when coming to paying bills, and i can only guess a lot of arguments would occur.

Also because the house is only a 9month let, how would this affect the contracts with the bill companies, e.g. telewest, water, gas and electricity?

I guess so long as there is no cap on the usgae of the bills, it would be much easier to go with all inclusive.

Cheers

Ian

Any further comments would be greatly appreciated.

melancholly

For electricity, it really depends on what you're going to use - if you all have computers on in your rooms most of the day, and some people have a fridge in their room, someone else uses an electric heater etc etc, the electricity bill can shoot up....
If you do want to pay everything yourselves - make sure the meter readings are all taken when the current occupants leave - I moved into a shared house and the electricity meter hadn't been checked in about 2 years (no idea how), and some people were not very concerned about turning lights off and conserving energy! The outstanding money came to just under £300 (split 6 ways but still a very nasty surprise).
And at the start of the university year, broadband connections can take a lot longer to set up because so many houses want it - so try and book that to be done as soon as you move in, to try and get to the front of the queue.

freebie_junkie

is thsi your first time running a home? if so, id ease yourself into it with tha all-inclusive option.

aimeelister

I shared a house with 4 others and we did the bills by all paying in by Direct Debit a set amount into a separate account which all the bills came out of by direct debit. In comparison our friends each paid each other, there was loads of arguments each month over who had paid for their share of which bill and who was in overall charge of paying the bill (they even nearly got cut off once coz someone forgot to pay it!)

My suggestion is if you can set up a "house" account which everyone pays in by dd then go for rent only, otherwise save on arguments and bad atmosphere which really doesnt help when studying by going all in!

Just for comparison in our house now (3 of us) in the south we pay £37/month for elec and gas (we are very elec concious and heating is always down low and we put another jumper on which isnt always the way with other people, do it online and get the most bargins) £32/month for 10 months for water and then its £120/year TV licence and then we have homecall broadband and line rental which gives us free calls and 1meg speed for £35/month only problem being they often ask for a 12 month contact.

Hope it all helps!

fran_from_willesden

I reckon it's cheaper to pay the bills separately. In my house now, we had our gas and lecky bills arrive a day apart. The combined total was £180 for the quarter, or £30 each (£10 a month each - there's six of us) which I think is incredibly cheap - especially over winter! We have the combined Telewest cable and broadband for £15 a month, or £30 each for the whole year. Another bargain!

StudentSaver_2

This is a bit off-topic (sorry!), but fran_from_willesden, can I ask what pub you get all those prizes from? I'm in Newcastle too and have won a load of things from Dobson's, but not things of that quality!

muddled_midget

I think it really depends on your housemates, as the previous posters have said, but one thing I would advise is getting a telephone package that includes weekend and evening calls! It may work out more expensive for some of you that don't use it so much, but believe me it saves the hassle of trying to work out who all the calls belong to. In my house there are 4 of us and we've never had a phone bill more than £2 because of this