Moving in with girlfriend..

Exstra

I am looking for some advice.

Basically my girlfriend has bought a place, she knows I was looking to rent a place in about 18 months time as I am still living at home. She has now asked me to move in with her after she has let it for 6 months. However I think this could cause problems as it is "her house" in the end.

I would obviously happily help with bills etc. however I think she would want me to pay rent as well. To be frank if I did this I would have no disposable income and it would deny me my chance to finish saving for a deposit for my own place, as the flat is much more lavish than I'd go for. Also even moving out I think I would struggle to pay bills, food etc. as it would only allow me to save £20 a month.

Should I ask to live there rent free?
Should I stay at home for the next 18 months?

Or any other opinions on the situation?

Missymoo82

Hi

I was in the same situation as you. My boyfriend asked me to live with him in his apartment flat a year and a half ago. He has a mortgage and was paying that as well as bills etc.
I thought long and hard about how much i should contribute it was always an awkward conversation and I didnt want to feel like his 'lodger' and pay his mortgage when the house was nothing to do with me - but I put it to him that I would pay him £300 a month - that would cover basic bills after all I was living there and using the heating/gas/electricity etc.But that said if I was living on my own in a flat I would expect to pay more than that
Perhaps talk to your girlfriend and ask how she would feel about paying a fixed sum per month to contribute. Obviously you dont want to leave yourself short each month so sit down with her and take into consideration all the expenditure relating to the house and what you can afford. She has asked you to move in so explain to her how much you feel you could afford.
Hopefully you can come to some agreement and your girlfriend understands the position you are in

Good luck! xx

split_second

to be honest mate it will be the first of many open conversations about money you will have to have in your lifetime.

i did this the other way round, i was the one with the house, my fiance had her own place (we werent engaged then though) and we just sat down and talked about what was fair. all depends what sort of income you both have, if she has lots more than you then expecting you to pay half might not be fair its something you need to work out between you as to what you both feel is fair.

BitterAndTwisted

This doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

Why is she going to let it for "the first six months"?

split_second

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

This doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

Why is she going to let it for "the first six months"?

maybe she used every penny she had to buy it and wants to build a reserve fund up again?

VfM4meplse

Exstra wrote: »

To be frank if I did this I would have no disposable income and it would deny me my chance to finish saving for a deposit for my own place, as the flat is much more lavish than I'd go for. Also even moving out I think I would struggle to pay bills, food etc. as it would only allow me to save £20 a month.

Should I ask to live there rent free?
Should I stay at home for the next 18 months?

Or any other opinions on the situation?

Tbh I don't think you can afford to have a g/f, let alone move out of your parent's home. I think you are better off staying put and letting your g/f do her own thing to raise funds to pay her monthly mortgage, until you reach a point that you can hold your own financially. Otherwise you'll always have inequality problems, and she'll feel insecure in the relationship too knowing that an unrelated argument may destabilise her financial position.

BigAunty

Though the legal judgements on co-habiting seem to swing one way or the other, there is potentially the risk to your girlfriend that paying towards her mortgage in the form of rent means that you gain an interest in the value of the property.

Research this area and if it is the case that in future your relationship breaksdown and you can sue her for your contribution to buying the property, then I would suggest this gives you ammunition to explain that it is better for you to contribute directly to the running costs only of the house, 50% of the bills. Also, you could say how setting up a landlady/lodger relationship with a sum for rent makes you uncomfortable, rather than a flat sharing one, as it introduces a 'business' element to a personal relationship.

However, as you are living at home, any kind of flat-sharing is presumably going to feel pricey to you? How much do you think you could pay towards household expenses which still allows you to save towards your own place? My share of all household bills for a 2 bedroom flat owned by my partner, including food (though we eat veggie which is cheap) works out at £300 per month. Are you saying that you can't even afford this because even on the National Minimum Wage, you'd get around £800 per month! So, no, I don't understand how you can say that a contribution to bills means you can only save a fiver a week, you'd have to explain to me why that is.


Though of course, how could you possibly co-habit with someone for a number of years and then move to your own pad - it's important to save but, really, once you move in with someone, it's rather weird to move out and continue the relationship. That sounds odd. Though I suppose you could stay at your mum's and tell her that you'd like to stay put and save up for a future shared place together in x years when your relationship is more mature (how long have you been going out with her?).

Sounds like you don't really like the prospect of moving in with her, you don't really like the style of the flat, nor the fact that you would have a financial relationship with her.

VfM4meplse

Missymoo82 wrote: »

Perhaps talk to your girlfriend and ask how she would feel about paying a fixed sum per month to contribute. Obviously you dont want to leave yourself short each month so sit down with her and take into consideration all the expenditure relating to the house and what you can afford. She has asked you to move in so explain to her how much you feel you could afford.
Hopefully you can come to some agreement and your girlfriend understands the position you are in

I completely disagree with this! The "pay as much as you can afford" is is not a business-like approach to rental, it's about the market rental value that the property could generate. Your g/f should take the conventional route and get a lodger without the complication of romantic attachments. I think she is being unfair to both of you by putting you in this position in the first place.

BigAunty

VfM4meplse wrote: »

I completely disagree with this! The "pay as much as you can afford" is is not a business-like approach to rental, it's about the market rental value that the property could generate..

Co-habiting is a primarily a personal relationship, not commercial.

So it is a much more flexible and negotiable thing because it isn't about the bottom line.

I don't have to pay towards bills when I am not in employment. Yes, if I was a lodger, I'd expect to be given notice, but my partner isn't a true landlord, either!

It's clear in this thread though that the OP feels financially threatened by the arrangement and there's a hint that he would feel exploited if he's charged rent. I think one driving factor is that he must pay next to nothing to live at home and really has no appetite to increase his outgoings.

Exstra

Thanks for the replies people, some have been very helpful.

I think I missed a couple of points out of perspective:

Currently I pay 200 a month to live at home, so bills and food included

My girlfriend bought her house outright (no mortgage, inherited money).

The place she has bought can rent for £1,400, hence my belief it is more lavish than something I'd go for. I think my use of lavish could be misunderstood. More along the lines of I would be looking at places that rent for nearer £800.

She has chose to rent it out for the first six months because she had as she had guaranteed tenants and wouldn't have had everything ready to move into the house.

I take home roughly £1,350 whereas my girlfriend gets about £1,000. However she has now 70k+ savings and I paid for house.

We have been going out 1 year, but very close for 2-3 years.

Once again, thanks for any further advice.

sonastin

From an outsiders perspective, it reads like your plans to save a deposit and move out in 18 months are the plans of a single man. Not necessarily that you don't feel like you're in this relationship but more like you set this plan for the future in motion before you got together and so far this relationship hasn't reached the point where it has altered your long term goals. Apologies if that isn't the case but that is the impression you give. If the relationship is only a year old, it is quite understandable.

This invitation from your girlfriend is the impetus for adjusting your long term plans. If you don't want to, perhaps this is the sign that you're not really seeing this as a long term relationship.
-do you want to live with your girlfriend? (either now or eventually?)
-if you did move in with your girlfriend, what are you saving for? do you want to buy your own place as well (maybe as BTL)? or are you just thinking in terms of building contingency fund in case this relationship didn't work out?
-what would your girlfriend do with your "rent" if she doesn't have a mortgage to pay off?

I am not expecting you to answer these questions on an open forum but they are the sort of thing you should be asking yourself. This should be about the relationship and where it is heading; the money is a secondary issue. If you want to live together and build a future together, you should be able to reach agreement about how much you each contribute to the costs of living together and how much you each get to keep in reserve in case things don't work out. If you can't reach that sort of agreement, you're not ready to make that sort of commitment to each other.