Roommate:

noun
friend or person sharing financial liability for a location of occupancy

but roommates are inevitable for most college freshman, at least until they graduate college.

Weird situations happen.

source
...and we can all get better at dealing with them. Let's discuss some possible points of contention so we can prevent awkward roommate situation

Rather than discuss problems, lets discuss solutions

In my first post of the series:

1. Rent:

IF there are three rooms of the same size, then its easy.
Otherwise, you have to discuss this. And its not easy.

Fortuantely, there are several tools available that can help you solve any other situation.

Roomie Calc
This one is cool because it allows you to determine fair rent purely on square footage, and also can include the number of people-per-room.
Perfect for the detail-oriented, you need square footage.

Here is an example of the input and output using this website:

SplitWise
This calculator is nice because it simplifies the process of calculating rent down to 3 steps. Perfect for those in a hurry.

Here is the quick processes:

Monthly rent and # of bedrooms

Describe the room qualities:

Then describe the common area:

However you decide on rent, do it early, and adhere to that

Stay tuned for these topics tomorrow:

2. Schedules

3. Cleanliness

4. Boundaries