Your Miserly, Mooching Roommate: Know When to End the Lease

Good roommates are hard to find.  When you have one, you stick it out, make it work!  But when you are finding yourself increasingly stressed just being in that person’s presence it’s time to reconsider renewing the lease with a mooch.

A mooch is someone who begs, borrows, and steals things that doesn’t belong to him or her.  A person like this is also miserly, selfish, and may even have his or her share of personality disorders.  With a roommate like this, you are often stressed, worried that the mooch will once again help his or herself to your stuff, and when disputes do occur you are angrier than most people having similar arguments.  You are simply tired of having to instruct this selfish person, watch his or her hands, hide your items, question about missing things, ask for money borrowed back, and more. 

The stingy mooch systematically does things to avoid paying for items while cutting down on current expenses he or she may have once agreed to pay but doesn’t like or want to continue to pay.  The excuses are endless as to why certain things are not bought or maintained.  Here is a list of some shady practices many selfish roommates do:

1)  They lie about how much they paid for something while hoping you don’t use too much of it.

2)  They cut costs most often without warning and you find out the hard way that they are no longer paying for certain services.

3)  They sit back and wait for others to pay for items and then they will begin to use them.

4)  They will make false claims about not having any money to assist with expenses especially those that they don’t believe are important.

5)  They will make small purchases that solely benefit them.

6)  They will act as if what minute contributions they make to the household are worth acknowledging and when one doesn’t, they behave immaturely even vengeful.

7)  They won’t financially assist when the going gets rough and will ignore your please for help.

Miserly roommates’ objective is to find various ways to use your money for as long as they can while they pocket the majority of theirs.  When you notice that you are being taken advantage of and you speak to your roommate about it, he or she will not appreciate your feedback.  This is when he or she will start to behave abusively.  Some things that they will do to financially abuse you:

1)  Steal your financial information.

2)  If you should lose your job, he or she will act very mean and controlling while reminding you that they “…paid for this…or that...”

3)  He or she will name-call and tell you how you are “Stupid, irresponsible, ignorant…when it comes to making/saving money.  No wonder you are always broke!”

4)  He or she will buy enjoyable items for self and purposely leave you out.

Photo by KaLisa Veer on Unsplash

5)  You will notice that most purchases are small inside and are not meant to be shared with others.

I have come across my share of cheap roommates who didn’t appreciate having to pay the majority of the bills.  However, I didn’t make no where near what they did so what sense did it make to take care of all expenses?  The twisted mindset of selfish people with personality disorders is a “Do for me…”  When they can’t accomplish using you in the way that they would like, this is when  they resort to abusing you.

If you have a history with a roommate that has included any of the following: threatening behaviors, hitting, kicking, breaking up your belongings, stealing your identity or credit cards, do not plan to sign a future lease with him or her.  Make plans to move on without this not only financially abusive person, but physically abusive as well.

Nicholl McGuire