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The Search is on for a New Roommate

Apartment Living

It seems that when it comes to the topic of roommates moving out, most people assume something negative happened.  Was there a huge fight?  Do they hate each other?  I thought they were BFF’s?!?!  It may come as a surprise, but sometimes roommates move out for awesome and positive reasons.  If you currently live with a roommate in an apartment, imagine if they got a new job and needed to relocate to a new apartment.  Or perhaps they got engaged and need to start looking for apartments for rent to live with their significant other.  You would be super happy for them, right?  But what about you?  Do you know what steps you need to take to move forward?
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After your roommate moves out of your apartment, you are going to want to make sure all the bill collectors know that your roommate no longer lives with you if the bills are under both names.  You don’t want your old roommate paying any unnecessary bills, and vice versa.  It’s very simple to do (in fact most things like power, water and cable can be updated online) and it’s something that is very necessary to move forward.
Creating a newly revised budget should be your next step.  Make a brutally honest assessment of how much money you bring in vs. how much you spend a month on every last little thing (rent, bills, food, gas, credit card payments, student loans, your chewing gum addiction, everything).  If you take a look at your budget and it feels a little too tight, you may want to consider auditioning for the role of “new roommate” to help offset some of those costs.  Who knows, maybe you can guilt your old roommate into helping you find a new one.  I mean, you were super happy for their new job, or marriage, or whatever it was, right?  Sure you were, now it’s their turn to help!
Finding another roommate that’s a good fit can prove to be difficult.  Maybe you don’t have any close friends that are looking for an apartment for rent, but the idea of living with a complete stranger seems too overwhelming to have.  Facebook, Twitter and all of the other social networking sites have really made it a lot easier to find potential roommates.  You can get in contact with a wide variety of people with one click and chat with them ahead of time.  Let the online social world do all of the work for you.
So by all means, be happy for your roommate!  Just make sure you have a game plan on how to budget to pay everything on your own, or how to find your new perfect roommate.