It says in our lease that we are all separately liable, and that each of us will be assessed the same amount for electricity and utility. Pretty standard stuff. I had an internship during the summer and I lived in the apartment over the summer. I was on my own for about a month. Then for some reason we only just got charged for that electric bill as residents for that month I was alone very recently when paying rent and other expenses for the past month. It’s 26 bucks per person for the electricity during that time. My best friend is one of my roommates. We’ve been friends since kindergarten. We are like brothers. BUT he can be such a tight ass about money sometimes. He said he thinks I should be the only one paying for it and that I should give the other three 26 dollars on top of my own charge. I don’t see why it’s such a big deal that they just pay an extra 26 bucks, because we don’t all use electricity or utilities the same. Some of us cook, others almost never cook. Some of us leave the lights on even when we are out of the house, and some of us save power. I don’t go chasing people around telling them not to do those things or that they should pay more than I do. Because I just don’t think it’s that deep. It’s what we agreed to when we signed our lease. If we wanted something different we could have had an in depth roommate agreement that addressed all of that. Also, it’s not like I haven’t looked the other way when my best friend could have owed me money. An example is that I paid 210 dollars for tickets so I could take him and one of my other roommates to a baseball game in the summer. I didn’t make either of them pay a cent for it because they were my friends, I was fine with biting the whole cost for that. There’s times where I just think there can be a courtesy between friends, and that was one of those instances. And it bothers me a bit that when my friend sees 26 dollars he has to chase me down for it. If all of roommates feel they should get 26 from me then I’m not completely against giving it to them. I probably will. But my initial reaction is that I shouldn’t have to, and if one of them was in my shoes, I wouldn’t ask them to pay me. It’s 26 dollars.