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As we have learned over the years, when you live in a big city sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and get a roommate so you can, you know, eat. Even if it means living with someone very weird, causing you to have to take some passive-aggressive action.
As we also learned last year thanks to our friends over at SmartAsset, the amount of money you can save by having a roommate varies greatly depending on the city in which you reside.
So, to see if anything has changed in 2018 with regards to the cost savings of having a roommate, SmartAsset conducted their study again, for the fourth year in a row, and the results are once again pretty interesting.
Some key findings…
• Of the top 10 places where it pays off most to live with a roommate, five are in California — with Long Beach ranking just outside the top 10 in 11th.
• Five of the cities where it pays off least to have a roommate are in the Midwest. Across Midwest cities in the bottom 10, the average returns to having a roommate are just under $300 per month.
• San Francisco is one of two places (NYC is the other) where the monthly benefit of a roommate surpasses $1,000.
• Getting a roommate in New York could save you somewhere around $12,500 per year.
• In Boston, moving in with a friend and inhabiting a two-bedroom together can save you about $990 per month.
• Switching from being alone in a one-bedroom to teaming up with a roommate for a two-bedroom rental could save $960 per month in San Jose.
• In Oakland, an average renter could save $10,600 by switching from renting alone in a one-bedroom to with a single roommate in a two-bedroom.
If you’d like to play around with the numbers and see how these savings can help out in different markets in the long run, use SmartAsset’s savings calculator to show the power of compounding interest or try out different retirement savings simulations with their retirement calculator.
View the entire study over at SmartAsset.com.