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How do I split the apartment rent?

Me and my friend moved into an apartment recently. My room is tiny! Her room is about 1.4 times larger. I commonly divided rent up just by the room and not the common space. She thinks we should include the common spaces like the kitchen and living room. I feel it is unfair because her room is so much larger but will only be paying about $40-50 more per month. Which way is most "fair" and commonly used (to include common space or not)

Public Comments

1. you have to pay all of it since she is wealthier (room wise)
2. Measure the square footage and divide the monthly rent by the number of square feet. Then Add up the space each of you uses, and multply that number by the price per square foot. You say you're a high school graduate?
3. It should be split by the whole place not room by room. You guys should not have gotten the apartment if the rooms where going to make an argument.
4. This is what I did in your situation: Lets say the total rent is $1000. We split half of that equally to represent the common space so, I pay $250 and my housemate pays $250. Then we split the other half of the $1000 by the size of our rooms (let's say 200 me, 300 him). Therefore, I would pay a total of 450 and he would pay 550. So you see what I did, 50% of my rent is for common space, and 50% of my rent is for my room.
5. The easiest way is to point out that at month 7 of a 12 month lease, you will be trading bedrooms and then you'll pay $40 more per month.
6. cranky bunch above! There is validity in both ways in dividing the rent. If you do it your roommate's way and you don't mind paying some extra cash, then offer to switch rooms with her. She may wanted to go about this way because she wants to pay less rent. Back in my college days, we divided the rent by the sizes of the room only. But there wasn't not much of a difference between one room and the next. But it seems like 1.4 times difference is huge. I would say what is "fair" would potentially be a compromise. But I would agree to just use the rooms and not common space.