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Dear Abby: Relationship finances, sorta
DEAR ABBY: My girlfriend and I each own our homes and have about the same mortgage payment. She ends up staying with me most of the time because I live closer to where we both work.
I recently found out that she has been Airbnbing her condo a lot of the weekends when she stays with me. I feel taken advantage of even though it doesn't really affect me whether her place is empty or she's getting rent.
What is the etiquette on such an arrangement? Should I be getting a cut? I feel if I told her I wanted to stay at her place and rent out mine, she would want some of the money. -- WEEKEND ROOMIES
DEAR WEEKEND ROOMIES: There is no rule of etiquette governing whether you're entitled to some of the income she receives from renting out her place while she's visiting you. Discuss this with your entrepreneurial girlfriend and see how she feels about sharing the wealth. Her reaction will give insight into her character.
I recently found out that she has been Airbnbing her condo a lot of the weekends when she stays with me. I feel taken advantage of even though it doesn't really affect me whether her place is empty or she's getting rent.
What is the etiquette on such an arrangement? Should I be getting a cut? I feel if I told her I wanted to stay at her place and rent out mine, she would want some of the money. -- WEEKEND ROOMIES
DEAR WEEKEND ROOMIES: There is no rule of etiquette governing whether you're entitled to some of the income she receives from renting out her place while she's visiting you. Discuss this with your entrepreneurial girlfriend and see how she feels about sharing the wealth. Her reaction will give insight into her character.
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Because there are ways this could easily be awful on the part of girlfriend, depending on how much she's getting from Airbnb-ing vs her mortgage payment. If she's making money by living rent free at LW's place then yeah that's kind of shitty on her part, and that also puts the part where it hasn't come up before in a nastier light.
On the other hand, if the Airbnb-ing is just barely covering or not even covering the mortgage payments/etc, then this is not an issue and she may not have mentioned it previously because it literally didn't come up or occur to her that it was an issue.
It also depends how close to the margins either of them is; LW's wording about it not affecting them suggests they, at least, are not - but it's actually still only a suggestion, because there's a hella lot of assumptions he may be running on even if he's living from paycheque to paycheque, including gendered ones (ie it's not okay for him to ask her for household contributions, which is why he's now going "well this feels really unfair since I'm basically paying for her home but she's making money off renting her place out" but hasn't just outright said anything yet).
I will say that it is my general feeling that if she is spending most of her time at his house, she should be contributing to the upkeep of that house. How big a deal that is is, as noted, directly related to how close to the margins everyone is.
But in addition to that there's all kinds of other things, like - is this a one-off, unusual thing? Or is this part of a pattern of behaviours where technically all things are equal but she ends up coming out at a strong financial advantage? (I have met people like that.) Or in the other direction, is he always eyeing and penny-pinching and going "well but what about the gas-money for when I drove you blah"? How often does it actually happen - are we talking like a hundred bucks every two months maybe, or a substantial income?
These all change it, for me.
I mean there is obviously a communication flaw, but it's not even necessarily a huge Symptom of Wider Problem one so much as, as noted above, she may not actually even be making her mortgage payment back out of it so it's not like she's making much and it doesn't feel to her like it's a big deal and it just hasn't come up and now he's just stuck in a position he has no idea what the etiquette is.
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