Hi, I am going to be a sophomore college student this fall and my boyfriend will be a junior/senior. My boyfriend and I just started discussing if it would be a good idea for me to leave the dorms at UCF (towers) and move in with him at his apartment for the fall. We will have been together for a year this October and out relationship is ridiculously strong. We are extremely happy with one another and have a very healthy relationship. He has an amazing job at Lockheed already and will most likely be graduating a year or so early. I am paying around $13,000 a year for my housing in the dorms on campus and he is paying around $10,000 a year, so $800ish a month. There is a bus that goes directly to campus every 15 minutes on the weekdays as well as a gym and all that jazz. Do I cancel my fall housing here (no cancelation fee atm) and split the bill ($400 a month each) with him at his apartment? We would both be saving a lot of money this way. Help please! 🙂
\*\*TL;DR;\*\* : Should I move in with my boyfriend of one year to his apartment to save money in college?
12 comments
If you both feel ready for this next step, go for it. It really is a big change though. You’re not just boyfriend/girlfriend, you’ll also be roommates which can make or break some relationships. I’d just think it over and only do it if you’re both 100% sure.
I’m one usually against moving in with college BFs while still in college. Independence is so much better. Especially when you’ve been together less than a year.
Part of the living at school experience is being able to come and go and not have to be accountable all the time.
Get a last minute invite to board game night? Have to tell your partner you won’t be home. Decide you just want to hang out and crash in the dorms? Is your partner going to be upset that you’re not home every night?
He’s basically done with school and you’re just getting into the meat of it. I think it’s a bad idea to cut off your campus life experience to play house. Who’s going to be responsible for cooking, cleaning, shopping for groceries? What happens if this doesn’t work out? Where are you going to live?
There’s plenty of time to move in together. If you want to “save money”, find a roommate to move in with. This hasn’t been a thing for a year and you both still have a lot of growing and changes ahead of you.
It will be there in a year.
Have you ever taken a trip together? Have you discussed things like chores and finances and cooking?
You literally just told strangers on the internet exactly where to find you! I’d definitely move now!
The choice of moving in together shouldn’t be made based off finances or practicality. It should be based only on your relationship, are you ready for such a big step after less than a year?
I actually used to live right there by UCF lol.
I also had a very similar situation happen while I was in college. I had a dorm room but ended up pretty much moving in with my boyfriend at the time. When it came time to decide if I wanted to have a dorm room for the next semester my boyfriend tried to convince me to save them money and just stay with him. Logically it made a lot of sense. I would have saved a ton of money. But something told me that I should hang onto my room just in case. Let me tell you I am glad that I did. We ended up breaking up midway through that next semester and I had to move back to my dorm room. I was really glad that last me was looking out for future me lol.
I won’t say either way, but if you do, sign a lease with him for the semester so that he can’t essentially kick you out halfway through, and do it again for the following semester. I mean, awkward if you guys break up, but that way you have time to secure on-campus housing again if it’s available, or find something else.
Honestly? You really need your home to be a sanctuary while you’re studying. Living with a partner is a whole other level of a relationship and brings with it an intensity that can be all consuming.
It really places the relationship above all others in your life. It makes it very difficult to break up, to focus entirely on exams, to nurture your friendships, network etc.
There’s also the general rule of not planning something further out than the length of the relationship. If you’ve been together a month, don’t plan a vacation in 6. If you’ve been together a year, a year out is pretty intense.
Personally, I don’t recommend living with a partner until after college/undergrad. I feel it’s really important to establish yourself as an adult by yourself. Living with a partner at such a young age makes that very difficult. If you don’t have a good sense of your independent adult self it makes leaving a relationship much more logistically and emotionally daunting.
You want to stay in a relationship because you both want to be there. Not because you don’t know how to be alone as an adult.
This is going to sound a bit harsh, so please know that I’m saying this in a “tough love” sense to get you to see why this is a very bad idea: You just stopped being a child a year ago. Moving in with someone is a serious thing you should not consider until you are in your mid 20s once your frontal lobe is fully formed at least and even then with someone you’ve been with for a few years.
Neither of you meet any of these criteria.
Also, you have plenty of time to be a domestic partner with someone when you’re older. Let yourself be a college kid and have some independence and freedom.
Almost all relationships at your age end in a break up. Cheating at your age is also prevalent. Tying yourself to someone legally and financially in these conditions is a terrible decision. Are you able to pay out the rest of the lease if you break up and have to move out before the lease is up?
This would only end in disaster. Please don’t do it.
Seconding not moving in with him juuust yet- at your age and with just one year into the relationship, I’d personally let it cook a little more and move in together later.
Besides, speaking as someone who only had about 8 months experience of living alone (well, with roomies) before moving in with my boyfriend…I truly wish I had the experience to be independent for a little longer. We’re 6 years in, happy as clams in a fantastic relationship and he’s the ideal roommate- but I do wish I had had a bit more time to just have a space that was 100% just me. If that helps!
I completely understand how devastatingly hard the housing market is.
However, moving in together for the primary purpose of saving money is really foolish. When two people in a relationship move in together, the purpose *should be* to find out if you have enough compatibility living together to advance your relationship to the next stage.
There is absolutely no way that moving in together is well advised if you are not ready to take things to the next stage. I have moved in with one boyfriend that I had been together with for 3 to 4 years. When I moved in,it was because I wanted marriage to be the next step.
When it became clear that marriage was not the next step, living together was pointless. And because it was pointless, we had to separate. The one saving grace was his willingness to be the one who moved out of the apartment, and left me the cat. However, all this did was buy me time. I could not afford the apartment by myself, nor was it appropriate to have a roommate there.
I went to head and got a room in a place with a roommate. That was the most affordable option for me.