Electricity consumption help/input/opinions welcome :)

[smc96]

I recently moved into a home with another couple... my boyfriend streams live on twitch and has one tower, 3 monitors and 3 lights that he uses while streaming around 5 hours when he does. He barely does this daily. It is a good source of income for us.
Now the question I have for you... is it fair that the other couple is asking us to pay 60% electricity due to this streaming job my boyfriend does?
I ask this because I feel its not using THAT much more energy compared to the rest of the house. They do around 1-2 loads of laundry a day sometimes with only a few items in it (every day they do laundry) … I feel using the washer and dryer daily uses if not more maybe just as much energy as his PC? I came here because I have asked around and no one seems to really understand what I am talking about when it comes to his set up for Twitch...
In addition... what I was trying to say overall was that our roommate is saying is my boyfriends PC a month will use 10% more in electricity than the rest of the house... (this other said guy also has a gaming PC himself and also plays quite often too for lengths of time). So is 60% for us actually "fair" … I know its only a slight difference but it seems a little ridiculous to me when they do laundry every day as well as run their own PC's.

 

[AllanGH]

Your BF is making money from the streaming, right?

And is consuming what probably amounts to the lion's share of the bandwidth when he's streaming, right?

If you stay hung-up on the "fairness" aspect of this, you are going to become embittered, and cause resentment in the other couple.

I don't count that as a very good environment to live in--for either of the couples.

Until you can develop evidence that establishes parity of electricity consumption, sufficient to offset the money being earned from streaming, drop it, and know that you are probably money ahead, because of the added income.

 

[smc96]

Your BF is making money from the streaming, right?

And is consuming what probably amounts to the lion's share of the bandwidth when he's streaming, right?

If you stay hung-up on the "fairness" aspect of this, you are going to become embittered, and cause resentment in the other couple.

I don't count that as a very good environment to live in--for either of the couples.

Until you can develop evidence that establishes parity of electricity consumption, sufficient to offset the money being earned from streaming, drop it, and know that you are probably money ahead, because of the added income.

The thing is though... we addressed to them ONLY that we should try to save energy by only running full loads in the dishwasher/washer... turning off lights when they leave the room ... etc. they are used to the military paying their utilities so they use everything so freely and forget they have to pay it themselves now.
This is what bothered us more in the end more than us paying more or it being even.
Idk... our friend gets housing allowance whereas we don’t. His streaming pays our rent in the end... and his other job pays for grocery’s etc. we are not pocketing too much... whereas this couple is since we are paying already 70% of the mortgage and he pays whatever he’d like (more or less) for that month from his $1300 housing allowance not to mention how much he makes weekly in addition to that. If we are bringing income into the picture though I do find it unfair. They are not struggling and neither are we ... we get that... it just the fact that we’d feel more comfortable it being 50/50 and his wife even agrees with us but he got very verbal with us and told us that there is no way the extensive use of the other appliances add up to be more than his PC use... so that’s why we disagree because we know that such appliances do indeed use more. He has the notion that of the average $5.50 a day kWh (actual cost on our bill) that we use alone from the PC set up at least 60% if not more.

 

[AllanGH]

I have been in two situations, in my life, when blending households was a necessary thing, and it NEVER worked-out. The primary lesson that I learned from those two mistakes was that, if I ever have to do it again, there will be a notarized contract involved, or it won't happen.

In your situation, it looks like it will never be 50-50, so I suppose that your options are to choke it down and make it a peaceful place to live, or walk out and get your own place.

You might want to position yourselves so that walking out is possible, then sit down and tell them that the split goes to 50-50, or you have no choice except to leave. By that time, you should have plenty of information to support your position, or disprove it. If you do that, though, you had better be ready to move out right then, instead of letting it escalate into an ugly situation.

It might actually be better to just plan on leaving, and just give them notice when you are actually ready to start loading up the truck and get out of Dodge.