The artist formerly known as SplitTheRent.com

Ryan and I have been hard at work the last few months building this project, formerly known as SplitTheRent.com. We’ve redesigned and updated our bill-sharing platform, added recurring payments, percentage splits, multi-user expenses, and an expense tagging and tracking system. We added a furniture calculator, and adapted the site for Australia and New Zealand. We are finishing up mobile apps for iPhone and Android.

We’ve hoped to write on our blog more often, so with the start of the fall semester, we’re turning over a new leaf. For the next few months, we will be releasing new blog posts on Tuesday and Thursday of each week (at roughly 10am, starting this week). We have exciting data and some fun sharing questions we want to write about!

One issue we’ve run into is that people confuse the rent-splitting calculator and the main bill-sharing app. So we’ve changed our name to Splitwise.com, which refers to both the app and to this blog. From now on, we will use “SplitTheRent” just to refer to the rent-splitting calculator.  Our new name should make it easier to distinguish between our projects, and to explain our project to friends and new users. (This new blog is also now being run on WordPress.)

Thank you again, beta-testers, for all your wonderful feedback and sharing the site with others.  You rock our socks.  Please share with your friends, and let us know if you have thoughts or questions by emailing contact@splitwise.com, or via twitter or commenting on this blog.

Introducing the furniture calculator: a “blue book” for furniture

Let’s say you and your roommate Nathan split a new $500 couch when you moved in together 2 years ago. The couch is currently in “very good” shape – the pillows are a bit flattened and there are some very minor signs of wear and tear, but not much else.

Now you are both moving out, and Nathan wants to keep the couch. You want to keep the $300 TV that you split around the same time (the TV still works fine). You should be paid back for your share of the couch, and Nathan should be paid back for his share of the TV. But what is the value of the couch and TV now, 2 years later?

Continue reading Introducing the furniture calculator: a “blue book” for furniture

How the furniture calculator works

The new furniture calculator is an awesome tool for helping you move out of an old apartment. As we mentioned in the introductory post, the calculator takes three things into account:
  • The purchase price of the furniture
  • The change in condition/quality of the furniture
  • How long the furniture has been in use since it was bought
It uses this information to calculate the current value of the furniture so that you can sell it to your housemates, or split up furniture fairly when moving out.  But how does it work?

Continue reading How the furniture calculator works

Does it really work? Feedback on the Rent Calculator

Thanks to interest from readers and responders like you, I have had a lot more opportunity to check my original work and the calculator is holding up quite well under public scrutiny. Thanks to everyone who gave feedback or wrote notes of congratulations – it’s made this whole project really, really fun!

Right after launch, I started collecting voluntary feedback from people using the calculator. Originally, I simply asked people to rate the calculator on a 1-5 scale. Here are the results from the first 1,338 respondents (before I switched the feedback system to the present one, which is still collecting data).

Continue reading Does it really work? Feedback on the Rent Calculator

Survey results – Split the Rent accurate to within 10%

Fairness is a funny thing. One person’s fair is another person’s rip-off. So it is important for a rent-splitting calculator to jive with a broadly intuitive sense of fairness. It can’t just be what I think is fair – or what any one person thinks – or it won’t be useful.

In order to validate and calibrate the formula I used for the rent-share calculator on this blog, I did a rather in-depth survey on “apartment sharing fairness” with my friends. Here are the results – enjoy!

Continue reading Survey results – Split the Rent accurate to within 10%