Making more money - having a lodger

We hmm'd and haa'd about getting a lodger in the past. We eventually had decided against it because we have a young child and my husband wasn't massively keen on the idea as he likes his privacy.

But we now have a lodger. It wasn't planned - it's my brother. He lost his job and has got himself into a bit of a financial mess, had nowhere to go so we said to come here. He got a new job pretty sharp-ish and started paying us rent. I asked how much he was comfortable with paying and he said an amount that I was also happy with.

We've split the rent money 3 ways - one bit to me, second bit to husband and tiny bit into the joint account to cover the potential increase in electric and water bills with another adult in the house.
I've been saving my part of it to buy my daughter a bed and towards buying a car. Because the money is not from my wages I don't 'miss' it and so it's great to use it for my savings goals.
Hubs part is being saved for a holiday we really want to take at the end of the year - but which depends on how much we manage to save.

I would definitely recommend having a lodger to anyone. You can do it tax free if the amount is under £4250 a year. It's so helpful to us to have this extra money coming in to use on the extra things we want to save for this year and to do so without deducting from our wages is great.

It hasn't been all great with him here though as I have had to take control of his finances in order to sort it all out which has been quite stressful! But we are happy to help him out and for it to help us too is a godsend. xx