What would YOU do in this roommate situation?

I’M SORRY THIS IS LONG! :)

**Background: My fiance moved into his first place last August. In October, a couple we are friends with moved in with him as roommates. I moved in on January 1st of this year.

I work 30 hours a week at a bank making decent money and I go to school full time. Josh (my fiance) works a 40 hour-a-week job that he’s had for a little less than a month. Our male roommate is unemployed and has been for over a year—still not looking for work and his unemployment recently ran out. His fiance works 12 hours a week on weekends and goes to school part time 2 days a week. Both of their vehicles are currently in the shop (excuses for not working or not working more).

Josh couldn’t afford the place alone before, but with his new pay he can easily afford it alone. With my help, we’d have extra money each month as well.

**The Situation: Things have been…well, tense lately. Our roommates are having money issues but they refuse to talk to us about it. If they end up not being able to pay, either me or my fiance will have to cover for them. I already had to pay an entire month of bills and food by myself because they couldn’t afford it the month after I moved in and my fiance got laid off. They paid me back, but they know that if they can’t afford to live here, they will have to leave.

That isn’t the huge issue, although it bothers me that they wait until the last minute to tell us about their money issues when it concerns us. The biggest issue is the tension. The lines of communication are all jacked up, to say the least. They have these moods they get into but don’t tell us what’s wrong, then we find out they were mad about something we did or didn’t do. Since they are home every day all day, they are the ones that do most of the cleaning and the majority of the cooking (we all alternate dinner dishes), and it’s become obvious to me that they think we aren’t pulling our weight. Last night, the girl made a comment to Josh about being sick of grocery shopping and so he can do it from now on. We go to the grocery store every week and spend $150/wk in food, and they seem to think they’re buying it all.

They are the type of people who are always right and you just can’t argue with them. It drives me absolutely crazy and it’s ruining the friendship. It makes me want to move back home with my parents, which is NOT ideal. Since Josh has only had this job for about a month, I know it’s not smart to kick the roommates out because you never know what might happen. However, we are miserable.

We’ve been holding our tongues up to this point, but I can’t stand that they think we aren’t doing what we need to do. If they had jobs and were gone like Josh and I are, there wouldn’t be a mess to clean, so why should we be cleaning their mess? We are NOT messy at all and we are extremely consistent on paying the bills and rent. I think we’re damn good roommates, so it makes me mad when I know they’re talking about us behind our backs.

Josh and I want to live alone and start our lives together, but we don’t want to screw ourselves over. I don’t know if we should talk to them openly about how we feel or if we should just deal with it until Josh’s job becomes a more permanent thing. He’s leaving Monday for 3 weeks of training in Ohio, so I’ll be left alone to deal with this. I don’t know what I should do, so I thought I’d get some opinions. What would YOU do in this situation?