When choosing your living situation for next year, your closest friends should be on top of the list.

There are many benefits to having a roommate. For instance, it helps keep living expenses lower and can make your living arrangement less lonely. But you must carefully consider who you choose to live with because this choice could make or break your living arrangement for the foreseeable future.

If you room with a friend, you can anticipate their living patterns as opposed to living with a complete stranger. There is a sense of security and familiarity. The same cannot be said if you room with someone you barely know or don’t know at all.

Moreover, rooming with a friend would allow for a more intimate household environment, which research from George Mason University in 2014 suggests is important for one’s personal well-being.

Positive roommate relationships are direct protections from psychological distress, so live with someone you know you get along with, like a friend. Though the same results can be achieved with acquaintances or strangers, it is much less guaranteed.

Studies imply that friends are a vital factor to an individual’s support system. This is important because even just the perception of having a readily available support system has been associated with improved stress resistance and well-being.

Hence, by living with a friend, you would essentially have a “buffer” against the stresses of life.

But above all else, living with friends will make you happy. What is better than staying up all night talking to someone you trust and like spending time with? Not much.

By living with a friend, you get to come home to a safer and more intimate feeling household, with all the benefits that come along with such.