Bachelor star Joey Graziadei clarifies why he lives with fiancée’s roommates: ‘Not broke’

The Bachelor star Joey Graziadei has clarified why he lives with his fiancée’s roommates.

The 29-year-old and his fiancée, Kelsey Anderson, first spoke about their living situation during an episode of the Trading Secrets podcast with host Jason Tartick. At the time, the Bachelor contestant explained that she wasn’t willing to immediately uproot her life after getting engaged on the show, and because Graziadei was living with his sister at the time, she invited him to move in.

“I was still working and so I was like, ‘I gotta go back to my life. I’m not quitting my job,’” she said during the June episode. “He was just living with his sister, so I was like, ‘You can move in with me.’”

At one point, Graziadei also explained that there was a large drop in his credit score, from 730 to 650, which caused him to struggle looking for a place to live on his own. “I went on a TV show and I come back and my credit score bombed,” he said at the time. “I was like, ‘I can’t even get into an apartment building. Jesus Christ.’”

However, the former tennis coach recently turned to his Instagram Stories on Monday, July 1, with an advertisement for the personal finance company Credit Karma. In the video, he addressed any rumors regarding his decision to move in with Anderson and explained that money wasn’t a factor.

“Let me set the record straight. I’m not broke, I’m doing just fine,” he said in the clip. “But I am temporarily living with Kelsey and her roommates as a choice to be able to spend as much time as possible with her as she finishes out her lease.”

He did note that while he was filming the reality show, his credit score dropped because of missing “one small payment.”

“But since that time, I’ve been able to raise my credit score,” he explained.

During the podcast episode, Graziadei and Anderson were able to laugh about their living situation. “I’m on a comedy sketch right now. I feel like I’m full-on in a New Girl situation,” he said, referencing the Fox sitcom that features one woman – played by Zooey Deschanel – living with three men as roommates.

The latest Bachelor star was also living in Hawaii prior to his appearance on season 28 of the show, which saw him get engaged to Anderson during the March season finale. Graziadei made the decision to relocate after being announced as the next season’s lead to have shorter flights for press trips. “No way I could be living [in Hawaii] with the amount that I was gonna be doing with the press, going from New York to LA,” he said.

“I do think people forget that, in my situation, moving to my sister’s was strategic,” he added. “So, I was like, ‘I need to either go find a new place, or I have to get into a place that’s gonna let me be able to travel pretty easily on the mainland.’”

Despite the couple’s unconventional living arrangements, he viewed the decision as a “no brainer” considering how much their lives were going to change after filming the show.

“It would have been wrong of me to be like, ‘We need to get you out of your life,’ because she dropped her whole life to be a part of this,” Graziadei said about Anderson. “And I knew that regardless of what was going to happen, my life was going to have to change and go somewhere else.”