How to Divide Expenses With a Group

Adventure is a State of Mind

The More the Merrier

Traveling with others usually multiplies the fun, but if you are traveling with anyone other than your partner or your immediate family, some discussion and planning ahead of the trip can prevent misunderstandings and hard feelings. One of the biggest areas for misunderstandings is splitting expenses.

I’ve been lucky to travel with very honest and conscientious family and friends, but even within a group of such people, there can always be misunderstandings if misassumptions or mistakes are made. To avoid such misunderstandings, have a discussion before your trip as to how you want to keep track of expenses. There are various ways of doing this.

Dividing Expenses Before the Trip

Some of the expenses may be divided automatically, such as if you and your travel companions are staying in separate hotel rooms. Other expenses such as plane tickets or a vehicle rental may be paid ahead of the trip by one individual, and the math can be done and payments made before leaving on the trip.

Dividing Expenses During the Trip

There are other expenses, primarily food related expenses, that will occur frequently during the trip and for which it is helpful to have a plan. In the U.S., we’re accustomed to asking our server in a restaurant to split the bill between individuals or couples, but this is not always an option in other countries. Or if you’re in another country, there may be language difficulties that prevent you from expressing this desire to your server.

If you and your travel companions have similar eating and drinking habits, dividing up the cost of a meal is easy. For example, my husband and I have friends, Shelley and Mike, with whom we have frequently traveled. We all enjoy good food and often split dishes so that we can all try new cuisines. Also, our beverage choices tend to be very similar to each other, so we often divide the check for the meal in half and feel it is fair to all of us.

This will not work very well, however, if you are traveling with someone who eats far more or far less than you or who has very expensive taste in beverages when you do not. In that case, you might want to spend some time looking at the itemized bill and deciding how much each individual or couple is responsible for.

Keeping a Running Tally

If you are on an extended trip with a group, there is a good chance that different individuals will pay at different times, and it is therefore important to consider how you want to manage an ongoing tally. One option, of course, would be to have one person pay everything for the entire trip and then have the other traveling companions pay their share after they all return home, but in my mind, this puts a lot of pressure on the individual paying to keep track and make sure that everyone pays them so they are not left footing the majority of expenses.

A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.

Elbert Hubbard

One method that works best with a small number of travelers (such as two individuals or two couples) is to alternate between meals or between days and keep track. This way, if one person ends up paying far more for one meal than the other person, the person who has paid less might end up paying for two meals in a row to catch up, at which point the other individual would pay again.

In the past, the only way to track this was usually using good ol’ paper and pencil. When I’ve traveled with my friend, Melissa, she has acted as the “accountant” and kept a running tally as we alternated between who paid. Now there are also phone apps, such as Splitwise, that allow a group to keep track of who pays each time, how much they paid, and how much each person owes the others in the group.

The Pay as You Go Method

Another method to share expenses and one of the most simple ways to manage this situation is for everyone to give cash to the person who pays. If you are traveling in a country that is primarily a cashless economy, however, this will not work very well since the meal will be paid by credit/debit card but the travelers will be exchanging cash back and forth with each other.

Again, in this modern day and age, there are some online options to pay up, such as using Venmo or PayPal. With this strategy, it would be important to make sure that everyone is in agreement and opens an account prior to starting the trip. If you have cell service, after the meal, the person paying lets everyone know how much they owe and they pay at that time. If you don’t have cell service or have not activated your mobile phone for the country you are in, you can wait until the next time you have access to wifi and can pay at that time.

A combination of apps, such as using Splitwise to keep track of how much is owed and then using Venmo to settle up at the end of the trip, can be a very workable solution so long as everyone is in agreement and the plan is made ahead of the trip, including each traveling companion opening the needed accounts and downloading the necessary apps.

Are you planning a trip with a friend or group of friends? Have you made a plan with them as to how you want to track and share expenses? Can you try experimenting with the apps or strategies before your trip to make sure they will work for you?