I recently went on a 12-day trip to Greece with my girlfriend and three of her good friends (yes, I was the only guy, which surprisingly wasn't an issue at all). Greece is a beautiful country with such delicious food and important history; I had an amazing time and created many wonderful memories that will last the rest of my life.
But this is a financial advisor's blog, so you know there's going to be money involved somehow. This group of ladies generally splits expenses on their trips, i.e. someone will pay for a meal or drinks, keep the receipt, and divvy things up later. I was told before the trip that I'd need to agree to this method of expense-sharing, as it's incredibly difficult to split meals/drinks five ways multiple times a day. Considering that we were planning on spending a lot of time together as a group, I was totally cool with that rule.
Right away, though, there were kinks thrown into our plans. One of the ladies had her phone and credit cards stolen on the very first night in Athens, so she was without money (and phone!) for the entire 12 day trip. Additionally, our group was on a sailboat with three strangers, and we were all expected to contribute to a food "kitty" so we could make and share meals and snacks while we were on the boat in the mornings...
But not everyone has the same food preferences. Some people were pescatarian, others were vegan or maybe had allergies. Is it fair to ask everyone to pitch into a group "food fund" if not everyone can eat the same food? I digress...
Since the five of us friends agreed to split meals and drinks, there was never any drama about who would pay for what. We each generally took turns paying for group stuff, and the girlfriend and I split most of our meals, so that was pretty easy for the two of us to calculate.
The issues that crept into our foolproof plan only reared their ugly heads when we got home.
The main problem with splitting meals with friends after visiting a foreign country: ALL OF THE RECEIPTS ARE IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE! Why did I not anticipate this!? Sure, people speak English pretty much everywhere, but their receipts are going to show the primary language of their country! And guess what? I don't speak Greek.
It is a long, laborious process to decipher what you ate/drank, and where the restaurant or bar was (because if you didn't immediately write down WHO the food and drink belonged to, you will have NO idea how to split things). I had to use Google Translate (highly recommend!) to help me figure out which of us was at a certain place and what was consumed.
And then I had to remember who ate / drank what. Because I sure didn't write it down on the receipt. (Thank goodness my girlfriend has a steel-trap memory. This doesn't usually work well in my favor, but it did on this trip!)
The lady who had her phone and money stolen was smart: she kept a food journal, detailing what she owed everyone after each meal. Great idea in theory, but it was hard for her to keep track of who was paying each time, so although she knew what she ordered and how much it cost, she wasn't entirely sure who to reimburse.
Oh, and did I forget to mention tips? And currency conversions?
It wasn't much help when a receipt showed, say, 41 euros, but my credit card statement showed $45.76 due to the exchange rate. So then I had to match up the date on the receipt with the dates on my credit card statement and HOPE that the name on the receipt matched my statement.
But that didn't always happen. Because the "Wine and Art Market" we visited might be owned by Adonis Papadopolous. And guess which name was on the receipt...
I spent a good few DAYS figuring out who owed what and to whom. And then we entered our expenses into an app called Splitwise.
I must say, Splitwise is a cool app. I recommend it if you're going to split expenses with friends. You can split with the whole group or just individuals, and you can split expenses evenly, by percentages, by dollar amounts, or just about any way you can think of. The free version of the app (I'm certainly not paying money for an app!) limits you to just 4 receipts per day, so it took me a good week to enter everything.
FINALLY, my part of the job was done: all of my receipts were entered, and I knew exactly who owed me money and how much.
But I had no clue how much I might owe the others.
And that's because the process of "settling up" can take days for some people, weeks for others. Money means more to some, less to others. Some people have busier lives, while others don't.
Then you have to figure out HOW to pay each other. No one uses cash anymore; we all use cash apps, like Venmo, CashApp, Zelle, etc. And we all use DIFFERENT ones. Some of the ladies don't use Venmo, so I had to download and use CashApp. It was a minor inconvenience, but definitely something I should have anticipated.
So unless you agree on a specific deadline as a group, it can take a long time to close out the tabs, per se. It took two weeks for our group of five to settle up. All done, right?
No.
One of the ladies accidentally PAID another one when she actually meant to REQUEST a payment. But the lady she accidentally paid was in a dispute with Venmo, so the payment was applied to the dispute and couldn't be sent back.
The moral of this story: even the best-laid plans with the best intentions can go awry quickly when splitting international expenses with friends. If you set crystal clear expectations from the beginning, and you're all on the same page, it will help make the entire process MUCH easier and with a lot less headaches. And you probably won't lose any friends!
Image by Michelle Pitzel from Pixabay