I got an email from a man who works in a non-profit organization. We support an old friend who is now head of the group (the staff are all responsible to raise their own support, which is not unusual in the Christian ministry field). This man said he would be in our area this week and would like to meet with us, so could we go out to dinner? I said OK, out of respect for our friend. I’m wondering if he will pick up the tab? We’ll find out tonight. I hope he doesn’t think we’re going to increase our monthly donation, because we aren’t.
That’s a tricky one. I would say, unless one of you is an actual member of the clergy, that you should all go in expecting to split the tab.
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I’ve tried to move towards just splitting the bill (or separate checks, whatever someone wants) instead of trying to remember too. When I turned 60 I implemented “no more celebrating bdays by paying for other couple” with one set of friends. It’s just easier to always split it.
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We usually just split the check equally with friends. Last meal, with (3) couples, we wanted to split equally 3 ways. The establishment said ok, but would charge an extra fee for doing so, and had to put the extra charge on one of the bills. No problem. That was just a new one for us.
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They usually have something on the menu when there’s an extra charge for more than 2 checks. I’ve only seen it a couple of times. There’s a restaurant where a group of us often go (some spouses in a band that plays there regularly), with people arriving and leaving at various times. They automatically do separate tabs for each of us!
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We have thus far never been charged for splitting a bill. Normally we only give them 2 cards and they split it evenly—easy peasy.
We once travelled to Europe with 3 couples. The husbands had a rotation for picking up meal tabs (which could vary greatly in cost) and taxi bill. They kept receipts, threw it in a group envelope. My husband tracked in a spreadsheet. We all laughed in the end by how close the family totals were, about $50 exchanging hands to make it even.
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We traveled to Japan with friends. They pre-paid for some things we paid for other things. After the trip, my friend and I tallied up the spreadsheet and I wrote her a check for the difference. It worked out fine. Another time we traveled with them, we just took turns picking up the bill and split the lodging bill. It worked fine.
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When we travel with one set of friends we do something similar. One guy always keeps track, and whatever receipts we just put our initials, or sometimes just a scrap of paper, and he does the debits and credits and tells us how to make it even.
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There are apps now for splitting expenses. And Venmo to pay 
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As long as there’s mutual trust and decent bookkeeping, it seems to work out pretty easily.
We are “old” and “old school.”
My SIL tried to get the family to use an app on a couple of family trips, and we were marginally successful.
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Don’t get cc points on Venmo ..
My comment was meant to be tongue in cheek 
I’m old also
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I only do cash, check & CC. D also does Venmo so if we need a Venmo acct, I have her pay & reimburse her.
I usually am that guy… when we go away with other couples we keep track of the expenses/receipts and then settle up at the end of the trip. We generally just do 50/50 or 1/3rd on meals (don’t keep track at the next level down of who ordered what). We find that if people take rough turns paying for different things along the way, the true-up isn’t all that much.
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Went to Europe with a friend who had made the hotel reservation. She said she had pre-paid so I paid for almost all the meals and museum fees. She left the day before me. When I went to check out, they told me she had only put up the credit card and did not pay. We ended up splitting everything but more complicated.
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We have a couple of times been on vacation with a friend who was… that person. At the end of the vacation we got sent a spreadsheet with an itemized listing of all expenses, who paid what and each person’s share still owing literally down to the cent. Like $203.57 or whatever. And that is how he expected it to be settled. If that was me I’d round up if I owed it to someone or round down if asking. (This guy is not short of cash… he’s just the guy who always knows exactly how much change is in his wallet…)
Well, I would be that person. I actually balance my bank account to the penny every month. I like keeping track of expenses. If one person drinks like a fish and the others don’t, I think he/she should be responsible for paying more. If someone is willing to take the time to figure all that out, more power to him.
Sure, if there is a big discrepancy in spending (I’ve been on the wrong side of that before, especially with alcohol expenses), but we don’t really have friends with much different spends anymore for leisure so we tend to take the “all comes out in the wash” approach. If a particular occasion one person or couple orders something noticeably more expensive or an extra course or something like that they/we will offer to pay by share rather than split, but it doesn’t happen often.
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