There are two things I love the most about group travel. One, you will have the time of your life with your favorite people. Two, you can split travel expenses and save costs in the long run.
At the same time, splitting bills can ruin a group trip if it’s not done right or if some group members feel like they are paying more than others. If you are planning a vacation with your family members or friends, you need to find a way to split costs when traveling. You should leave for your trip only when you’ve figured out how you will split travel costs with your group of friends or family.
Let’s take a look at the best ways and tips to split travel expenses with your friends or family.
Plan Ahead for Harmony
Before embarking on your group vacation, it’s crucial to ensure everyone is on the same page to avoid any misunderstandings. Discussing details like destination, accommodation preferences, itinerary, and budget with the entire group will help streamline the planning process. This ensures that everyone’s expectations align and facilitates easier bill splitting at the end of the trip.
Set a Budget
One thing you should decide before your trip is a vacation budget. Is it going to be a $1000 per person trip or a $1500 per person? Please speak with the entire group to get an idea of how much they can spend during this trip. Remember that your friends have different financial realities. While someone might not mind having a fancy dinner every day, another person might not have much money to indulge in that.
Your trip budgets should give a precise estimate of what food, flight, accommodation, and transport will cost. One of the purposes of a group travel budget is to provide your travel buddies with a clear understanding of how much they need to bring from their pocket. Remember, it’s okay for someone to decide they want to cut down on costs or back out from an activity if they can’t afford it. People’s expectations and needs are different. So don’t assume everyone would like to spend their money the same way, on the same things.
Designate One Person to Record all Expenses
While it’s a good idea to keep travel expenses separate with your buddies, a group vacation doesn’t always work that way. There are vacation costs you have to pay together. But how do you know who owes what if you can’t remember who paid for the hotel room or how much was paid for the cab fare? Imagine if someone paid for the group dinners, another paid for the hotel, and someone paid for transportation. It might become confusing to calculate. This is where recording all expenses comes in. To make things easy, you should have one person from your group of friends who documents every expense. This person will note what was paid for and who paid, and take photographs of receipts for reference.
Have a General Fund
Between ordering a platter of dinner, hopping into cabs, and paying for tickets to an attraction site, it’s possible to lose track of who paid for what. That’s why I always recommend having a general pool of funds where everyone contributes the same amount. This general fund can be helpful for bills like taxi fares, rentals, outings, and tickets. For this to work, you need to get an estimate of what the trip will cost your group. Then agree on a vacation budget and have everyone contribute equally to the general fund. Alternatively, you can have one person in the group pay for everything with their funds and then pay them when you split the bills.
Use Apps
The simplest way to split travel expenses with your travel companions is by leveraging technology. Nowadays, a plethora of valuable apps makes splitting travel costs easier than ever before, offering convenience and efficiency for sharing expenses. With these apps, you can take note of what everyone spends and split the bill based on different percentages. Streamlining payment processes and settling balances seamlessly.
Take a look at this list of awesome apps and pick the ones that work best with your group:
Splitwise: Tracks expenses, calculates balances, and sends reminders to settle up.
Venmo: Allows users to easily send and receive money, making it convenient for splitting bills and sharing expenses with friends.
PayPal: Offers a similar service to Venmo, enabling users to split travel expenses and transfer funds securely.
Billr: Specifically designed for splitting restaurant bills. It calculates each person’s share, including tax and tip.
Tab: Ideal for group outings, it lets users split bills evenly or by item. Making it easy and fair for sharing expenses for meals, drinks, and more.
Tricount: Helps track shared expenses and settles debts among participants.
Settle Up: Enables users to track expenses and settle debts in various currencies, making it suitable for international group travel.
Splittr: Tracks expenses and divides costs among group members, making it simple to manage shared expenses on the go.
Use Cash
Cash payment might be necessary during your group trip. Especially when you want to tip a server or pay at a store that does not accept debit card payments. A good tip for group traveling is to have one person handle all cash payments. While it’s easy to trace payments on bank accounts and credit cards, it will be hard to track cash payments. For this reason, avoid having different people handle cash. Assign just one group member who will pay for everything needed in local currency. Of course, this person will be reimbursed after the trip.
Ask For Separate Bills
Imagine one person orders several glasses of wine and someone else orders water only. This is a common situation during group trips that makes splitting bills complicated. To solve this, you can ask the server to get separate bills. This way, everyone pays exactly for what they have. You can also do this with other expenses, such as tour tickets, rental car, or accommodation. Also, some ride-sharing apps and companies offer bill-splitting features that allow costs to be split from the get-go.
Take Turns Paying
When someone pays for a car rental, let someone else handle the hotel bill, and another person should pay for the meals. Taking turns paying group expenses is the best way to ensure the responsibility of payment does not fall on one person’s shoulders. Another great thing about taking turns is that it can lead to everyone spending a similar amount. In this case, repayment at the end of the trip won’t be too difficult.
Book in Advance
One of the ways to split travel expenses easily is by having your travel mates make reservations before the trip. Whether it’s rental costs or a ticket for a show or dinner reservations, you can book beforehand and have people pay before they get to the destination. This eliminates the stress of splitting expenses during the trip. It also ensures you have easy access to the group activities you want to try out.
If Things Get Complicated, Handle Your Own Expenses
Sometimes, splitting travel expenses can be complicated. Don’t go in with the mindset that you have a strong relationship with your friends and family, so splitting should be easy. It doesn’t always work that way; money conversations can especially be difficult with people you’re closest to.
If you have doubts about having a general fund or taking turns with payment, you can consider having everyone handle their own expenses during the trip. Getting a separate check everywhere you go is the easiest way to handle bills if you’re worried that money conversations will become awkward. Also, take advantage of bill-splitting apps to split costs immediately after payment instead of waiting till the end of the trip. No one should feel obligated to pay for someone else if they don’t feel comfortable doing it.
Avoid Issues: Communicate and Keep it Fair
Figuring out how to split travel expenses can be a bit difficult, but here is the key: have everyone on the same page and keep communication open. Note down who isn’t consuming like the rest because it will be unfair for them to pay the same amount as everyone else. Once the trip is over, let everyone know what they owe and pay the fair share. You can send the calculations to your group chat for transparency in case someone forgets what they spent. If someone isn’t paying on time, reach out to them privately and give them the benefit of the doubt that they forgot.
Remember that the purpose of a group trip is to have a good time, and it wouldn’t be nice to have anyone with hurt feelings before returning to your normal lives.
Be prepared for your next trip and discover additional useful travel tips here!
