holiday money nightmare

[Maggieshack]

I have just been on holiday with two couples without children and me my husband and two children in a villa to say it cost a fortune is a understatement everything from shampoo, hairbrush, soap ect that both couples forgot to bring to food that my family do not eat was split eight ways even the beer was included, when we went out for meals they waited to see how much we were putting in before they coughed up there share as my husband cannot do with the penny pinching he would put in half the bill even if my kids just had a main course and a drink and the others had starters and copious amount of alcohol, expecting that someone would notice and say you have paid too much, not a chance so in the end we started eating out alone. One of the party even said that my ten year old ate like a man because he had two beefburgers for dinner one day, looking back we should have set ground rules but these are friends i have known for years or so i thought. I am hoping i can forget about it but five days after coming back i feel more angry than ever.

YANBU, sounds unfair but if they were friends you should have raised this issue at the start of the holiday and agreed to split into 2 groups for paying for stuff as others have said. I wouldn't want to fall out with a friend over money, which means you have to speak up if you are unhappy with things like this.
Saying "sorry but we bought shampoo and toileteries so i think it's unfair to expect us to pay for yours" may have made them think of how unfair they were.
I hate paying for things in a big group. Kids and their different needs are a good excuse not to split everything.

happened to us - though we didn't have kids. we paid for the cottage, supplied the food and i thought they would cough something up but no.

i don't think its as easy as 'well you should have said something at the start' as you don't want to be seen to nick-pick over everything. its the cumulative effect that grates and by that time its too late.

my solution - never go on holiday with friends, unless you have separate accommodation.

i would expect you to pay for your own kids though.....ie not expected things to be split 3 ways.

as others have said - mark it up to experience - move on and try and forget about it.

YANBU but you should have raised this issue right at the start and get separate bills right from the begining. I went away with a friend for our daughters birthdays and she kept saying she'd pay more to the kitty for her glass of wine. I didn't grudge one glass of wine. But if it had been dh's sibling, we'd have paid the whole bill because that's what they're like.

I like shared holidays but there's NO WAY i would put in too much money and expect somebody to say 'oh no that's too much' and give some back.

To be honest it sounds like you didn't make any attempt to control or influence the situation from the start.

YANBU but another who thinks you should have raised it, maybe they assumed you didn't mind or something. Not sure why you had to buy their toiletries though if they had forgotten theirs, what exactly happened...were they just put in the trolley with the rest of the shopping?

We go with old friends nearly every year, the same family. It's been fantastic, but mainly because we all have the same approach to the finances, which is...

Be fair about it. If it feels like your taking the piss, then you are.

Sometimes the other family's dad sneaks off and pays for a meal, mainly because they're loaded, and I've done all the planning and prep so it's kind of a thank you. He also bungs some money to my 3 older ones (2 are mine and I also take my niece) for helping entertain and amuse (babysit) their much younger dd.

There's only 3 of them and 5 of us, so we get separate checks in restaurants. He always wants to split down the middle, but that would really be unfair on them and I think that sort of approach would fester as the holiday wore on, so we insist we go separate.

We have never fallen out or had a cross word. I know this is because we straightened the money end of things out years ago and now we all know how to operate.

I agree with always getting own bills for family - most restaurants will do 3 separate bills for 1 table if they just get told what goes with what when you order.

I am a LP with 1 DS and often my friends try the split bill thing - fair enough we often eat out just us and kids but I'm not paying for someone elses child when I don't have 2 incomes. Not least this annoys me more when the parents order copious drinks for their DC's and large desserts or extra chips because they don't eat their main meal.

How old are your kids? If they are 15 and 17 then the answer is different to 1 and 3.

We usually take the cost of dd's meal off the bill (easy to do as we eat in pubs where it is usually a fixed price for a kids meal and she only drinks tap water) and then divide by the adults when eating with child free friends. That seems to work pretty well. Although we do it that way because most of our friends would just divide the bill by the adults completely ignoring Miss Piggy Dd who has just tucked into an enormous plate of sausage, chips and beans!

It's amazing how otherwise reasonable people seem to lose all sense of reasonableness when it comes to splitting bills.

I am a lone parent and I was once having lunch with two other couples and our kids. When it came to paying they decided to split the whole bill in three - forgetting that I was not a couple. I did bring it up but felt really awkward about it, like I was being tight.

thanks guys for the feedback feel alot better now thought it was me. Would have sorted it out at the beginning of the holiday but we all kept the receipts from the shopping trips we did and then a couple of days before we came home we all gave them to the one who spent the most and she sorted it out i didn't even look at the paper she wrote out just took her word of how much we owed each other and paid up, it wasn't until i came home with the paper because it had the transfer details on for the villa ( i booked the whole holiday) that i had a look and realised that she had totted up the bills and divided them by eight, a lesson learned indeed never trust a persons word, as for the toiletries when you are a long way from a supermarket and someones says will you get me say a toothbrush you just say yes not go get your own not realising that you are going to end up paying half towards it.