To pay or not to pay? Help me decide!

[RainbowCottonCandy]

Flight booked next month with Ryanair. Very short time of under an hour. Travelling with teenagers. Have not currently paid for seats together as it kind of annoys me to! I fully accept this may mean we're all separated and trust me I would absolutely not kick off or ask others to move. I've told the kids and they are ok with it. It's only £40. Dh thinks we should pay it, I think we shouldn't!
It's been years since I flew Ryanair. When we do online check in the seats will already be allocated won't they? Are they different to Jet 2 where if you do it soon enough you can choose what's left?

The last few times we have flown with Ryanair we have been split up, you do have the option to move some of the seats so you sit together for a charge when you check in.

If you are not bothered about sitting together then I wouldn't bother paying the extra.

DH & I waited & just checked in with pot luck - we were sitting apart (of course) but there was a spare seat beside DH and I still had option to change my seat (same price as if I'd bought earlier) so I only paid for 1 seat instead of 2 iyswim

Ryanair do deliberately seat you apart and you generally get the middle seat if you haven't paid.

Trust me this is the least of my problems. This Ryanair flight is the short flight the day before our long haul holiday which has already been postponed twice. Ryanair cancelled our original flight hence me booking a new one and not wanting to pay them more. Literally 6 days before this our holiday villa booked in 2019 was cancelled too. We've had to pay over £2k more to secure another at such short notice.
Let's hope everything turns out OK in the end!

I think it's fine not to pay and take pot luck providing you don't expect someone who has paid to change with you. If you ask someone who's paid to give up their seat you are essentially asking someone else to pay for you to sit together. I was asked once if I would move out of a seat I had paid £50 for for the convenience of someone who hadn't paid to sit with their child. I said I preferred to sit in the seat I had paid for next to my husband but in order to be helpful I would sacrifice mm y seat if she was prepared to reimburse me the £50 I had paid, I had the paperwork evidence of what my seat had cost me. Suddenly it wasn't so important to move her child by a row. I can't think of any other situation where someone would see something you had paid for and put pressure on you to give it to them.