Family holiday. How should the costs be split?

[Sallyrush]

3 families looking to hire a Villa. (Siblings. Not sure if relevant or not)
2 families are 2 adults and 2 kids, other family is 1 adult, 2 kids.
Families 1 & 2 (2 adults, 2 kids each) think Villa should be split per family.
Family 3 (1 adult, 2 kids) thinks the cost should be split per person, their reason being they have 1 salary to pay for the holiday, other families have 2 - all adults work full time.
Families 1 & 2 feel they all use same facilities so it’s per family.
Family 3 would also like to split costs like food per person but other families think this is petty.
who is right?
YANBU. Families 1 & 2 are correct. Split per family
YABU Family 3 is correct. Cost split per person

6 kids, 5 adults

Work it out as 1 child is half an adult, an adult being y

A pays 3y, B pays 3y, C pays 2y.

What would seem 'fair' to me in any situation really depends on so many things. In our family, when we (DSis & I) started to be the ones making arrangements for family, rather than our DP's doing it, I always insisted we split the costs 50:50.

We started with a DP or DH each, it meant we paid equally for our DParents.

As her family grew with DC and DGC, I was still happy to pay 50:50, after all she carried all the costs of raising the later generations, without whom family holidays would be a much less rich experience.

Finding a way to make things easy on those who are carrying higher costs, without wounding their dignity is imo an important part of the wider family life

That is I suppose a focus on the benefit of the holiday, is all spending time together in relaxed surroundings.

The clue really is to find something that really does work for everyone. In the OP's situation, I'd tend to suggest that there might be an entirely different solution which might not have these tensions. Tension this early in the process does not bode well.

I'm sorry you are having this experience @Sallyrush In your shoes, I'd be tempted to skip the holiday this time. Hope you find a way forward that works for you all. It's horrible when a family falls into an ungenerous dynamic. It's very difficult to recover the relationships.

Personally I wouldn’t bother with the holiday, if you’re arguing already.

This reminds me of the holiday I went on 6 months after my husband died, I tried to do the right thing by taking my children away with his parents & sister (+fam) plus uncle/aunt & cousin(+fam).
SIL insisted everything split by 5 so I subsidised the other eight adults for their food & alcohol all holiday - for this & other reasons we never went away with them again.
My children want nothing to do with any of them

Noone should be expected to subsidise anyone else. A lot of posters work with that which is fine if they do it themselves, not when they impose it on other people.
I guess there is more than one way to split the accomodation costs but certainly splitting food per family isnt right.
Surely even if the 2-adult family gets a same room as 1-adult family it costs more when being occupied by 2 people as opposed to 1 person.

This is just the same as when a couple, gets in a taxi with a single person and the couple thinks they can pay half the bill.

Accommodation by rooms used and food by person is the fairest way.

Yes, have a separate booze budget! That’s for the 5 adults so OP pays 1/5. Potentially big savings there.

We always split per family. How many rooms is each family getting? Splitting per room might be fairer in your circumstances. Food we just sort of muddle through.

Are all the bedrooms the same? How many bathrooms are there?

This is brilliant! Is there any chance of doing this, OP?

I don't think it's as clear cut as that

Many people have said accommodation by room and food per person but your voting options don't cover that.

is the difference in cost really that much

I've gone away a few times with my siblings and their families. I like this idea. It seems fair enough.

In my experience, we're all 2 adult families, with 3 siblings having 2 kids and one having 3. All kids are between 5 and 11. We usually split accommodation 4 ways, using 2 rooms per family. Food 4 ways. Booze separate. 2 of the siblings are in better financial situations (including the one with 3 kids) and they would tend to pay a little extra in other ways, ie pay for everyone if we were out for the day to an attraction. So we are all happy with the way it works out. And that's the key really.

I appreciate in my case, as the kids get older that might have to change a little, but we'll deal with that when it happens.

If agree to pay 1/3 of accommodation but only to paying 3/11 of food. If they would not agree this id not go with them.

My brother just says I pay higher tax than you and you only have 3 flights (yes you pay higher tax as you earn more and yes you have 4 flights as you have an extra adult - who also has a salary - contributing to the Villa)

Y

If you are eating out food split per person OBVIOUSLY (never understand why any one would do otherwise, well I do it greedy people who want a subsidized ride).

If its self catering groceries just buy your own.

Houses are more complex you could argue loads of things like:

• pay pp (with 3 and under free, children half price and 12 and over as adults etc... like some holiday places do)
• pay per room
• pay based on size of room (the double master with en suite is obviously worth more than a little twin box room with shared bathroom)

I don't think paying per salary works though, I mean really we are talking 4 people vs. 3 people its hardly wildly different unless the 4 are 2 adults and 2 teens/adult children and the 3 is 1 adult, 1 toddler and 1 baby.

Villa costs should be divided into 5 , so families with two adults pay 2/5 each and single parent family pays 1/5. Two adult families get first pick of rooms for themselves.

Children eat ‘free’ . I was going to suggest that children over 14 count as an adult for food, but since there is only one child over 14 that means his family would be picking up half of all the food costs for the entire party, which doesn’t sound fair. So divide eating out and supermarket shops by five as well.

Thank heavens you all have two children!

Your siblings are being very mean. They're effectively expecting you to partially fund them.

But even regardless of what's "fair" and what's an even split, as your siblings you could expect them to take into account your situation and help you out.

A lot of people who are comfortably off truly have NO idea of what life is like for people less well off than themselves. None at all.

Tbh, if that's their attitude I don't know if I'd even want to go on holiday with them.

You sound lovely don’t you

Families 1&2 are being cheeky fuckers expecting you to subsidise their food. You wouldn't split a restaurant bill three ways when there's one less in one group.

Accommodation is less clear cut because you have more rooms than needed.

I'm another who would say split the accommodation by 3 and the food per person as you would essentially be subsidising their food (and with the youngest child?).

I would say a middle ground between the two,: the two parent families subsidising the single parent family cost to an extent they are able. It's tough only having one income.

Villa by 3 as all having 2 bedrooms. For adult and child

Food divided By adult so 5

Sorry your sisters aren't supportive

We did this last year three families plus grandma. Cost of accommodation was split per person but then we all used the same no of rooms (two bedrooms per family).

Food costs were split per person too. I felt we got the rough end of this one as we have two small children and others had two teenagers. In hindsight maybe we could have done a kids/adults costs but it still worked out a really good price for the whole holiday so I didn't argue it.