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Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

nytimes.com

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Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#71

Post by watwut »

bit48 wrote: post #51
pyrrhotech wrote: post #45

>“It’s making people less generous and chivalrous,” Ms. Pennoyer said. “It used to be you’d go to a restaurant, and you’d put down your credit cards and split it 50-50, even if one person had steak and one had chicken. But now people pay exactly to the cent.” How is this portrayed as a bad thing in the article? This solution to this problem is the ONLY reason I use Venmo. Perhaps the author was always the one orderin…

> How is this portrayed as a bad thing in the article? It takes some of the humanity out of the time spent together. Being generous with each other is part of how friendships and other relations are formed. Among friends, boiling it down to a precise transaction is petty. If a friend is abusing this approach, that says something about both him and your friendship.

When I did not had much money, I consistently prefered cheaper option. 50-50 would mean that either my richer friends can not eat what they like due to me being there or I can not socialize with them as often. Alternatively they could pay more often, but it would be hard to keep that fair and I would not like leaching off theirs money either.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#73

Post by wfunction »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #63

When I spend more at dinner, I eyeball the cheque and ask for a little more to be put on my card. If we're alternating between who picks up the tab, I'm mindful about buying them drinks. Venmo just makes cash-only, "no more than 2 cards" dining and vacation booking easier. Note that I've had friends try to split bills to the penny. I tell them to stop, because both our times are worth more than that. (The exception b…

Addendum: One useful thing I've found about reimbursing (note: NOT splitting, which is what you were talking about) some other bills down to the penny is that it makes it much easier to search for them afterward if you want to figure out whether you remembered to pay for them. Like if you buy someone dinner and they insist on paying, don't round $10.49 down to $10 or up to $11. Because then you have different numbers showing up on different accounts (credit card statement vs. bank statement vs. Venmo/whatever) and it makes it harder to see if you remembered to pay for it or not.

Aside from the social awkwardness/pettiness, it doesn't really work for typical bill splitting anyway, since it's not like they would remember what amount to search for, given that usually the person paying has the only receipt. Where this method really shines is when someone is reimbursing you in a bulk/lump payment -- in that case it's far more valuable to know that the actual amount was $304.01 instead of just something rounded to $300, since then it'll be a lot more work to figure out if that payment included a $6.23 item or another $7.98 item or whatever.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#74

Post by mherdeg »

I think a lot of people are totally unaware that Venmo transaction details are public-to-the-world. Fascinating experiment in radical transparency.

Also, per NYT:

""More supportively, Noam Waksman, a 24-year-old who works in digital marketing in New York, said he has “been called out by friends before, for charging my girlfriend for a meal,” which they had spotted on Venmo.""

This is an interesting dynamic - normally the quasi-transactional stuff in dating is not made so explicit. A friend who wrote a web app like Splitwise/Bluechips about ten years back reported that he quickly stopped working on it because "girlfriends hated it".

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#75

Post by tigershark »

Honestly it sounds extremely freaky.. I didn't know that people in the valley, that probably earn some multiple of my income, were so scaringly attached to fractions of dimes when going out with friends that they desperately needed an app for this huge first world problem..

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#77

Post by extr »

Young millennial male, every single person I know uses Venmo. IMO this article largely misses the point of the app. It's replaced cash/checks is all, it's not some huge social upheaval in the way we use money that needs to be analyzed. In my experience it's rarely used for splitting bills for dinner or picking up bar tabs (I can't remember the last time I went somewhere that wasn't able to split the bill on their end?), but more around casual "I'm going to go to the store, you need something?" "Yeah, get me some ice cream. I'll venmo you.". Or for utility payments among roommates.

The guy who was nagging you to give him $3 cash for the cab ride is now requesting $3 from you on venmo for the uber, but it's the same guy, and he still needs to chill out and remember you split your case of beer with him last week.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#78

Post by jchw »

I'm reading this as someone being upset that they were asked to pay for what they ordered, with the excuse that the app somehow makes the world less "chivalrous."

I say whatever. I'm not friends with people because I trade off doing nice gestures. Some people account for their money and would greatly prefer to balance the books. Fine. Is it really a big deal to pay what you owe? It's not like they asked you more effort or money. Pay the fucking invoice.

If someone wants to be nice in Venmo literally nothing is stopping them. Realistically, when I pay people on Venmo I tend to add a few bucks to round up. But expecting others to do that kind of thing seems stupid to me. The person on the other end is not nickling and dining you. You're trying to do that to them by suggesting you don't just pay the bill.

P.S.: I'm sick of hearing the phrase "silicon valley mentality." It's literally an app that bills people, there's 10s of them out there, none of them encourage any specific kind of behavior than what the person behind the phone takes from it.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#79

Post by cbhl »

extr wrote: post #77

Young millennial male, every single person I know uses Venmo. IMO this article largely misses the point of the app. It's replaced cash/checks is all, it's not some huge social upheaval in the way we use money that needs to be analyzed. In my experience it's rarely used for splitting bills for dinner or picking up bar tabs (I can't remember the last time I went somewhere that wasn't able to split the bill on their end…

For our generation, this pettiness goes the other way, too. I will literally try to buy lunch/coffee/dinner for someone, and after I've gone home, they've sent an unsolicited 'repayment' to me by Venmo. And on the other hand, it's difficult to "split your case of beer" with someone -- people are afraid to partake because they're worried you'll bill them afterwards, and they can't afford the $3 in this month's budget.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#80

Post by nevi-me »

dsjoerg wrote: post #68
mjevans wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were either too proud to tell your friends the truth or had bad friends.

You haven't had many friendships with diverse income levels.

This. It's not even about whether one can afford things, but the unfairness of splitting the bill. I have an anecdote where a friend of mine had 2 glasses of juice, while her friends were drinking wine and all sorts. When her part of the bill was $4 she ended up paying $50 (currency approxm, but you get the point).

Even with similar incomes, as young adults in our mid-20's, working hard for our money, we'd like more control over what we end up paying for.

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