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Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are
- ndonnellan 9y agoOn the contrary, I find it removes social friction if you go out to eat relatively often. You can still buy rounds of drinks or pick up the tab; no one is stopping you from being generous. In college I found it way more tedious to try and "keep-even" with classmates. Combine that with any sort of gossip around "they always shortchange" (maybe they're not good at tax+tip mental calcs), and I'm all for removing uncertainty from friendly transactions. I most definitely do _not_ allow venmo to share my transaction to my social circle. That seems just silly.
- maaaats 9y agoYeah, I second that it removes friction. I hate the "lets split the bill evenly"-approach. It makes me feel like I leech of others if I want something expensive, and the other way around if I'm not very hungry but have to pay for everybody else having three courses.
- kurthr 9y agoYeah, they ought to use bill roulette (choose a penny out of the bill to choose who pays). You still get the jerk who doesn't tip, though.
- closeparen 9y agoWow. I tend to think of "not randomly destroying each other's finances" as a baseline criteria for friendship.
- kurthr 9y agoSometimes you don't go out and eat only with friends... However, like a potluck or dinner club, check roulette works great with groups you regularly eat with since it is distributed exactly according to the bill. I have groups that I eat with 30-50 times a year.
- Volt 9y agoCan't you just get your own bill then? I feel like so many people make this to be way more of a deal than it needs to be.
- Spivak 9y agoBecause the act of getting your own bill is a statement. It's no secret that you're doing it because Ted always adds a lobster tail to his steak. Or that you're doing it because you're going to order a water, no appatizers, and the Ruben because money is tight. Once you're outside of specific circles 'being broke' stops being a shared experience and it affects how people view you. The only time you might be able to get away with it is because you're going to order the 24oz sirloin and don't want to put that on other people. But that's a statement in a different direction and could come off as elitest or insulting. Pay for what you order lessens this awkwardness.
- broknbottle 9y agoI don't understand why Venmo is such a popular app. I've always used Square Cash and just recently tried Venmo for the first time. My sister and I had dinner and she offered to split the tab. She refused to try Square Cash and had me download Venmo. On the iPhone it felt like buggy port with some weird social feature that allows users to see public transaction.
- harryh 9y agoVenmo significantly predates Square Cash, and once you get used to using a particular app for a task switching is a burden, especially for something like this with a powerful network effect.
- thaumasiotes 9y agoAs far as I remember, Paypal significantly predates Venmo. What happened there?
- eachro 9y agoVenmo got its initial traction through college students. I doubt most college students had a paypal account to begin with.
- niketdesai 9y agoThe Paypal app was late, and didn't really support the seamless Venmo experience, because initially Venmo allowed you to sign up with a CC and ate the fees. Later, with enough momentum and usage, they moved people to direct deposit by adding the CC fee and giving some other incentives. The company was acquired, along with BrainTree, by Paypal to bolster their mobile and API-driven payments in the present age.
- objclxt 9y agoVenmo is more social than PayPal, and the brand is cooler. Given PayPal own Venmo I think they realize the value of this.
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- harryh 9y agoOne paragraph in I thought to myself "haven't I read this before?" A quick google later: https://qz.com/687395/venmo-is-turning-our-friends-into-petty-jerks/ https://qz.com/687395/venmo-is-turning-our-friends-into-pett...
- the_common_man 9y agohttp://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- tyingq 9y agoThat article has a funnier lead. Offering a glass of wine in your own home, then billing for it afterward. That person was probably an asshole before venmo existed.
- harryh 9y agoAgree! Same basic structure though.
- teen 9y agoI'm pretty sure nothing has changed, it's just easier to split bills now.
- foobaw 9y agoYou can easily keep your transactions private on Venmo. I think the benefits outweigh the negativity mentioned in the article - it has made our lives more efficient. However, their scam protection (https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/19/15997768/venmo-scam-fake-payment-merchant-clause-fraud https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/19/15997768/venmo-scam-fake-...) has room for improvement..
- nfriedly 9y agoMaybe its because I live in a semi-rural part of the Midwest, but I've never even heard of Venmo. > Ms. Pennoyer agreed and recalled childhood taxi rides, when two adults would fight to treat the other That still happens around here. (Well, we don't really have many Taxis around here, but it happens with meals at restaurants and such. I can recall occasions not too long ago where friends and I would all try and sneakily pay for the meal before the others noticed.) My wife and I lived in SF for a while and stuff like that is part of the reason we came back.
- peter303 9y agoAlso rare among people over 40.
- semaphoreP 9y agoYeah, I only use Venmo when I'm on the coasts. None of my friends in the Midwest have it, and maybe I'm just used to it, but it just felt inefficient to split the bill and wait for each person to pay with their own credit card rather than having one person pay and Venmo them back.
- greggarious 9y agoPart of it is probably that a decent enough chunk of places (especially bars) in the Midwest are cash only. Personally I prefer always keeping some extra cash in my wallet to throwing even more of my life onto the internet. (I also find keeping my entertainment budget "cash only" really helps me think critically about what I want to buy)
- canadian_voter 9y agoIt is possible to make one’s ledger and contacts private, but many users overlook these options ... I'm sorry, what? The default is to make all of my transactions public? What the absolute living f---.
- beisner 9y agoIt's not all transactions, just social ones. People share their personal information on social media all the time, particularly information that relates to a social interaction. Since money is often a component of social interactions, a public record of social transactions essentially adds no information to what people have already voluntarily posted on other social forums. I use Venmo all the time, and since the dollar amounts aren't shown (only the participants and a short memo) I generally feel comfortable with public transactions. More sensitive interactions I make sure to set private.
- carrendi 9y agoA friend once paid me back for a "sensitive interaction" and put a snowflake emoji in the comment. I don't know if it was public. It was tacky and thereafter I only took cash for such transactions.
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- dmihal 9y agoIt should be noted that the dollar amounts are never shown to anybody except the individuals involved in the transaction. When I scroll through my Venmo feed, all I see is "Mike paid Jen for pizza".
- zitterbewegung 9y agoI see systems like Venmo being commoditized and Venmo being an acquisition target or being disruptive for large banks . My reasoning is below. I must not be a true milennial (29) .The new hip social networks don’t make sense to me or don’t work. Not only that but if this is a feature of Vennmo I’ll stay with only transferring cash to people with boring old Chase Quickpay with a bank account I don’t have to pay for without Venmo fees. Edit: Sorry I should have read up on this.
- wutbrodo 9y ago> I must not be a true milennial (29) .The new hip social networks don’t make sense to me or don’t work. Not only that but if this is a feature of Vennmo I’ll stay with only transferring cash to people with boring old Chase Quickpay with a bank account I don’t have to pay for without Venmo fees. I think this is less "not a hip millennial" and more "commenting on something you don't understand". Venmo doesn't have fees. The reason everyone started using venmo is because it predates anything even remotely as usable (try getting bank account numbers from 15 people at a dinner). The introduction of usable p2p transfer by eg banks was motivated by venmo's success.
- CydeWeys 9y agoVenmo was already acquired by PayPal last year. I don't think it's an acquisition target anymore.
- mabbo 9y agoI think the problem here is expectations. If you went to dinner with a friend, and thought everything was covered but then later received a bill in the mail there's an aspect of unexpected demands in it. If your friend said ahead of time "hey I've got this app that will let us split the bill easily, that okay?" then you'd be expecting it and there's no social transgression. Social norms and expectations are the fiction here, not the money itself. This app won't get much transaction in Canada though- in Toronto at least most waiters easily handle individual bills for groups. I was at a party of 12 or so the other day- no issues will the bills, everyone paid for what they ordered. Better software, or maybe better wait staff, whatever it is, it works.
- nitrogen 9y agoRestaurants are definitely accustomed to splitting bills in Salt Lake City as well. I was surprised to come to a larger city like San Francisco and have to chase people for their share since most restaurants won't give individual receipts.
- jdavis703 9y agoI've never been to Toronto, but in general it seems like more popular restaurants give you a harder time splitting the check, where as empty places will sometimes ask if you want the check to be split, without even having to prompt them.
- MAGZine 9y agoMy experience across Canada is any restaurant (Quebec/Maritimes I can't speak for), is that all restaurants, of any size, will ask you if you want split bills. In fact, if anything, the small places that do their cheques on paper with pen are likely not to split anything.
- Overtonwindow 9y agoYou make a good point. If things were handled beforehand, such that one person says let's go out and split everything, I've got this app that will do it for us, then it takes that awkwardness off, and I think is more friendlier. It's the before-hand planning, versus the afterward billing...
- peter303 9y agoClassic pre-venmo humor article "Caltech Physicists Successfully Split the Bill". http://www.theonion.com/article/caltech-physicists-successfully-split-the-bill-2037 http://www.theonion.com/article/caltech-physicists-successfu... In the old days it could take as long to split the bill as to eat for a double digit dinner party. Not to mention cheapskates who conveniently forget beverages and appetizers.
- marcoperaza 9y agoI find Venmo very useful, but one of the first things I did was make any payment from or to me private. I don't understand why anyone would want to make that public.
- tylerhou 9y agoWell, there is a multi-billion dollar industry built on top of public transaction records...
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- tedivm 9y agoI have never disagreed with something so much. While I'm financially not doing so bad, I grew up poor. When I was college age going out with friends was complicated- if we all handled our own bills it was one thing, but when I'm not drinking and only eating cheap food to save money splitting the check would literally mean I'm subsidizing other people friends and could be the difference between being able to afford to go out or not. Apps like this level the playing field and make it a lot easier for people of different incomes to socialize together with less awkwardness.
- mjevans 9y agoYou were either too proud to tell your friends the truth or had bad friends.
- dsjoerg 9y agoYou haven't had many friendships with diverse income levels.
- nevi-me 9y agoThis. 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.
- detaro 9y agoI understood mjevans as saying that they thus should have not split the bill evenly (and their friends should not insist on it), for exactly those reasons?
- treehau5 9y agoThis problem is even worse when it's not even necessarily income levels that is the problem, but just different values around money & spending. If you have the same income level, but find it outrageous to spend x on y, you just get viewed as a "cheap ass" It's not my fault I don't want to pay 13 dollars+tip for a cocktail when I can make 20 of them at home for the same price.
- metaprogrammed 9y agoAnother 'how [tech company/product] is ruining [social norm]' thought piece.
- prodtorok 9y agoRight, and this is more of an evolution of generation. This is a social norm amongst millennials.
- eropple 9y agoNot in my neck of the woods. If you sent a Venmo request amongst us you would be invariably called an asshole (and it wouldn't be a kind way of saying it, that sort of thing is real shitty). We use Venmo to push money around (Square Cash is nicer, but that ship has sailed), but it's more like "ehh, $25 is about right and I'll get it next time so the rounding will work in my favor". We are not doing down-to-the-penny nonsense because that would be silly and we are not dunning our friends because that would be awful.
- prodtorok 9y agoI live in a transplant city dominated by young professionals. Multiple roommates (paying for utilities, grocery shopping together, house-shopping), many nights out a week with friends, etc. all yield to a multitude of spotting cash/credit for everyone. The only assholes are the ones who freeload often. venmo keeps everyone in check. What is your neck of the woods, partner?
- eropple 9y agoI live in Boston, which is about as young-and-transplanty as it gets. I don't know, maybe I just hang out with folks who take friendship with a degree of seriousness, but nobody I know would need to dun somebody in either our group or our extended group to pay their share. You grab the bill, you eyeball it for your stuff, you add twenty percent for tip, you're done. If you try to freeload, you just wouldn't be invited again. Because friends don't do that, just as they don't send each other invoices.
- Overtonwindow 9y agoI don't use this app and this article kind of explains why. If I go to dinner with friends, or anything, I'd rather pick up the check than worry about splitting it. The next time, they'll pickup the tab, and so forth. That's what friends do. I don't know if I'd want to go out with someone who is going to bill me for it later, or wants to use an app to split things up. For me it just makes things superficial, awkward, and distant.
- sotojuan 9y agoMight be a cultural thing? I have friends that have your point of view, and others where every meal out is a communal experience (everyone chips in, but everyone can eat every dish) even if the restaurant is not set up that way.
- R_haterade 9y agoAgreed. I think it's simple common courtesy that the person extending the invite picks up the check.
- deorcness 9y agoIn my experience, that's culturally exclusive to the upper-middle and upper echelons of society. In working class groups, no single person is expected to pay for everything; it's split relatively evenly.
- seanp2k2 9y agoIt's absolutely cultural. Within Hong Kong culture (a close friend is Cantonese), there's this funny thing where people fight to pay the bill. You typically get points for doing it before anyone else even has the chance. Sometimes a person will get up to "use the restroom" then go pay the bill away from everyone else. It's seen as a privilege and an honor to be able to pay for everyone. Considering that in the family, we sometimes go out to seafood places with a dozen or more people (all family), it can get expensive. It's a bit of a show-off thing IMO, but the family is not obnoxious about it (no one actually tries the bathroom thing with us; they just joke about it...but we also never ever split the bill or even show it around or let anyone else see it).
- OliverJones 9y agoThe default setting isn't pro-privacy? Really? WTF? What's next? I gotta idea! Let's get the app to ask for net promoter scores ... Would you recommend this friend to a friend ... no=1 yes=10
- RayVR 9y agoThey fail to consider that venmo and other simple cash transfer applications lower the barrier to payment of items down to the penny. Time isn't free and I would be annoyed if a friend demanded I reimburse down to the penny for something in hard cash. Asking for me to type a number into an app is so easy it's petty to worry about those pennies and a waste of time. What a ridiculous article.
- pyrrhotech 9y ago>“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 ordering steak and misses his old friend-subsidized lifestyle.
- bit48 9y ago> 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.
- freddie_mercury 9y agoThere are other countries on this planet that have long had the custom of paying for exactly what you ordered instead of splitting the bill 50-50. Near as I can tell, having lived in a few of those places for many years, the people there have plenty of humanity and generosity and lack pettiness.
- snakeboy 9y agoWhat if you just happen to enjoy steak and your friend enjoys chicken? Then in the 50-50 split, you could be seen as "abusing" the system if you two go out to dinner often, yes?
- vertex-four 9y agoA 50-50 split is never how it works out - you look at the bill and think "X spent about £15 and Y spent about £20, so we'll put that down and then make up the change between us". Or "let's split the food 50-50 and I'll get the drinks".
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- grenoire 9y agoFor some reason, I never felt this as a friction or problem needed to be resolved. In the Netherlands everybody (really!) uses debit cards, so it's easy to have people pay for what they got. Beer, however, is when you get to be charitable.
- inezk 9y agoThis is one of the worst article I read in a long time - also I couldn't disagree with it more. I like eating salads and my friends like eating stakes - Venmo and Square Cash makes it so easy for us to spend time together and split money in a sensible way (how splitting it in a half would be sensible in this case?). Saying that this make friendship transactional is just bullshit - it makes them honest. And people thinking they they are charged for friendship because they have to pay for their own meal need to rethink it.
- maxxxxx 9y agoTotally agree. From my experience the people who get offended are the ones that eat and drink the most.
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoWhen 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 being if I know they need the extra cents, in which case it still seems more reasonable to round down in their favour.) That kind of gentle social shaming is productive and something I've noticed a lot of people my age shy away from. TL; DR If you think Venmo is ruining your friendships, it probably isn't Venmo.
- wfunction 9y agoAddendum: 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.
- cbhl 9y agoIf you like this, you might like the free workshops from You Need a Budget. I like to think of it as teaching "poor person's double entry accounting". (The workshop is free because they're trying to sell you their $50/year SaaS.) https://www.youneedabudget.com/classes/ https://www.youneedabudget.com/classes/
- type-2 9y agoThis is cultural, your response this behaviour is based on your upbringing.
- mherdeg 9y agoI 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".
- colejohnson66 9y agoYou can change the publicity of a transaction to private or friends only.
- mherdeg 9y agoOof yeah I should be more precise -- I think the surprise is "public default". They do make it super easy to find the setting "default audiences for future transactions: private" plus "past transactions: make to private" and I would wildly speculate it is interesting that many people don't think about whether or not they should do that.
- tigershark 9y agoHonestly 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..
- walshemj 9y agoin many places I have worked this petty attitude would get you marked as not a culture fit
- wodenokoto 9y agoSo asking for 31.61 is socially unacceptable, while asking people to mail you a check is okay?
- extr 9y agoYoung 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.
- cbhl 9y agoFor 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.
- FireBeyond 9y agoWow, this sounds horrible. The day my friends think I'll bill them for splitting a case of beer is the day I've failed as a friend.
- sethrin 9y agoSigh. This reminds me of an ex-roommate. So I worked at a factory and he was a notary or some such function connected with real estate, working from home. One day I was running late for work, which was maybe fifteen minutes away by bicycle, and asked if he didn't mind giving me a lift. About halfway there he mentioned casually, "Oh, just so you know, I'll be billing you at my normal rate ($60/hr) for this ride." Thanks for the trouble, just pull over and I'll walk, buddy. People may or may not have sane ideas about friendship and money.
- jchw 9y agoI'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.
- chipperyman573 9y agoThank you. A lot of people on here seem to forget that not everybody has six-figure tech job. I write down every single one of my expenses and every single penny I earn in my budget. An unexpected $25 can really throw me off.
- Latty 9y agoExactly - and the idea this somehow stops that small favour stuff is rubbish. You can use an app like this and still buy your friend a drink - it's just it's a choice you are actively making, not one being imposed on you to save time or effort. It also means that I can order something expensive without feeling bad that I'm imposing on everyone else when we split the bill evenly. This is particularly relevant when you have friends with different incomes or lifestyles. I'm pretty sure there is a Friends episode about this. Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I53n7ldcSGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I53n7ldcSGo
- mehwoot 9y agoI'm reading this as someone being upset that they were asked to pay for what they ordered So you assume some unstated motivation behind something and then get angry about the thing you just made up? Hmmm...
- endlessvoid94 9y agoSorry but this is nonsense. The fact that there is no more rounding is a better default that we no longer must put any thought into. It's more convenient. I fail to see how it harms the relationship in a way that's "petty". This also completely leaves out the inconvenience of planning a large gathering for friends and fronting all the money yourself. Yes, it may feel "petty" to be reminded to pay your share, but imagine if 12 people all owed you $50. I say it's petty to need to be reminded. Please, someone explain to me how splitting expenses is a negative thing. How is it petty? How is it more "transaction" and less "relationship"?
- zorked 9y agoThis is just another article about how millennials are horrible, horrible people because they don't live in the 50s.
- themoat 9y agoAbsolutely. Rounding leads to trying to keep a mental tally of how much do I owe you vs hoe much you owe me. My wife's family is a mess with that because everyone remembers or forgets different amounts. Just let me reimburse you exactly what you paid and we will always be square. How could that be a bad thing?
- grue2 9y agoThis article is borderline "Millennial bait," but: Suppose I invite you over to my apartment to hang out. I offer you a beer. You accept, so I tally "1 beer" on a little notepad. You have some potato chips. ("13 chips" goes on your tally.) You use the toilet twice, flushing both times. ("7 gallons of water" goes on your tally.) You're a bit hot, so I turn up the air conditioning. (I need to break out the calculator, but "+$0.63 for AC" also goes on your tally.) You tell me about a sad movie you watched recently. (This reminds me of a family problem I am having, which is mentally taxing. Since I'll likely need an anxiety pill, I add a fraction of the prescription cost to your tally.) You suggest a walk in the park; we go out. Walking makes me thirsty, so I buy a bottle of water. (But since walking was your idea, I add "1 bottle of water" to your tally.) Do any of the above come across as petty - or absurd - to you? If so, then that will give you some idea of how someone might feel that splitting social meal expenses down to the penny - and with a written record, to boot - feels transactional. The point is everyone has a threshold where this kind of Venmo'ing behavior goes from innocently equitable to distrustfully penny-pinching. Venmo'ing someone can be the equivalent of saying, "I don't trust that our relationship will proceed in terms that will average out in such a way that is fair to me." Insisting on Venmo'ing is a lot like insisting that your significant other tell you their email password. If you have to insist this in all cases, maybe rethink your relationship?
- carrendi 9y agoOne friend of mine will regularly pay for group dinners or events and Venmo each person their share. He does this so he can get rewards/points on his card.
- Spivak 9y agoI do this too. I use my credit card for everything but my SO only uses it for big/online purchases so I love splitting things with her. Double the cash back!
- gozur88 9y ago>"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." Spoken like the person who always orders steak. I don't drink, so I'm always irritated when I go out to dinner with a bunch of people and someone says "let's just split the tab evenly. It's too much trouble to figure it all out." Since drinks are so expensive relative to food either I speak up and look like the jerk or end up paying much more than I should.
- technofiend 9y agoThe infamous "unpopular subsidy of Wally's lobster" Dilbert cartoon covers this, although we had a coworker at my last job who took it to the next level. We'd go to lunch and this guy would wait for everyone else to chip in their money (tip included) and then he'd see how much was left, claiming he didn't have change for a $20. But I noticed he was taking enough change back that all the tip money was subsidizing his lunch. So even if the waitress started with $20 in tips she ended up with $5 when Rick was done. The next time we went to lunch and he conveniently didn't have change, I pulled out a stack of 100 $1 bills. I don't know if they do it any more but you could get them brand new and glued to a spine (called gluebacked). It's trivial to peel off exactly how many dollars you need. That stopped Rick's trying to steal the tips to pay for his lunch. I think was embarrassed that someone had actually noticed what he was up to and prepared for it. But yeah I don't mind Venmo after getting skunked by friends who wanted to equally split the bill at a tapas restaurant. It made sense since we would be sharing little plates of food. So we agreed up front and then the two of them proceeded to drink everyone else under the table because of course the bill was subsidized. I'm usually generous and forgiving about these things, according to my wife to a fault. But for someone who doesn't drink at all to suddenly have their evening's cost doubled is no bueno. I absolutely refuse to equally split the bill if people are going to drink even if it makes me look cheap. Now drinking in England is different - everyone's expected to pick up rounds and it's equally distributed. But sheesh trying to make people (particularly those that don't as a rule drink) pick up the majority of your drinking tab is just rude.
- 9y ago
- colecut 9y ago"Teddy Wayne’s most recent novel, 'Loner,' comes out in paperback in August." I thought that was funny.
- MarkSweep 9y agoA few friends and I had dinner together every Wednesday at Tied House. I made a website to split the bill and track debt, so that every week whoever owed the most money to everyone paid the bill. The levels of debt stayed pretty low. https://github.com/AustinWise/DinnerKillPoints/ https://github.com/AustinWise/DinnerKillPoints/ The heart of the system is a bill splitter: https://github.com/AustinWise/DinnerKillPoints/blob/db54eec94b0698b38cdca6ca628acbc3861374a8/src/DkpWeb/Util/BillSpliter.cs https://github.com/AustinWise/DinnerKillPoints/blob/db54eec9... And some simple graph algorithms to analyze the debt-graph and render the results with GraphViz: https://github.com/AustinWise/DinnerKillPoints/blob/db54eec94b0698b38cdca6ca628acbc3861374a8/src/DkpWeb/Util/DebtGraph.cs https://github.com/AustinWise/DinnerKillPoints/blob/db54eec9...
- siliconc0w 9y agoSplitting the check used to be a ridiculous exercise of handing the wait staff a deck of plastic with instructions like '20 more on the blue card'. So now one person can bear the costs and charge everyone at the end of the evening. This is marginally better, ideally you could just 'venmo' the venue directly but this would upset the mediocrity of US banking infra and the card monopolies.
- wink 9y agoHa, such a non-issue to us petty bean counting Germans, we always split the bill and it's only a problem like once a year with particularly stubborn wait staff. Yes, maybe I'm generalizing a bit too much, but you're usually asked if the bill will be split if you're obviously looking like a couple. I'm leaning towards preferring that way. I've no problems buying friends a beer or two, but a) I don't want to be overthinking what I am gonna eat and drink if the bill will be split evenly (like in other countries) and b) sometimes there's really people I don't want to subsidize (e.g. coworkers instead of friends).
- sshanky 9y agoI lived in Germany in the '90s and loved the way they split bills at the restaurant. In fact, there wasn't even any "splitting"—you paid for whatever you ordered. The server wore a money pouch and sometimes even a coin dispensing machine. She would walk around the table and ask each person what they ordered, would write the prices down on a neat little recycled paper pad that was about 1" wide and 6" tall, hand it to you, and you paid her immediately. No tips (you rounded up sometimes), no guilt—just German efficiency. Geil!
- wink 9y agoWell I'd say tips are common - but in the ballpark of 5%-10%, and also usually no hard feelings if you don't tip or just round to the nearest EUR.
- makecheck 9y agoThanks to Venmo, I now know all about transactions between people I don't know. I honestly can't understand why that stream is considered useful at all, much less as a feature that has the entire first tab devoted to it.
- thinbeige 9y agoOT: Long time ago, I had friends who made 150k-200k/yr. You won't believe it but they remembered every single Euro they lent and always insisted on the pay back. Never met such folks again.
- rand77763 9y agoI refuse to link my financial activity and things involving my physical address to Facebook, which Venmo seems to require. This is insanity to me. And I am a millennial as well.
- tradersam 9y agoI use Venmo without a Facebook account. Works fine.
- chillwaves 9y agoIt does not require this. I use Venmo and do not have Facebook.
- Insanity 9y agoI had never even heard of this app. Yet it seems to be for people in my generation (25). I'm really happy that this is not something that happens in my social circles. Could be a cultural thing. Most of my social circles involve Latin American people, which is quite a mindset difference from the standard European / American mindset. Though, even with my European friends this does not happen. I don't mind having paid more than one of my friends at the end of the evening, it'll even out eventually.
- consz 9y agoWhat if it doesn't even out eventually? I like to get 4-5 cocktails when I go out, and am usually the one getting steak instead of chicken (to use the article's analogy) -- so I almost always dine on significantly more than the average person at the table. If we just split uniformly, I'm definitely taking advantage of the other people at the table, so what options are there? Of course, I could pitch in more for that evening's bill, but once we're at the point that we're splitting it unevenly, then I don't see how that's any different than venmoing someone instead, and that's a lot easier than dealing with cash.
- lotsofpulp 9y agoThere is no way it evens out for someone who doesn't drink alcohol and/or eat meat.
- cscurmudgeon 9y agoNYTimes susbscriptions: Starting at a low $2.63 per week.
- erdojo 9y agoI guess I'm too old. Have heard of Venmo but don't know of anyone who uses it. My friends and I trade off treating each other. It's fun, and no one is keeping score. I enjoy being generous. I also suspect this author writes off anecdotal info, not actual data. Take his comparison to libertarianism. Anyone who studies the actual political platform/ideology of libertarians know that describing it as "every man for himself" is a gross oversimplification. I'm not a libertarian myself but I know it doesn't discourage generosity or philanthropy. Such lazy references make me think the author heard someone riffing about Venmo at a bar and decided to write rant.
- ishbaid 9y agoBetween Venmo, FB, Twitter, and now SnapMap it's scary how much you can learn about a person you've never even met...
- ishbaid 9y agoAlso, wouldn't be shocked to start seeing venmo exchanges being used in courtcases
- glangdale 9y agoThis seems to be a generational and geographical gap. Speaking parochially, among relatively well-off 40-ish Australians acting like this would mark you as some kind of cheapskate space alien. I remember being similarly surprised at the 'down to the last penny' bill-splitting when I first got to the US, but, as a lot of people remark on in other threads, many of the social gatherings weren't really very long term (e.g. a random collection of Bell Labs interns). I'm sure that there are good reasons people act this way, but the impression that I have to fight down when someone acts like this that you're either cheap, broke or paranoid about being taken advantage of. I think there are occasions where everyone needs to get a little more fine-grained (especially not doing the thing where non-drinkers subsidize drinkers) but the amount of time some people fritter away on these calculations makes me wonder what their time is worth...
- bb611 9y ago> among relatively well-off 40-ish Australians The same is true in the US. Note the ages and geographic locations of the people mentioned in this article. Among well-off middle-aged (40+) Americans, in my experience it's more typical for people to compete to pay the ENTIRE bill, every single time, rather than attempting to share. Generally it's bad form to seem like you're competing to pay the bill, but very socially desirable to be known as someone who will pay the bill (and thus must have the money to do so).
- ahallock 9y agoI've been using Square Cash lately.
- ryanx435 9y agoPaid propaganda piece (TM)
- a13n 9y agoI recently deleted venmo in favor of fb messenger pay. I think it's US only right now, but it's just one less app on my phone. I also always hated how venmo held on to your money if you forgot to withdraw it. It also just makes sense. I send and receive text, photos, videos, and now money from friends in one place.
- ixacto 9y agoThis is not a good idea. I don't want some company like venmo/paypal/brantree/visa looking datamining every last cent and transaction that I spend. Who knows who they could sell the data to or if they get hacked. Just use cash and tell the server what you ordered. They will give you an individual check, with totals on it. If theres >10 people yes you might need to pay 10% extra fee but that's better than subsidizing someone's 3 $15 cocktails, $30 steak, $10 dessert.
- DrScump 9y agoVenmo is fine used among friends but is a major fraud vector otherwise. I expect most other uses of Venmo in the USA to be supplanted by Zelle over time.
- Sukotto 9y agoIf you're from the old school and prefer something commandlineish, Ward Cunningham has a neat little AWK script to calculate everybody's share of a group expense: http://c2.com/doc/expense/ http://c2.com/doc/expense/
- kharms 9y agoI used to be a big fan venmo as a cash/check replacement, until a friend needed some emergency cash. Tried to venmo them, both accounts ended up being frozen for over a week. A check + USPS would have been 6 days faster.
- Pxtl 9y agoHuh. I've never even heard of this app in Canada. Around my office we just use PayPal for that kind of thing where needed. Hamilton here (near Toronto). I've found a lot of us startup brands missed the boat invading Canada and let eBay eat their lunch here. Kijiji beat Craigslist for example.
- stefkors 9y agoThe funny thing about these services is, is that in europe they have a hard time getting ground. With most banks the default bank app can do these things. Some things like requesting money also across different banks.
- fierarul 9y agoThis is clearly a PR piece for Venmo disguised as some sort analysis of grave social change. I never heard of Venmo before this article! How did it end up on the HN front page? Also see http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- jhanschoo 9y agoI find that this article's contention of nickel-and-dining millennial is one instance where technology has enabled a huge change in social mores. Nickel-and-dining was a problem in the days of loose change, where counting small change was a huge hassle. With Venmo this problem simply does not exist. On the other hand, I would say that payments and reimbursements between friends accurate to the penny on Venmo reflects well on you as a conscientious person.