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I remember this meal really well. It was summer, it wasn’t immediately after college but probably a summer or two after I graduated (cum laude, double major bee tee dubs, in the sciences, too, so suck on that). So, probably summer ’14 or ’15, and my friends and I had been bouncing from bar to bar all over the Seaport, and eventually we got hungry so we went to The Barking Crab to continue enjoying the absolutely gorgeous Boston summer day, but also stuff our faces with fried seafood.
Anyway, this was sort of back before one person would take the points because Venmo was much less ubiquitous and relatively still in its infancy. And it was also back when some of us (read: not me) were still kind of scraping by and counting pennies and cutting coupons, so while some people balled out on the fisherman’s platter and several perfectly hopped brewhahas (read: me), others didn’t. We’ve been in this conundrum before. But pre-Venmo? Fucking nightmare. Long story short, I was the only guy without cash, so I had to log on to my frickin’ Bank of America app and initiate a transfer into my friend’s account to pay for my fish. Do you know how many goddamn digits are in an account number? I was standing by the Boston harbor, wind whipping through my Jewfro, water spritzing every so gently on my drunken face, and there I am punching in a nuclear launch code into my BOA app so I can pay some dipshit $35.
Thank the holy triumvirate of Brady, Belichick, and Kraft for Venmo and for Venmo John.
Love this guy:
Now, flash forward to the present day, and everyone and their mother has Venmo. Literally. Before I had unlimited data, I used to ruin the data allotment on the family plan and I was getting Venmo requests from Boston Mom every month because I was churning through data like Kavanaugh churns through a 30 rack.
Outside of paying my bookie my weekly rent, my Venmo is usually a back and forth with my friends: one of us gets the points at dinner or at the bar, the rest of us Venmo our share. Pretty standard stuff. Slush funds and fun funds.
Now, I know some people who like to scroll through the Venmo feed and see who is Venmoing who. It’s usually completely useless, but once and a while you see someone hanging out with someone else, paying for “pizza emoji” or “martini emoji” or “poop emoji” which is weird because I don’t know why you’d charge your friend to take a shit in your apartment but I could actually get behind that idea. Sometimes I’ll have been enjoying myself a bottle of a fancy, seductive full bodied red, the Faye Reagan of the wine store, and I’ll leave snarky comments on someone’s Venmo feed. All in good fun. But I’d never seen anything on Venmo that really ever got me into a tizzy.
That is until this a few weekends ago.
There I was, minding my own beeswax, scrolling Instagram like the kids do, when all of a sudden I saw a few wedding photos. “Wow,” I thought to myself as I had a minor existential crisis for the millionth time this year, looking down at my bare left ring finger wondering when it’ll be my turn. A true 27 Dresses sitch. Katherine Heigl and Boston Max. I knew my buddy from high school JD McNugent was engaged; I’d actually met his fiance a few times by happenstance. We’d lived close by back when I was in Boston. I was certainly happy to see they’d gotten hitched.
Then something weird happened.
I was on Venmo transferring a haul of coin into my bank account since I’d just received a Scrooge McDuck amount of money from paying off the Football Sunday bar tab. I opened Venmo and the default screen is the “timeline” and I noticed that JD had just Venmoed his wife. “Huh,” I thought. It struck me as strange. I clicked on JD’s name. Surely this was an anomaly. Maybe they were splitting the wedding fees and he was just paying for his share of the caterer. What I saw next sent my head spinning like a dreidel.
JD and his now wife shoot each other Venmos pretty much daily. I’ve been monitoring it since I saw this and it has not let up. Even getting married has not stopped them from Venmoing each other.
I have no words. Well, that’s a lie. I have several. And they are in this order: I thought marriage was a partnership. What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is yours except my off-shore bank account. Joint bank account or not, doesn’t this marriage mean that our money is pooled?
I polled my girlfriend’s brother and his wife and turns out…THEY VENMO EACH OTHER TOO! I’m sorry but when you change your last name to match your hubby’s, get a joint credit card, and share a bank account, I think you can stop Venmoing each other, right? RIGHT?! Am I the crazy one here? It’s seeming like it more and more. I went deeper. Every time I see someone on my Venmo timeline who I know is 1) married 2) engaged 3) lives with their S/O, I click on their name, and it’s overwhelming: they’re Venmoing.
A few of my friends who are dumb and have girlfriends instead of being single say they Venmo with their girlfriends, too. Maybe that’s a bit more normal, since it’s not like they have a joint bank account.
My girlfriend and I do not engage in the act of Venmo. We’re morally against it. Venmo is something to be shared betwixt friends at the bar, not for splitting romantic dinner bills and museum entrance fees. My girlfriend and I have been together nearly a year and I went back and checked. We’ve only Venmoed like three times and they were all within the first few months of dating.
I just think that if you’re living with your significant other, or you’re engaged, or if you’re fucking married, it’s all going to even out over time, and that shit should be shared anyway. You’re sharing your entire life together so why are you Venmoing for your share of the electric bill? Just pick up the dinner tab tonight and call it Even Stevens..
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Boston Max
Spending my retirement fund at Trader Joe's and trying to remember to check my mailbox semi-regularly
@BostonMaxG
@boston_maxg
This is an all time bad take
What’s worse:
Venmoing your significant other
or
Actively monitoring another couples Venmo transactions in your free time?
Big purchases like vacations, mortgage payments, etc. are acceptable Venmo transactions between SOs, but this daily stuff is absurd, I agree.
Went on vaca with my lady this summer. Did not split anything. I got the plane tickets. She got the hotel. We went tit for tat on all food purchases. Each spent a few thousand. Tallied it up at the end and we were within $100 of each other after a week abroad. That’s how it should work, IMO
But you still tallied it up…
Just out of curiosity; we weren’t going to Venmo the difference. If one of us had significantly more spend, then they’d pick up the next few dinners. That’s a partnership, baby
That’s socialism, baby.
“Hey uh, Steve, you’re an engineer right? Yeah so can you pick up the next couple tabs? I mean, you make more than anyone here by a long shot so it’s only fair right?”
I think picking up the next few dinners is the same as venmo-ing. Off your partnership high horse
RT. We never tally it up but we generally take turns paying for stuff and assume it comes out fairly even. And if I’m out a couple hundred in the end because I was having a good time with my bf, who cares?
This reads like it was written by someone who just woke up from a 2-year coma.
I’d kill for a good night of sleep
My wife and I have our respective checking accounts and a joint checking. If we have joint expenses, then we put our share in the joint. But for the most part, we generally use our own checking accounts.
Why though? What’s the point of getting married and joining your lives together if you keep finances separate? My wife and I can’t figure out why her sister and brother in law have kept things separate for years. Once we got engaged and moved in together we joined everything in one account including direct deposits with our jobs and have been doing great.
Just wait until you two start living together and start splitting everything. You can’t really decide “well, I’ll pay for groceries and you pay for internet and Netflix.” I mean you can, but it’s harder since some stuff is variable and some isn’t. Plus then there’s rent, which you usually pay with one check. It doesn’t really even itself out. It’s also harder if you two come from different financial situations (e.g. – one of you has some good money saved up, while the other is drowning in student debt).
Married is a whole different ballgame because by then you probably have a joint account for all the things, but until then, splitting everything kind of has to happen, otherwise one of you ends up resenting the other person.
My girlfriend and I split everything 60/40; 60 on me because I make more than her. Twice a month, we sit down and figure out who owes how much and Zelle the other person money. It’s worked out pretty damn well for over a year now.
You should try using Splitwise. Game changer for stuff like that. My roommates and I use it for all of our utilities, household supplies, etc.
Venmo only allows a bank account to be used on one profile, so when people pay me I have to transfer to my wife in order for it to go to our bank account.
Ditto. Cash has become king for me. CREAM.
Couples spend at least a few thousand dollars a month from vacations, food, rent, utilities, etc. Just assuming it will be even stevens at the end of every month is foolish. There will always be someone upset and they will definitely bring it up in a fight. There should be a difference between normal dinners, concerts, etc that are split up and those times that you want to treat your S/O. It makes those events even more special.
I’m pretty shocked that you seem more offended if they’re living together/married…In my experience, Venmos were kept to a minimum pre moving in. Now, it’s inevitable. I’m all for a good time on vacations and dinners but stuff like groceries, rent, internet, if one of you NEEDS cable and the other one doesn’t care–it all adds up and should be split. Also, idk but maybe let people live??
“the Faye Reagan of the wine store”