Stingy or over-spending buddies, blunderers, lazy… “Dirty friends” exist, and each year manage to find people to go on vacation with them.
Every year, and this year maybe even more, after three anti-Covid lockdowns, do you go on leave with friends?
"20 Minutes" has decided to help you.
Quite simply because the editorial staff believes that you have taken a fair amount of money in 2020 and 2021. It is high time to take advantage!
Here is the manual for going on vacation with friends without committing suicide or committing suicide to your loved ones (because an accident can happen quickly, we know).
The sun sets peacefully over the Mediterranean, and between two laughs shared between friends, we tell ourselves that we would complete this idyllic picture with a good pint to celebrate the holidays as they should be. This bar with a view of the sea will do the job perfectly, and it doesn't matter if the beer is seven euros there, when you love, you don't budget. A consumerism that does not necessarily share the whole group of friends, some of whom may be less serene in the face of the slate than Hugo Lloris during a penalty shootout (in the round of 16 against Switzerland for example) .
Since the start of the holidays, the sea urchins have been dragged into Jérémy's pockets * as the ultimate burden of 2021. We would swear that the rest of the year, he is not stingy, and the oldest even remember a few rounds he rinsed off at the bar.
But when summer arrives and the budget explodes, he is dumped.
The guy even has his terrible nemesis and evil twin of the budget, Edouard *, for whom a day at less than 200 euros spent has no interest and who finds our choice of bar a little proletarian compared to the royal casino with deckchair and mojito requiring bank credit.
Do not dream, you too will inevitably come up against a Jérémy or an Edouard during your leave with friends (otherwise, you are one of the two).
"A vacation without having dessert is not a vacation"
Shifting from an everyday budget to a vacation budget can cause discord in a group of friends, admits Angela Sutan, behavioral economics researcher and professor at the Burgundy School of Business: “When we go on vacation together , the environment in which we operate changes, we are confronted with new situations for the first time, and our expectations of our friends are sometimes disappointed. "
A subject that tenses us all the more during our holidays, often associated with a certain letting go, especially economic.
“This is the time when most people don't want to worry about money, and spend it lavishly.
On the contrary, for others, a successful vacation is a vacation where the budget has remained correct, they are proud and relieved when they come home, ”adds the expert.
As with people who don't like cheese, we won't judge, but still.
In 2015, Lucien's * holidays with his friends in Brittany came to an end for this reason: “Everything had to be calculated and everything underweight for a single friend!
Since then, we no longer invite him, it's too much of a headache.
A vacation without having dessert is not a vacation.
"
Prevent rather than suffer
On the other hand, Léa *, the only precarious of her band of friends, gives us a driving lesson: "When we are in the difficult financially, that we make the effort to come on vacation anyway to be with our people. friends and that we see that our difficulties are not taken into consideration, it makes you want to murder.
"All the more so since being in the posture of one who cannot do everything is by no means obvious:" We pass for the bad one or the re-hire, while it is we who suffer the most from each choice.
All I can see is that my friends prefer a nice restaurant without me to a regular meal with me.
»Atmosphere ...
To avoid all these tragedies,
20 Minutes
looked at a list of advice, apart from no longer inviting Jérémy or Edouard, a solution we have of course all thought about at least once.
As with the coronavirus (we had to talk about it somewhere), the best solution is probably prevention.
Sure, that breaks the idea of letting go and the sweet improvisation of summer a bit, but it helps deal with the problem at the root instead of seeing the weeds rotting your vacation.
Angela Sutan advises: “Define before departure the number of restaurants, activities and evenings to be consumed outside, so that everyone can find their way there and that there is no debate once there.
“Because we will always prefer to take our heads in our usual 18 square meters than once there in Palavas.
For a few dollars less
As impersonal, unbearable and icy as it is, the tricount - where any other application of this style which lists what each has consumed and what each has paid for - has the advantage of avoiding some tense discussions, and allowing everyone to manage his budget more or less as he wishes instead of the debated aunts "we divide the bill by three? ". Everyone pays their fair share, whether it's the blue lobster on his bed of Edouard's caviar or Jérémy's plain salad.
If you'd rather avoid this hellish app, let's get down to the drastic solution: since that seven-euro pint on the beach is so important to us and we've planned a “no limit” vacation, why not double down the stake and pay that of Jeremy in addition? Radical, but not perfect: it will (clearly) strain your budget while putting your Jeremy in an uncomfortable situation. "It's complicated to see that we are a financial burden for the group, that they do charity with us," says Léa. And then, consciously or not, when they pay you everything, they expect you to be indebted to them. It's pretty unhealthy. Good accounts make good friends, it seems.
So what to do?
If Nelson Mandela has managed to forgive his jailers, you should manage to find a budget compromise with your buddy close to his pennies or too overspending.
A picnic on the beach from time to time rather than a restaurant, an aperitif at home instead of this barathon, and is finding an Airbnb with swimming pool really essential when you live 300 meters from the sea?
Doing less to hit everyone's budget, even if it looks like a coffin, isn't really complicated, offers a new way to travel, will relieve your local Jeremy and leave you with more money to spend. snapping into other vacations with other friends.
Beware, we are always someone's Jeremy, and an Edouard is never far away.
* The first names have been changed for obvious diplomatic reasons.
World
Coronavirus: Vaccination, tests, form… What are the restrictions for traveling to our European neighbors?
Economy
Real estate: The holiday home is increasingly dreaming of the French
Society
Summer holidays
Trip
Salary
School vacation
Budget
Friends