You pick up the bill for dinner, pay for the taxi home or grab a friend's coffee with the promise they'll pay you back later, but days go by and the money never arrives. At what point do you ask them for it again and how small is too small to chase? For some, $5 (£3.70) is worth a reminder, while for others, asking a friend to repay anything under $20 (£15) feels more awkward than simply taking the hit.
Henry Payne says he's "sent a request for $8.50, but I wouldn't go lower than $8". The 21-year-old New Yorker adds that he will chase someone once but "two requests is insane". "I would rather swallow the $8.50 than send another request." He does admit that he's sometimes the person on the other side of the transaction and can be forgetful himself.
"For everyone that I haven't sent back money to, I just forgot, feel free to double request me." Kaz Jahanbini, 19, says needing to ask to be paid back in the first place can be frustrating. "If someone bought me something, I'm immediately paying them back. So then I'm thinking for them, what's the delay?" His rule for navigating friendship and finances is to "keep your wallet close but your friends closer".
His friend Nouria agrees and says as a student "every extra dollar counts" but she would usually only ask for money back from a friend if it was more than $10. A recent study, external found that 76% of Gen Z who have fronted money for a group expense, like a trip or event, say they were not fully repaid, and 55% say it created tension or negatively affected a relationship. For British student Betsie Brooke-Taylor, 19, the threshold to ask for money back is a fiver as she says "every little helps".
She sees a cultural difference between the UK and US and even though "we are all broke, I think Americans are a bit more generous". Betsie also thinks technology makes settling small debts easier in the US, where payment apps such as Venmo are widely used. Venmo lets users send and request money through an app which includes the function of sending a reminder if someone hasn't paid you.
In the US, more than 95 million people have a Venmo account, external. "In the UK you have to ask for the account number and sort code, and not everyone has that on hand," she says. For 19-year-old Annika Violet, the amount she would ask back from a friend depends on whether she's consistently paying for them.
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