Our Friends Asked Us to Take a Vacation With Them, But Our Budgets Clash

Traveling with friends can be a great way to build lifelong memories. But sometimes budgets don’t align.

In a June Experian survey of more than 700 U.S. adults who’ve traveled overnight with friends in the past five years, 18 percent of boomers and 31 percent of Gen Xers said they were concerned their vacation budget was too low compared to their friends’. In addition, nearly 2 in 5 boomers and more than half of Gen Xers reported they were worried about splitting costs fairly when their travel companions had different spending habits.

If you’re afraid your travel budget won’t mesh with a friend’s, our etiquette expert has a few suggestions.

Our friends are renting a place in Paris next year, and they’ve asked us to join them for a week. My husband and I greatly enjoy spending time with them, but we are hesitant to travel together because their lifestyle is very different from ours. When they go on vacation, they like to dine at Michelin-star restaurants that cost a small fortune, and stay at hotels or rental properties that charge an arm and a leg. We prefer to travel on a tighter budget. How do we discuss our budget concerns with this couple without coming off as cheapskates? Should we even be traveling together, considering our different spending habits?

I love that you asked whether it’s even a good idea to travel together because I have to admit, my mind went there, too. And that’s OK — not everyone is a travel match. But before you abandon the idea, let’s find out what kind of an invitation this is.

Money Manners

Lizzie Post is AARP's financial etiquette columnist. She is the great-great-granddaughter of etiquette legend Emily Post. She’s also the co-president of The Emily Post Institute, co-author of Emily Post’s Etiquette: the Centennial Edition and co-host of the Awesome Etiquette podcast.

Have a question? Email us at moneymanners@aarp.org. 

Are your friends hosting you on this trip and covering the cost of the apartment, or are they inviting you to join them in Paris and split the price of the rental property while you’re there? Establishing this difference is key to figuring out what kind of conversation you should have about your travel styles and budgets, and whether they’re compatible.

If your friends are hosting you — as in, “We’ve rented an apartment in Paris next spring and we’d love for you to come stay!” — you’re being invited as a guest. That means it’s unlikely you’ll be asked to pay for the accommodations, though you’ll still want to check with them so that you know what’s expected.