Travel · Advice & Questions · Oct 18

Should the holiday grocery fund cover wine when two of us do not drink?

Travel

The receipt is on the cottage table. “Wine is groceries,” says Tom, tapping the total. “We're not doing separate receipts for every preference.”

Six adults have each put €60 into a shared fund for a week away in this example. Their agreement was “breakfasts and shared dinners”. The first shop includes €54 of wine chosen by four of them. Rina and Joel do not drink and did not realise bottles would come from the fund.

Rina is happy to share the cost of ordinary food she will not eat in exactly equal amounts. She does not want to audit every slice of cheese. She does want to know whether paying the same share means funding another wine shop later in the week.

Tom says separate payments will make the trip petty. Joel has stayed quiet because he was the person who proposed a common fund. What agreement would keep the cooking communal without making the two non-drinkers feel that raising €54 is ruining dinner?

Discussion

3 community replies

@noahwrites

Separate the wine from the shared grocery budget going forward, if everyone agrees. For this first €54, the four who chose it could cover €13.50 each and put that amount back into the common fund. That is one straightforward proposal, not a claim that all holiday groups must split food and drink this way.

@northstar88

Tom is right that communal cooking cannot run on perfect equality of consumption. The question is where this group wants the boundary. A bottle purchase two people will never use is specific enough to discuss without predicting a separate invoice for every teaspoon of jam.

@raincheck

Joel proposing the fund did not settle an item nobody discussed. He can say, “I still like the shared meals; I hadn't included wine when I suggested the amount.” That helps Rina avoid becoming the only person speaking while everyone else waits for dinner.

Should the holiday grocery fund cover wine when two of us do not drink?

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