A family dinner celebration has led to unexpected tension for one woman who believes she’s being asked to pay more than her fair share.
Posting on Reddit’s “Am I the A——?” forum, she explained why she disagrees with evenly dividing the cost of a recent birthday dinner for their father — particularly because her two sisters brought their significant others along.
“My two sisters and I took our dad out for his birthday,” she wrote. “There were seven of us: dad, mom, sister #1, her husband, sister #2, her boyfriend and me. My sister and her husband picked up the bill, which came to $900, and suggested splitting it three ways — $300 each.”
She felt this wasn’t fair because paying an even split meant covering not only her own meal but also her sisters’ partners. She emphasized she was “more than happy” to contribute toward her parents’ portions.
“An extra $85 is significant for me,” she said after breaking down the cost.
She calculated that dividing the $900 check by the seven people present comes out to roughly $129 each. She then took her parents’ combined total of $258 and divided that by three since she shares that cost equally with her sisters — giving each person $86.
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Combining her own $129 portion plus the $86 parental share brought her total to $215, not the $300 her sisters proposed.
Wondering whether she was out of line for suggesting a different method, she turned to Reddit for an outside perspective: “Am I the a—— for suggesting to split a bill a different way?”
Many users supported her reasoning, with one commenter saying, “Your math is mathing.”
Another agreed: “Your suggestion is more equitable. It sounds like your sisters want to take advantage of you. There’s no way you should be paying for part of their partners’ meals.”
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Others offered a different viewpoint. One commenter noted, “You’re not wrong, neither is your sister. Since they have significant others you had to have known that those extra 2 people were coming, so if the extra expense was going to be an issue for you, that’s something you should have brought up beforehand.”
They added: “It’s an obvious thing for them both to infer that the bill would be split evenly between the 3 of you. So you’re not an ass for it, especially if money is tight, but you should have brought it up before because after the meal, you are gonna look like an ass to them.”