How much should you contribute toward the $2000 of the birthday person’s total if you aren’t attending?
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Anonymous
| Zero. How is this even a question. |
Anonymous
| Zero. Are you young without kids or older and retired? This is so out of my idea of what friends do for each other’s birthdays. I’d stop the insanity now. |
Anonymous
|
0
Unless you had reserved a spot then backed out. Then you need to pay your share unless another guest can take your spot. |
Anonymous
| What? Nothing. I'd be really unhappy if my friends planned a trip for me and expected people not coming along to subsidize it. Just buy her a separate gift. |
Anonymous
I'd probably spend close to $50 on a normal gift but the question is - why on earth are you subsidizing someone's trip, especially when you're not going on it? |
Anonymous
"These situations" are not normal. How old are you? No is also a fine answer. |
Anonymous
| Zero wth? |
Anonymous
|
FWIW, since everyone is asking OP how old she is, as if this is a younger people thing...I'm in my early 30s and I've literally never heard of this.
I've heard of guests at a bday dinner splitting the cost of the birthday girl's drinks and dinner. But never a trip where someone isn't going chipping in. |
Anonymous
| If you’re going away on a girls trip, you take the number of people who said they would go and divide it by that number, or that number minus one if you agree you’re paying for the birthday girl. If you never said you’d go, you owe nothing. To be nice you could give a gift card to cover a round of drinks. If you said you’d go and then backed out after the arrangements were made, you owe your share of anything non-refundable. If this is a gift for someone where no one is going (like kids paying for a parents’ anniversary trip), then you generally split the cost between the presenters, with richer siblings kicking in more (they should know to volunteer that). |
Anonymous
| We need more information before you'll get any helpful advice |
Anonymous
|
Zero.
If you are wealthy, then contribute what everyone is contributing. |
Anonymous
| OP, give me a break. You know we need much more information before we can give you useful advice. Did you agree to go, they booked it, and now you’re backing out? What timeline did any of that happen? Was there a conversation where the others all agreed to fund Birthday Person’s (BP) travel? Are there costs, like a rental car, that aren’t solely BP’s costs? What is the $2000 for exactly? What is your relationship to BP? To the others? How financially well off are you? What would you have spent, if anything, on a gift for BP absent the trip? |
Anonymous
Maybe I read the OP wrong, but I was thinking of it like a contribution to a trip the birthday person chose. Like a honeymoon fund for a wedding. If they said that's what they wanted, why couldn't my small contribution be my birthday gift to them? |
Anonymous
|
How close are you to the birthday person?
Generally speaking, I'd say zero. But if you are the bday person's bff, and would normally be planning this or something, and you have way more money than everyone else and want this to be your gift to the bday person, then maybe give something -- a few hundred? But otherwise, nothing. If you aren't going on the trip, you don't need to contribute. |
Anonymous
| Nothing. I’d take my friend out another time. |