Anonymous wrote:When renting a home with friends or other family members, do you split costs by bedrooms, or by number of people?

split the lodging costs by # of BRs per family.
split the food costs by # of mouths per family.

We wanted an extra room for DS (he’s a toddler and a noisy sleeper, DH refused to go if we had to share a room with him lol) so found a house with an extra bedroom and split the costs by room. My parents protested a bit and sent us some extra $ towards the rental but my sibs (who are both childless) were cool with splitting by room. Obviously when there are more kids they will share a room.

Anonymous wrote:DH keeps trying to talk me into this kind of vacation with us & DD and friends with kids - I need to show him this thread to back up my case for all staying in a hotel.

Even if this gathering were with people I totally loved, I would lose my mind - sounds like a nightmare! Does anyone really have fun on these trips where you are together 24/7 in living arrangements where everyone feels uncomfortable about something?

I've done this sort of trip with my family and it was a lot of fun. At the time, it was three couples, no kids - and we all had a great time. Sure, there were trying moments, but at the time we were all living pretty far from one another and it was great getting to spend a week in the same place. (My husband and my brother's wife might have other thoughts about how it went. It was fun for me.) My brother and I split the house between us as a present for our mom, so no fights about who pays for what.

I'm sure with more people, and more challenging personalities, and more disparate finances, it would be a different story. And even still it's not like there were no fights - my brother was pretty rigid about where he was willing to go, and it was inconvenient for me and my husband, my mom got crabby, etc. But overall: good trip, I'd do it again.

I haven't read all pages, but wanted to add in what we do. In the few years we've done this with groups of friends, we've split equally by family. Granted, we all have between 1-3 kids so we don't have to consider single people, but each couple gets a room and then the extra bedroom(s) with bunks/twins are used for older kids as first come first serve. Little ones sleep in the parents' room in a pack and play or on the floor. We have a get together a few weeks before the trip to literally draw straw for bedrooms and divy-up who's bringing what paper products. Each family is assigned a night to feed the group, you decide what you want to cook (or order...). And on the first day a group will go to the store and buy all the snacks, popsicles, breakfasts, yogurt, lunch meat, chips, etc and we'll split equally and PayPal/Venmo. If you go out to eat on your own, that's on you. Or if 1 family brings back Duck Donuts for everyone, that's on them.

Our friends are all pretty good with this arrangement and it's worked well. DH and I have drawn the short straw and gotten the room with 2 twins and no bathroom before and it sucks, but we were on vacation at the beach with friends so we sucked it up and paid the same as the couple who got the master king bed with the jacuzzi tub.