Food charges for family vacation

[Kate1]

Help. I can’t think this through. Everyone bought diff dollar amt of groceries for the week. Have total spent per family. Have total owed or overpaid. Now what do I do? Who receives what’s owed and how are those who overpaid paid?
Is it like this? Those who over paid are paid by those who owe? And any difference is added or subtracted from what? rent? Problem: one person paid entire rent, expecting to be reimbursed, so that person will lose out if food charges are deducted.

 

[Dr.Peterson]

Help. I can’t think this through. Everyone bought diff dollar amt of groceries for the week. Have total spent per family. Have total owed or overpaid. Now what do I do? Who receives what’s owed and how are those who overpaid paid?
Is it like this? Those who over paid are paid by those who owe? And any difference is added or subtracted from what? rent? Problem: one person paid entire rent, expecting to be reimbursed, so that person will lose out if food charges are deducted.

In principle, you could just have everyone who owes pay that amount to one "treasurer", who then pays from that to everyone who is owed. (The net should be zero.) Sometimes that can be modified so that some people pay others directly, but that can get more complicated.

You could include rent in that scheme, or keep it separate, with each person paying their part to the one who paid. But this depends on what agreements were made about money matters.

If you have trouble working this out, you may need to provide the details.

 

[HallsofIvy]

First add up what everyone paid to find the total. Divide that by the number of people to determine how much each person should have paid. Now do what Dr. Peterson suggested- have every person who paid less than that average pay the difference into a pot, then let every person who paid more than the average take the difference out of the pot.

(Of course the total put in equals the total taken out.)