A Venmo request for $75 Dollars…One Year Later?!
Venmo etiquette and rules
A friend of mine and his buddies went to Sundance last year in January 2018.
It’s 2019.
The weekend was your typical 15 person cabin chaos with shotskis, late nights, and bringing back guests for more shotskis and early mornings.
Each person financially contributed in their own unique way, according to their party spirit animal.
Frank (I’ve changed his name), constantly bought rounds of fireball gathering more balls to talk to women in the bar.
Victor (also changed his name), a tall thin 6’4” man with an astoundingly fast metabolism, fed the entire house pizzas at 2am.
With house expenses paid and everyone on a pretty even keel for spending...a mystery email came about YESTERDAY that fortuitously inspires the subject of this post.
The subject line: Could everyone venmo delusional Dave $75.
His wife wasn’t allowing him to go on a similar trip if he didn’t fix his finances…and so exactly 372 days later, he finally got around to starting that email thread.
Shocked at hearing this story last night, it brought up two important questions that have been spinning in my head for the last 24 hours.
1. can your spouse really tell you what to do?
Is it just me, or is it weird to think there would be a sense of ownership dictatorship when you get married? Maybe because I'm completely and utterly single, I don’t understand this concept.
As a married person, are you allowed to choose social situations for your partner and which trips they go on? If this is indeed a socially acceptable fact, I hope mine forces me to go on many, many vacations against my will. ;)
2. HOW LONG IS THE EXPIRATION date to send a venmo request?
And more so, what is the approximate time frame to be considered rude, late, or flat out crazy sounding like Dave?
some venmo rules i'm making up:
7 days is is the polite window to send/push accept.
Sometimes we can get distacted by the many notifications that pop up on our phone...but let's not forget we also get an email reminder for every venmo transaction. At some point, we see them. Pro tip: If you pay for a group dinner or a round of drinks, send the request that week. Otherwise, it’s not top of mind and people will start playing tit for tat (what a great phrase) for each thing they’ve contributed to being your friend drinking buddy.
30+ days is catastrophically careless.
One month is your maximum limit for any daily/weekly regular transactions. You have definitely checked the app within this time-frame, and at this point, it's already kind of rude. In my opinion, this is the maximum allowed time to send a request for any group dinner/round of drinks OR a more than acceptable time to to pay clicking a simple button.
60 days is the maximum acceptable amount of time to send a trip/bill expense. This speaks to any large/complicated expense that people have been too lazy or have put off trying to figure out (like gathering all room service, gas, and hotel expenses OR adding up all utility bills with your roommate). But really, after this, it’s just weird and inconvenient. NO?
Summary
Venmo is quite a fascinating utility and phenomenon where society can be held accountable for managing social situations responsibly. It’s in fact, the first-of-its-kind, digital IOU.
It’s even become a verb in our weekly lives.
On the positive side, it’s opened up a world to nicer waitresses, more airline miles, accountable cabs, and roommate ease.
On the negative side, it’s also opened up a world of pettiness around the difference of dollars or cents. And in Dave’s case, trying to scrounge up money for some other circumstance he’s clearly hurting with. One article sums it up perfectly, “A friend recently requested $4 for the difference between a drink she bought me and a cheaper drink I bought her in return.”
Is the unspoken trust of, “I’ll get this coffee, you get the next one” completely gone between friendships?
What a world we live in. I would suspect that this digital financial landscape and economic behaviour surrounding it will only continue to develop in unique ways.
What other rules am I missing? Do you agree?