How to Split Bills With Your Mates Hassle-Free

Money is always a bit of a tricky topic, but I reckon it’s even worse when you’re young. Some mates are scraping together their coins from their casual job, while others are sitting pretty on a tradie’s salary. This can become a bit of a recipe for beef in the group chat - but don’t stress. We’ve got a few easy tips and tricks to make splitting your expenses an absolute breeze:

Use Beem for super-quick transfers

One of the problems with regular bank transfers is that for new accounts you’ll typically need to wait around 24 nerve-wracking hours for a payment to come through, while you bite your nails hoping you got the BSB and account number correct. But with Beem, that’s all a thing of the past. Beem is an app you can link with your existing bank account to help you make, request and split payments.

The split payment feature is new, but it’s super useful. You can set it up by creating a group based on your Beem contacts list. From there you can add expenses and payments (even if they’re not via the app itself), and Beem will keep a running total of who owes what, without having to scroll madly through your group chat to figure out who paid who and how much.

Roll regular bills in with your rent

Every household these days seems to have about nine streaming services, three utility bills, a subscription to some kind of gift-box delivery service for milk alternatives and a ‘toilet paper fund’ that remarkably remains empty despite your best efforts. It’s a lot of payments to keep track of, and we wouldn’t blame you for feeling a little overwhelmed about the whole thing.

Rather than having to chase your mates up four times a month for the latest payment, why not arrange for all of the recurring bills to be added into the full amount? For example, if you pay $60 a month for the house’s Internet, and $250 a week for rent, have your three flatmates put in $3 extra every week when they send you the rent money. It seems like a small change, but it’s such a relief not having to keep track of who’s late with what payment.

Schedule your payments to make life easy

Nobody likes being the person asking for the rent all the time - especially because you’re left out-of-pocket because your flatmate conveniently forgot they had to pay rent every week like everyone else (yes I am speaking from my own salty experience).
But on the other side of the equation, it doesn’t feel good to suddenly realise you owe someone a bunch of money, putting yet another thing on your to-do list. So why not take the effort out completely? Banking apps such as Westpac’s allow you to schedule payments ahead of time.

If you have rent to pay, all you have to do is set the amount you want to send over weekly, and schedule it for the day before rent is due to keep your flatmates happy. Scheduled payments are also super helpful for things like putting money away every week to hit your savings targets! Just make sure you have enough in your transaction account to pay for your expenses…

If all else fails, abide by the honour system

This method requires less admin, but needs more trust. While keeping track of your receipts and being meticulous about your Beem requests does make sure you’re getting paid back for what you put in on a night out, it can bring on a certain transactional feeling about your friendships. If you really trust your mates, why not keep a verbal track on who paid for what last time, and make sure you rotate the bill? There’s an added benefit here, because it means you have a good excuse to set up a bit of a regular hangout ‘to make sure you pay them back’.

However - this only truly works if you and your mates either spend around the same amount between each of you, or people don’t mind having to pay a little extra now and again when they plan on having a less bougie time. It’s a high-risk, high-reward strategy that should only be attempted with extreme caution.

If you’re looking for a bank account that has plenty of spending and saving bells and whistles, why not take a look at Westpac’s Spend’n’Save accounts? You can easily hook your transaction account up to Beem, break down your expenses, set regular transfers and enjoy a bonus interest rate if you’re under 30. Not bad huh? Head on over to Westpac’s site to get around all the deets.

This content has been created by Year13 and is sponsored by Westpac