Sam*, 36, is a plumber from Doncaster who earns around £30k a year. A keen water polo fan, he enjoys attending the biennial European Water Polo Championship with a big group of friends he met through playing the sport.
They’ve done the holiday three times before – to Barcelona (2018), Budapest (2020) and Split (2022) – and have already started saving for the 2026 championship in Belgrade.
Sam, who’s used Monzo for five years, is the trip organiser. He takes the lead on booking flights, accommodation and more, and keeps a spreadsheet to keep track of how much everyone’s spent. They have an activeWhatsApp group called ‘Serbia 2026’, where they discuss logistics for their trip.
Here, Sam shares how his friendship group now manages to avoid disagreements about money on holiday.
“Money disagreements affected the vibe of previous holidays”
We've all been good mates for years, so we can say what we want to each other and no one gets easily offended. But money can make things awkward on a trip.
Like when others didn’t pay you back straight away and you have to chase for payments. I’d sooner everyone just had Monzo because it’s easier to ask people for the money they owe you.
“Having Monzo is a prerequisite for the trip”
I announced a meeting after water polo training where I asked everyone to set up a Monzo account. It will make it easier to pay for things while we’re away.
I’ve found that once you show people how easy it is to split bills and send and receive money, they’re keen to be involved.
“Everyone saves £25 towards the trip each month”
Once we’ve collectively saved £10k – £1000 each – we’ll use the money to buy flights, accommodation, event tickets, food and more when we’re there.
I've got a spreadsheet with all our costs on. When it comes to booking flights and accommodation, we'll discuss it on the group chat.
“Splitting bills during our last trip to Croatia last year was a nightmare because half of us had Monzo and half of us didn't”
We had to get our calculators out and do bank transfers to each other. This time, we’ll use Monzo to split bills for things like taxis, meals out, shopping and rounds of drinks. Monzo automatically works out how much we owe each other.
I showed the others what you could do with it and they were like ‘I can see why you wanted us to get this’, so everyone is on board this year.
And we get the added bonus of knowing what we’ve spent in pounds as soon as we’ve paid. It’s less hassle and perfect for everyone.
“I no longer mind being the one in charge of organising group trips”
Monzo makes it so much easier to split bills as a group. I don’t mind being the organiser.
Plus, I’m not the only one looking for flights and accommodation. We all share ideas on the WhatsApp group, we discuss which to get and then I'll pay for it and ask everyone to pay me back. It’s easy.
“Before Monzo, I’d leave all my money in one account and then try to work out how much I needed for travel”
I could transfer it to another account, but it was a pain having to sign in online.
To anyone else organising a group trip, look at Monzo, it saved me a lot of time and effort when chasing payments from people.
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*We’ve changed his name