Most people have at least one. The friend who always means to pay you back but somehow never quite gets around to it. The one who goes quiet when the bill arrives. The one who says "just get this one and I'll sort you out later" and later never really comes.
It's one of the more frustrating positions to be in, because the money itself often isn't the main issue. It's the dynamic. You don't want to be the person constantly chasing. You don't want to feel like the friendship has a running tab attached to it. And you definitely don't want to have the conversation that makes the whole thing awkward.
The good news is that most of these situations are fixable, and the fix is usually structural rather than confrontational. Here's how to track shared expenses with friends who are bad with money, and how to handle it when the system alone isn't enough.
First: what kind of "bad with money" are we talking about?
Not all money problems look the same, and the right approach depends on which one you're dealing with.
The forgetful friend: Genuinely intends to pay you back but loses track of what they owe and to whom. The problem is disorganisation, not bad faith. A visible tracking system usually solves this entirely.
The avoider: Knows they owe money but finds reasons not to bring it up. May go quiet on group chats when a balance is mentioned, or change the subject when you hint at settling up. The problem here is discomfort with the conversation, not necessarily an inability to pay.
The genuinely stretched friend: Actually struggling financially and either too proud to say so or not sure how to raise it. Their "forgetting" is often avoidance of a situation they don't know how to navigate. This one needs a different kind of conversation.
Knowing which category you're dealing with shapes how you respond. Assume the most charitable explanation first: most people who forget to pay back are forgetful, not calculating.
Make the balance visible
The most effective single change you can make is to move shared expenses out of your memory and into a shared tracker that everyone in the group can see.
When balances live in someone's head, the person who is owed money feels it acutely, and the person who owes money doesn't feel it at all. The moment the balance is in an app that both people have access to, that asymmetry disappears. The amount owed is no longer something one person has to bring up: it's just there, visible to everyone.
tricount is built specifically for this. Create a group, add your friends, and log expenses as they happen. Everyone sees the running balance in real time. Nobody can credibly claim they didn't know what they owed.
Visibility alone solves the forgetful friend almost completely. When the number is in front of them, most people pay.
Set up the system before the expense, not after
The other structural fix is timing. Most tracking problems start because the system gets set up after the fact, when expenses have already happened and nobody's quite sure of the total.
Before a group trip, a shared dinner, or any arrangement where one person is likely to cover costs on behalf of others, set up the group tracker and agree that everything goes in it from the start. This removes the need for any conversation about what's owed: the record exists, it's shared, and the numbers speak for themselves.
For group trips specifically, getting the tracker running before you leave means the settle-up at the end takes minutes rather than an uncomfortable hour of trying to reconstruct who paid for what. The guide on how to plan a group trip without the money drama covers the full pre-trip setup in more detail.
How to ask for money without it being the thing
Even with a tracker, someone still has to initiate the settle-up. For a lot of people, that's the hardest part.
A few things that make it easier:
Let the app do the asking. tricount generates a settlement summary automatically. Instead of you saying "you owe me €47," you share the settle-up screen and the app says it. The emotional charge is lower when it comes from a neutral source.
Normalise it with a deadline. "Let's all settle up by Sunday" is easier to say and easier to hear than "you still owe me from last week." A shared deadline applied to the whole group feels like admin, not a confrontation.
Make it casual and consistent. The friends who are most comfortable with money talk about it lightly and often. "Just settling up from the weekend, want to send your share?" feels different from a formal request that's been building for three weeks. Settle early and regularly so the amounts stay small and the dynamic stays light.
Send your own transfer first. If you owe someone in the group anything, pay it immediately. It sets a tone and makes it natural for others to do the same.
When it's a pattern, not a one-off
A friend who forgets once or twice is just forgetful. A friend who consistently owes money across multiple situations, over months, is a pattern. The structural fixes above help, but a pattern usually needs a direct conversation at some point.
The conversation doesn't need to be a confrontation. It can be brief and matter-of-fact: "I've noticed the shared expenses tend to sit unpaid for a while. Can we agree to settle at the end of each trip or month? It would make things easier for me."
Most reasonable people respond well to this, especially when it's framed as a system request rather than an accusation. You're not saying they're bad with money. You're saying you'd prefer a clearer process.
If the response is defensive or the pattern continues unchanged, that's useful information about the friendship.
When the real issue is financial struggle
Sometimes a friend who is "bad with money" is actually struggling financially and doesn't know how to say it. The avoidance, the excuses, the going quiet: these can all be symptoms of genuine stress rather than carelessness.
If you suspect this is what's happening, the conversation shifts entirely. Not "you keep forgetting to pay" but "I've noticed things feel a bit tight lately. No pressure at all, just wanted to check in."
Practically, you can also adjust the shared expenses going forward. Suggest lower-cost options. Offer to cover their share for now with a vague "sort it out whenever." Let the tracker show a balance without making it a source of pressure.
If the income gap in the friendship is significant and ongoing, it might be worth thinking about whether proportional splitting makes more sense for recurring costs. The guide on how to split bills based on income covers how to set that up in a way that doesn't feel like charity.
When to protect yourself financially
Most situations with a forgetful or avoidant friend can be managed with a good tracking system and occasional direct conversation. But there are situations where the smarter approach is to stop floating costs on their behalf.
If someone consistently fails to pay back, the answer is to stop covering their share upfront. Don't book things on their behalf. Don't add their costs to your card. Let them pay their share directly rather than reimbursing you later.
This isn't a punishment. It's removing a dynamic that wasn't working. You're not refusing to share costs; you're changing how those costs get paid so that the responsibility lands where it belongs.
For group trips where this is a concern, the guide on splitting group vacation costs per person includes advice on how to structure payments so no single person ends up floating large amounts for the group.
Friends who are bad with money are usually forgetful, occasionally avoidant, and sometimes quietly struggling. The fix for most situations is structural: make balances visible, set up the tracker before expenses happen, and normalise settling up early and often.
When the structure isn't enough, a brief and direct conversation usually is. And when neither works, the right response is to stop covering costs on their behalf rather than letting resentment build.
Use tricount to track shared expenses with any group. Shared balances, real-time updates, and automatic settle-up calculations mean nobody can claim they didn't know what they owed.
