Imagine going on a road trip with friends, and you agree to split the gas bill. Would you trust your friend to tell you how much gas cost and what you owe, or would you want to see receipts?

In this story, one friend is in this situation, and he wants to see proof of the gas payments. He doesn’t think this is unreasonable, but the friend who drove and paid for the gas seems to think it’s way too annoying to actually look up how much the gas cost.

I’d be hesitant to trust this friend’s calculations if he is hesitant to pull up receipts. Keep reading to see if you agree.

AITA for asking for proof of money spent?

Recently, my friends and I went on a trip which involved driving 2 separate cars for about 20 hours each.

One friend, “Simon”, put his total gas bill in a group chat for us each to pay an equal share of, but I was immediately confused.

His car was used slightly more than the car I was in due to it being driven for short miscellaneous trips, but his gas bill was 50% higher – $300 vs $450.

I had no idea how this was possible since both cars have almost the same gas mileage and they were both driven to the same efficiency.

He asked for proof.

I wanted to confirm this number with Simon, so in the group chat, I asked him if he could send just the individual numbers he added to arrive at the total (ie. the cost of each time he refuelled).

He promptly told me to “Shove it,” and said “its freaking stupidand immature [to fight] over 6 dollars”.

I replied that it’s “rich calling me immature after [he] keep[s] getting ticked off over non-issues.”

It’s not that OP thinks the friend is lying.

He flat-out refused to send me anything related to it, saying “I’m not sure why you expect people to bend over backwards to accommodate you.”

Simon then went on to say he was insulted by me thinking he was scamming me, which I made clear wasn’t true.

I explained that I did not think he was lying, but there was possibly a miscalculation, which he found hard to believe.

He realized that I never really questioned any bill sent to me before this one, so I pointed out that again, it’s not that I don’t trust him to be honest, but more that I am extra careful with my money around him for reasons that he probably knows already.

He has reasons for not trusting his friend.

These reasons are that a miscalculation/miscommunication happened in the past leading to him asking for $350 from me instead of $150, and that he regularly takes months to send money he owes despite me occasionally reminding him about it and him having plenty of money in his bank account to shut me up.

The argument fizzled off with him saying “I just refuse to pull out every charge and go over it, I’m not an accountant,” and “I’m not going to stoop down, this is literally about principle.”

He told me to just pay him $40, then later told me the least I could do is a bit more than $43.

Another friend weighed in.

One of my other friends told me that he doesn’t know why Simon doesn’t just look at his transactions since it’s literally just 3 mins of his time, and that Simon could just finish this ordeal in several minutes instead of getting into a heated argument.

My view is that he’s the only one who can provide a satisfying ending for both of us.

I sort of just agreed to pay him that “more than $43” he asked for.

OP sees both sides of it.

I get his side, which is that it’s annoying to have to pull out that information and send it, and I realize it’s probably not a common thing for friends to have to do, but my side was that ultimately he should be responsible for doing that since the gas bill is technically equally all of ours and that information should not be intentionally hidden from us.

AITA for requesting the information to confirm the total cost of the gas bill?

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I don’t think OP is asking too much.

Let’s see if Reddit agrees.

This person is sure the friend is scamming OP.

Another person says it’s common to provide receipts.

Here’s a suggestion to stop splitting expenses with Simon.

Another person agrees that this friend can’t be trusted.

Did he just make up a number that sounded good? If he thinks it’s a hassle to pull up receipts, how did he calculate the total? Surely, he had to look at something to arrive at that total.

OP is not being unreasonable. Simon is.