Cool web site: Bill Monk

Date:	August 15, 2006 / year-entry #276
Tags:	non-computer
Orig Link:	https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060815-10/?p=30103
Comments:	9
Summary:	One of my friends introduced me to Bill Monk, which is like PayPal but without the money. You and your friends sign up, and then you can let the site keep track of who owe whom how much. Of course, whether this is useful to you depends on how you and your friends actually deal...

One of my friends introduced me to Bill Monk, which is like PayPal but without the money. You and your friends sign up, and then you can let the site keep track of who owe whom how much.

Of course, whether this is useful to you depends on how you and your friends actually deal with money and small debts. With some of my friends, we use the "It'll all even out in the end" strategy. We'll take turns paying for dinner and events based on the "I think it's my turn" honor system.

With another group of friends, the bills are neatly tabulated and reckonings sent out by email for settlement. They use this system since they've known each other since college (I joined later), back when money was in short supply, and in order to accommodate group members of varying financial means. For this group, Bill Monk works great (and replaces a similar system some of us had set up to do exactly this).

Comments (9)

BlakeHandler says:

August 15, 2006 at 10:35 am

Too bad IOU.COM was taken (^_^)
Jo-Pete Nelson says:

August 15, 2006 at 12:22 pm

My friend and I kept talking about making exactly this, but now that you point it out I don’t have to do the development. Thanks.
Brian says:

August 15, 2006 at 12:36 pm

Me and my friends do the honor system too until we noticed one guy that never seemed to pay… ever… so we stopped inviting him to come to lunch with us. Problem solved.
grumpy says:

August 15, 2006 at 12:42 pm

My favorite method of paying the dinner bill is credit card roulette. Everyone puts a card in the hat and you let the waitress pick the winner!
Estebez says:

August 15, 2006 at 1:28 pm

Came across another one of these: http://www.roomind.us/ . I haven’t used it though cause my friends are already on billmonk.
stesmo says:

August 15, 2006 at 1:29 pm

Google Video has the BillMonk founders at a Google Talk two months ago that some might find interesting.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5389759860995489467&hl=en
VishalSi says:

August 15, 2006 at 2:00 pm

Hmm..nice site.
Chuck Groom says:

August 15, 2006 at 2:44 pm

I’m the co-founder of BillMonk. Raymond, thanks for the kind words! We couldn’t agree more that BillMonk helps many, but not all, social money situations. If you have a system that already works for you, that’s great. As to BlakeHandler’s comment about iou.com being taken… a lot of the obvious domain names were taken, which in retrospect was a good thing because it forced us to pick what I think is a more fun name. (It’s also a nod to our favorite watering hole, the Stumbling Monk bar in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle).
Ring Zero says:

August 15, 2006 at 4:27 pm

When I start caring that a friend owes me ten bucks, please shoot me.

[What if your friends collectively owe you $956.64? (I’m not upset. There are a lot of expensive tickets in there. I’m sure it’ll even out eventually.) -Raymond]

Comments are closed.

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