Marketplace®

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Season 10Oct 17, 2024

Check your Venmo, please

When do you ask someone to pay their share, and how?

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Jay Benedith, left, and Ben Williams
Jay Benedith, left, and Ben Williams
Courtesy Jay Benedith

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In the spring of 2023, Jay Benedith’s dating profile stopped Ben Williams in his tracks: a beautiful woman looking for someone “intellectually stimulating, sexually intimate, and silly”? He sent a like. When Jay reciprocated, they scheduled a video call for the next day. Several video calls and numerous dates later, they were dating dating. 

Everything was going well until about a month into their relationship when Jay invited Ben on a trip to Panama, and they realized just how differently they approach money. Weeks before the trip, without warning, Jay sent Ben a Venmo request for his half of the Panama hotel. “It just rubbed me the wrong way,” Ben told us. “This is still like a month out, and she’s asking me for money?” 

As their relationship got more serious, they realized their disagreement over Venmo requests goes much deeper.

“Being very careful with how I spend my money and how I’m earning money is, like, very built into my DNA,” Jay explained. 

Jay and Ben share with host Reema Khrais how nickel-and-diming (and more importantly, miscommunication around money) can test a relationship.

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