Me and my friends have a system where if I buy someone food or a drink, I trust they’ll eventually pay me back through covering a food or drink in the future. It works out perfectly. On the other hand I’ve had this mindset before with the wrong people and after paying for their food and drinks over a span of time, they began to expect me to pay for them. It does add up pretty fast over time so I don’t mind if someone wants to be payed back immediately
i think it kinda depends on your relationship. if it’s pretty infrequent for us to buy each other things then i’d say there’s more of an expectation to pay back but if we’re doing that all the time (which mainly happens with my closer friends) then idrc cause the next time they’ll pay for me and it all comes out in the wash
i only have like three friends and two of them are very cheap (no offense to them, we’re in college we gotta save money) so they do expect payment back regardless of how cheap it is. i had one of them pay me back for something that was like $2 also. the other friend will just grab shit out of my cart and buy it for me 😭 but ofc she had to transfer and we barely see each other