What does “split the budget” mean?

You probably know that a budget is a sort of plan for your money. When you make a budget, you decide how much money to allocate to different sorts of expenses such as food, entertainment, books, savings and so on.

We call this process “budgeting”.

If you are going to do something with a friend – spend a week in London, for example – you might decide to “split the budget”. This means that when you are planning how much it is going to cost, you decide how much each of you can afford and how much each of you will pay. This would normally mean that you each pay half of the total costs. But you might decide to do things differently. Perhaps the trip is to celebrate your friend’s birthday, so you’re going to pay for the travel yourself – but you’re going to share all the other costs equally.

But instead of “split the budget” we are probably more likely to say “split the costs” or “split the bill”.

Perhaps you haven’t made a detailed budget in advance, but you agree that you whatever the cost of an activity you will both pay part of it. That means that you “split the cost”.

When people go to a restaurant together, they often agree to “split the bill”. That means that they all pay a share of the final bill. Usually this means that if there are, say, four people they each pay a quarter of the total cost. But sometimes they might come to a different arrangement – perhaps because one of them has ordered more expensive dishes.

^{Thanks to Vika for the question}