Woman explains how she and friends use shared bank account for group trips to alleviate stress of splitting bills

One group of friends has come up with a unique solution for splitting expenses on a girls trip to alleviate the stress of budgeting or shared bills post-travel.

Kim Brindell and five of her lifelong friends, who first shared their story with People after going viral on social media, have a mutual love of travel that has deepened over their 20 years of friendship.

But setting a budget and deciding who will run point on dividing up payments during group trips can be a cumbersome burden and create unnecessary friction.

At the end of a trip three years ago, the six friends, who are from Australia, came up with a solution to the tired cost conundrum.

“We were frantically trying to work out who owed who what, and calculate everything to be squared up at the end of the holiday, and one of the friends said, ‘This would be so much easier if we had a shared bank account,'” Brindell, 34, told “Good Morning America.”

She continued, “We all just laughed it off, and then we were like, ‘Wait, that’s actually kind of genius.’ We actually opened it by the end of breakfast.”

Each of the women contributes $20 dollars per week to the shared account, to be used for any and all travel expenses later, including airfare, lodging and dining.

If someone can’t come or participate in certain activities, the group has a way to handle it.

“There’s been a time when one of the friends has been pregnant, which meant she didn’t drink on the trip. And so we just all individually buy our drinks,” Brindell explained.

Another time, Brindell said “one of the friends was not be able to come after we’d booked — however she didn’t expect any money back, but the rest of friends thought we could probably calculate how much she’d actually put in that would have contributed.”

“We just thought, well, the right thing to do would be to refund her because I think we’ve very much taken the approach that it all comes out in the wash or it all comes back to you eventually as well,” she said.

The shared account solution could be especially helpful for anyone traveling often with the same group of friends.

Brindell said she and her crew have one person who controls the bank account, but each of them has a card with access — and trust is their key to success.

At the end of the day, Brindell said that taking the stress out of budgeting and splitting costs has made the group’s bond even stronger.

“Instead of thinking about cost being a barrier to whether you wanna splurge on that extra glass of wine, you just do it, and you don’t have to think about it,” she said. “It’s made our trips actually so much more fun, and we’ve been able to connect so much more freely, not having to worry about money at all, really.”