Gen Z Takes on Unpaid Debt for Shared Trips and Live Events, Study Finds

Group travel, concerts, and major sporting events are increasingly pushing younger consumers into financial distress, as shared group expenses among peers go unreimbursed for weeks or even months. According to a new study released by payment network Zelle, 47% of Generation Z consumers report taking on personal debt to front costs they expected others to repay, compared to just 13% of Baby Boomers.

The financial overhang is widespread among young adults. The research reveals that 46% of Gen Z individuals currently owe friends or family members more than $1,000, with 30% carrying unpaid peer debt of $2,500 or more. This pattern comes as spending on live entertainment and leisure travel has surged, driven by post-pandemic consumer demand for high-ticket experience events.

Gen Z leads all demographic groups in major event expenditures, with 37% spending upwards of $2,500 per person on group trips, music festivals, and sports outings. However, the mechanism for settling these tabbed expenses remains fraught with delay. Only 28% of all borrowers repay shared debts immediately. Among Gen Z, 18% take up to a month to reimburse trip leaders, 10% wait two to six months, and 11% delay payment for longer than half a year.

To evade money conversations, young borrowers frequently resort to social withdrawal. The study identifies a trend termed “payment avoidance,” finding that 20% of Gen Z debtors have muted or ignored group messaging threads to dodge repayment requests, while 7% went so far as to cut off personal contact with the person they owe.

“It’s really uncomfortable to have money conversations with people that you’re close to, and so they may not hash out what the payment arrangement should be before they front the cost,” said Dr. Traci Williams, a clinical psychologist and financial therapist, who noted that trip organizers often shoulder unexpected costs because terms were never explicitly agreed upon beforehand.

This reluctance to address debt exacts a measurable psychological toll. The survey indicates that 82% of Gen Z experience stress or anxiety from owing money to peers, compared with 71% across all adult demographics and 64% of Boomers. Furthermore, 59% of Gen Z express anxiety over being owed money by friends, while 46% of Boomers feel similar stress. One-third of Gen Z respondents stated that the physical act of settling up induces anxiety outright—roughly three times the rate reported by Boomer respondents.

The underlying friction is also fracturing personal networks. Nearly 70% of Gen Z respondents report that repayment issues have strained a friendship, family relation, or romantic relationship, with 14% stating a financial dispute permanently ended a friendship. Among Millennials, who came of age alongside early peer-to-peer payment platforms, 19% reported losing a friendship over uncollected debts.

The Zelle study was conducted across two distinct online sample sets: a national cross-section of 1,000 U.S. adults aged 18 and older, and a second sample of 1,000 frequent payment app users who transact at least four times monthly. Within the digital payments ecosystem, which encompasses services overseen by federal financial regulators like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, adoption of instant transfer tools appears to correlate with faster repayment times. Among frequent Zelle users, 76% said using digital payment apps sped up their reimbursement habits, a figure that rose to 86% among Gen Z users.