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The Total Sum Of Money Joey Owes Chandler In Friends

The Total Sum Of Money Joey Owes Chandler In Friends

The Total Sum Of Money Joey Owes Chandler In Friends
23 February 2015
The One Where Chandler Takes Joey To Court Over A Huge Debt And The Pair Never Speak Again.
 
Friends Joey
 
Because in spite of all the laughs, hugs and questionably-named pets shared by the duo throughout the show’s ten seasons, Joey had much to thank his pal Chandler for: free rent in a West Village apartment, utilities, food, extra money for audition tapes, some more for headshots, and hernia surgery - the man took freeloading to the next level.
 
They Did The Math
 
They live in Manhattan in a nice area of The Village, in a 2 bedroom, 1 bath, apartment on one of the upper levels. That is a very expensive location to live in; today an apartment like that would cost around $5000 a month easily, using Zillow.com as a guide (and I'm low balling it assuming they got a good deal). Using an online dollar appreciation site, and using the year 1997, i found that $5000 would translate to about $3500 (*Edit: which after researching was actually their monthly rent that was actually mentioned in the show, so spot on) for them. The rent was supposed to be split 2 ways, so this is 3 years of chandler paying Joey's $1250. So $45,000 in rent alone. Now we're at $49,000.Now for utilities, bills, food. We can guess the utilities may have been $1000 a year so lets add another $1500 for the 3 years of joeys half. So $50,500.We know they had a phone and cable. Using today's basic phone and cable TV prices, lets say that would be $100 a month (no cell phones/data remember) counting inflating for 1997 would be around $70 a month; so Joey's half over 3 years would have been $1260. So now we're at $51,760.Now for food, this is huge. Joey is known to be a huge eater, and add that to the fact that the group goes out to eat constantly; while watching the show you see that not only does chandler cover him every time they get coffee/dinner, he also gives joey money for him to go on all of the dates he constantly goes on; as well as chandler buys all the groceries (Which would be a lot). I can only guess the amounts but lets say $100 a week on groceries+$100 a week on pizza/takeout/coffee+ $50 a week for Joey's dates, every week for 3 years (which i'll say counts as 1997 value). So $39,000.In total, if he calculated everything, it would be around $90,760. Chandler basically funded the living expenses of a full grown man for 3 years in one of the most expensive parts of Manhattan, so it was pretty costly to him."
 

Following some Reddit advice, a few costs were added:

"That doesn't include the time Joey got the entire apartment's furniture and electronics stolen when he got tricked, and chandler had to replace everything. Including a TV, a stereo system, a CD collection, 2 Lazy boy chairs, a full size couch, a few different seating chairs, and an early laptop which was pretty expensive at the time as the technology was new. If you wanted to take a guess at the worth of all that i'd say (Scaled back for 1997) the TV may have been $500, the stereo system $200, the CD collection value at $200, each full leather Lazy boy brand chair is at least $800 even at that time, the couch, chairs, whatever other furniture maybe $1000 in all (the whole place was cleaned out), and the laptop was probably over $2000, they were extremely expensive when they first came out. So there's an extra $5,500. So $96,260 if you want to include that."

And later some more, before finally arriving at this figure:

"That also doesn't count the time that Joey's health insurance lapsed because he didn't work enough that year, and Chandler payed out of pocket for him to have a hernia surgery. A quick Google search estimates between $6000 and $10000 for that surgery. So lets say $8000 in today's money, scaled back to 1997 again, we'd have around $5,500. If you add that on top of the original and on top of the first edit, you have $101,760 total."

Talk about (central) perks.
 
[Via The Mirror]