How Much Does Joey Owe Chandler? One 'Friends' Fan Did the Maths

Even with a rent-controlled apartment, living in downtown Manhattan is incredibly expensive. In season 8's “The One Where Rachel is Late,” Joey tries to figure out just how much he owes Chandler for keeping him financially afloat the past three years. When he sees the enormous figure, he hurriedly reassures Chandler that all has been forgiven and calls it even.

A curious Redditor wanted to know the actual amount Joey owed, so he posed the question to the They Did the Math subreddit. Within 24 hours, the world had its answer.

"He then says 3 years worth of rent, utilities, and food. 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 too 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.

[Ed. note: $3,500 split in half should actually be $1,750, so we’ll add in the difference.]

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.
… 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."

That brings us to $108,760 when you add in the extra money for rent.

All we can say is WHAT A GOOD FRIEND........................

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