Redditor Calculated How Much Money Joey Owed Chandler On ‘Friends’


If you fans of the show Friends or have succumbed to the latest Netflix binge, you might remember that Chandler pays for Joey a lot. Basically supporting him financially on almost everything from food to rent to bills to more food.

But at the same time, these two are one of the greatest friendship duos you will ever know.

point and smile

But back to the money.

Chandler covers an insane amount of money. Like I cannot think of any close friend where I would lend that much money, not even my mother and she gave me life.

In the 8th season, one of the episodes shows Chandler calculating how much money he has paid on Joey’s half of rent, acting lessons, dance lessons, utilities, headshots, sandwiches, and more. In that episode, “The One Where Rachel Is Late,” Joey is upset for Chandler falling asleep during his movie, but is soon to forgive him after he hears how much money Chandler has covered for him.

joey surprised

On a subreddit, someone asked how much money exactly has Chandler dished out for Joey. Redactor ASmileThatKills decided to do the math. Spoiler alert, it is over six figures.

joey surprised 2

“He says that there were 2 sets of head shots, each at $500. So there’s $1000. Let’s assume that the acting lessons, dancing lessons, and voice coach sessions were all $1000 on average. So now we’re at $4000.
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.

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.

Edit: 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.

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.

Edit: Math mistake on my part on the rent. The first total would be $108,760. So after the furniture replacement that would be $114,260, and after the surgery would be $119,760. Thanks to /u/SirNoName for pointing that out. I’ll leave the original totals so it doesn’t look like the commenter is pointing out something that’s already there.”

joey doesnt want to listen

There have multiple edits and people’s opinions swaying what Chandler actually payed for.

1. Buzzed calculated $114,260 after a commenter said Chandler did not pay for his surgery.

2. Uproxx brought up their TV Guide subscriptions or duck and chicken food.

In the end, once you get past 100,000 it is just one hell of an amount. Chandler should win the best ‘Friends’ award.

chandler and joey

[Photo credit: E Online]


Kokou Adzo

Kokou Adzo is a seasoned professional with a strong background in growth strategies and editorial responsibilities. Kokou has been instrumental in driving companies' expansion and fortifying their market presence. His academic credentials underscore his expertise; having studied Communication at the Università degli Studi di Siena (Italy), he later honed his skills in growth hacking at the Growth Tribe Academy (Amsterdam).

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