Don't take experts as always giving the best answer

The Ask Marilyn question in today's Parade magazine was how to fairly divide the cost of four items between two people assuming that each chooses two items, and the store is offering four items for the price of three, charging for only the three most expensive items and providing the least expensive of the four items free.

Marilyn answers that the cost of the total purchase should be divided according to the ratio of the costs of each buyers pair of items.

Say that the first person selects two items costing $1000 and $100, and the second person selects two items each costing $100. Then, following the Marilyn's proposal, the total cost of the four items would be $1200, with the first person paying $1015.38 and the second paying $184.62. Thus the first person would get the second item for $15, while the second person would get the second item for $85 even though those two items had equal value. Were the first person's two items cost $2000 and $100, then the first person would get the second item for $8.70 and the second person would pay $91.30 for an item of equal value.

Of course, any method that the two people agree to would be fair.

Here is another answer. Each person pays the cost of the more expensive item that that person has chosen. The rest of the total cost would be divided according to the ratio of the costs of the less expensive items. In my first example, the total cost of the $1300 dollars worth of goods would be $1200, with the first person paying $1050 and the second $150. In the second example, $2300 dollars would be purchased for $2200, with each person getting the second item at half price.

Of course, if one of the persons is the 10 year old son of the other, Dad pays is all.