"It's just how our friends are"

Some readers will say the pace isn't theirs to change. It's the group's. Your friends go to those places, do those weekends, split those bills. It's how they are, and you can either keep up or find new friends.

I'd ask who set the pace. Not the group. Groups don't set things. One person suggested the first expensive restaurant, probably because they'd been somewhere nice and wanted to share it, and nobody objected, and the second time it was the norm. One person suggested Lisbon because their sister's hen do was abroad. One person said "shall we just split it?" once, and it became how the bill is done. Every element of the pace was set by an individual on an ordinary day, for a reason that had nothing to do with anyone's finances, and it stuck because nobody said anything. That's not how your friends are. It's how the last three years happened to go.

And what one person set, one person can move. Chapter 3's cascade runs on nobody objecting. The moment someone at the table says "can we do the corner place this time?", the standard shifts, not for everyone, but for that evening, and if it goes well, for the next one too. In my experience the person who moves the pace isn't resented. They're followed, because half the table wanted to say it and didn't, and the other half doesn't mind.

Look at how the pace has already moved, if you doubt this. Five years ago the group went to different places, spent different amounts, split bills differently. Nobody voted on the change. It drifted, one suggestion at a time, mostly upward, because upward suggestions are the ones nobody objects to. A thing that drifted up can drift down by the same mechanism, which is one person suggesting and nobody objecting.

You don't have to lead a movement. You have to make one counter-offer, once, and see who's relieved.

There's an honest limit. Some groups are organised around spending, and the spending is the activity. A group whose whole life is expensive restaurants and weekends abroad will, if you stop, drift, and that's information about what the group was. Most groups aren't that. Most are people who like each other and have fallen into a pace, and the pace is the thing that can go without the people going with it.