How to gracefully give back money?

[Girly]

I'm one of those people that always 'over reimburses' everyone. I do it because I never want someone to feel like I 'owe' them, or put someone else in the position of having to ask me to pay more. I also do it because I'm appreciative of their time and trust to just 'settle up later', and it's not worth it to me to try and split a bill exactly right.

[WillyNilly]

OK I don't know where you ate, or what you ate, but honestly this was 6 adults for dinner and at least 2 cocktails... she really might have figured after tax & tip $150 was half of it.  I would think that.  Maybe I just drink too much or order more courses or go to expensive places, but I would budget about $50pp for a family birthday celebration meal.  I get not everyone is in that that mindset/budget (certainly as recently as 5 years ago I wasn't either!) But she really just might think that was fair.

I love the idea of offering it to your parents, either as a monetary gift, or a gift for the house, or taking them out to dinner, as a thank you for the house.  And if I was the one who'd over paid for dinner and then was told I did, I'd be thinking "well it was totally in my budget so..." and then to hear about using it to thanking the house owners?  I'd be totally down with it.