Over the past year, I’ve occasionally used the “Ask the Readers” feature at Get Rich Slowly to poll people about their budgets and spending habits. So far, I’ve asked folks:
- How much do you spend on food?
- How much do you spend on clothes?
- How much do you spend on gifts?
- How much do you spend on health insurance?
- How much do you spend on housing?
- How much do you spend on kids?
For today’s installment of this irregular series, I turned to Twitter for topic requests. Tony Dobson (@toneboy) wants to know: How much do you spend on fun?
I like this question because it leaves the definition of “fun” up to each individual reader. So, for instance, even though I enjoy my Crossfit classes and my Spanish lessons, I’m not going to count those as fun. I’m going to count those as “self-improvement”. (We’ll talk about self-improvement during the next episode of “how much do you spend?”) To me, spending on fun is all about the movies and concerts and restaurants and recreation. It’s the stuff that we enjoy but which isn’t necessarily productive.
I was going to share my numbers but they’re, well, bizarre. I mean, one month I’ll spend less than $20 on entertainment, and the next I’ll spend more than $200. And there’s no rhyme or reason. During December, I might spend $75 to download a few seasons of TV shows from iTunes, but then not spend anything else on iTunes purchases for the rest of the year. Or I just bought tickets to see KD Lang when she comes to Portland next month. That’s $75 for a concert, but there may not be another concert expense all year.
And in April my entertainment expenses were very high, but that’s easily explainable. I’ve begun dating, and so am eating out more often and doing more things outside the apartment. (Maybe I need a new category in Quicken just for dating?)
In reality, though, my entertainment expenses are a very small part of my income, especially now that I’ve stopped collecting comic books. (I have spent $0 on comic books since last September. In fact, I’m probably going to “hire” a friend to sell most of them for me.)
So, I think this question will be fun to answer, but it may be difficult to answer. I mean, I have all my spending numbers at my fingertips and I still can’t figure out how to quantify how much I spend on fun.
What about you? How much do you spend on fun? For you, what does this mean? What kind of fun things are you buying with your bucks? Do you wish you were spending less? How do you keep costs down? Or do you even worry about that? (For me, as long as I’m spending less than 30% of my income on Wants, I don’t care where the money goes.)
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Typically 3-5% of my take home. Mostly for eating out, occasional movies, a play, etc. I also save about 5% of take home for vacations.
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After spending a couple of years getting out of debt, I really struggle with this. I still feel guilty for spending any money on things that are ‘essential’! However, I do love travel, so I spend a lot on that, and am happy to cut back on eating out to fund it. I’d say we only eat out (including lunch and take-outs) once or twice each month. We entertain a lot, so we don’t miss out on seeing friends though.
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I spend “fun” money pretty irregularly, and when I do spend it comes out of targeted funds. One is vacation – so that’s generally planned in advance. Most of my “fun” money comes out of my “do whatever I want with it” account, which gets funded a very small amount from every paycheck, but is mostly side project money.
I don’t usually spend much, but just wiped out my account yesterday to buy a new mountain bike. I probably won’t spend hardly anything over at least the next couple months now.
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My expenses are variable as well. There is no budget that I maintain. When I see quickly in to my Yodlee report, it’s not more than $200 per month for last 12 months.
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We do not spend much on fun at all. Maybe up to $10/mo on some VOD from Amazon, then $8/mo for Netflix sub.
More of what may be considered “fun” money for some goes towards our boys sports fees and sports camps. That is pricey, approximately $200/mo averaged over the year. (oh but I do include equipment in that #)
Then we do our once a year trip to the fair, so you drop about $100+ easily on that day.
Other than that I give myself $20/mo for misc/fun.
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I have a separate “fun money” account at ING that I contribute to with each paycheck. That way, if I want to have some “fun” I can, as long as I have the money in this account. I’ve recently pulled a decent chunk of change out of this account to buy a new guitar and amplifier, for example.
I don’t include my guitar lessons in the “fun money” account, as it is a monthly recurring expense. I also don’t include eating out, as I see that as a “household sanity” expense. If I were J.D., I would create a new fund for “dating”, as it can get pretty expensive pretty fast ($50+ per date adds up quick).
Now that I know I want a new computer at the end of the summer, I’m saving up the money for that, knowing that I can’t buy it until the account is large enough.
This forces me to think twice before I decide if I want to make a “fun” purchase. I was recently thinking about grabbing some microphones for recording off of Craigslist, but I realized it would set back getting my computer another two weeks. I’d rather have the computer first, so I didn’t go ahead with the purchase.
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I like the dating fund idea. It’s an irregular expense for me and I’m more comfortable paying my own way (at least at first — then I’m happy to treat too.)
Knowing some free and inexpensive things to do in my city also helps too!
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Saving money is my fun! I need nothing else to entertain me but to watch my bank account grow. As the dollars and cents increase, I find myself breathless and overjoyed, thrilled at the possibilities that this money (which I will not spend) has earned me. Oh, the swell I feel in my breast when I find that my Roth IRA has expanded 0.23% overnight! The anxiety and subsequent release as I refresh my bank account on payday! Sport? Movies? Theatre? Bah! Who needs them?
…
Okay, maybe I’ve exaggerated. Typically I spend very little, though.
- $8/month on Hulu
- Maybe 2 movies a year – there aren’t many that can drag me to the theater – at $20 per visit (2 people)
- Big ticket video games (Diablo III was $60! ouch!)
Like most others, my fun spending varies greatly, but hey, that’s what makes it fun. It’s spontaneous!
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Hmmm. The fact that I can’t answer this question makes me think I should track this part of my spending more closely. The only regular entertainment expenses I have are a weekly coffee with a friend ($3) and basic cable. I lot of things I do for entertainment are free – like spending time at the park, visiting friends, reading. I’m not sure if hobbies fall under “fun” or not.
Food for thought!
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I would say 4% of my take home income, but that includes cycling and fitness stuff that could also be classified as self improvement or transportation. Pure entertainment (movies, ziplining, and such) is only 1%.
I also consider travel a separate expense at 10% of my take home, which is actually my second biggest expense other than housing.
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Forget the money on fun thing, congratulations on starting to date again! Getting out there is tough, and you’re doing it! Awesome, man!
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It varies from month to month. We do have a fun fund at ING, like Chase but we normally use that money for something especially fun, like tickets to a show or a concert, one time we used it to go off shore fishing.
We do spend quite a bit on eating out and entertainment but since we use an allowance system as long as we stay within out allowance amount than there really is no restriction. And it really changes from week to week, month to month. We probably go out at least once a week if not more but that can be a $10 outing, one of our favorite places has $1 beers and a taco truck or it could be a $50 expense.
Fun during travel or vacation comes from our travel budget.
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Looking back at last month’s numbers, it was probably about $500-600 for three people, mostly for eating out, but including small amounts for Netflix, and apps for my kid… That’s higher than usual– we ate out a lot more than we generally do. $300 would probably be more typical.
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Not enough, according to my wife. Which is why she is talking about leaving. I just could never get her on board about being debt-free.
Congrats on dating again.
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Sounds awful, David. It might be harsh, but I advise you to pull off the band aid. Hopefully there are no children involved — if there are not, it will be a far easier process. You need someone who will better mesh with your beliefs and lifestyle. There isn’t only one person out there for everybody, but there is definitely somebody out there for you. Do something for yourself because you are worth it. Good luck.
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Dink,
Thanks. I appreciate the thoughts. Thankfully, our son is 21 and far more financially savvy than I was at that age (I guess he has been listening to me all these years). He has been bracing for this for a while. He hates to see this happening, but he wants me to be happy and has been very understanding.
I have to chuckle when being the financially responsible one makes you the bad guy.
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I’m so sorry to hear about your trouble
If divorce has been put on the table, though, and the sole reason is needing more fun/romance (and not falling out of love with one another), would it be possible to pull back a bit on the debt repayment in order to prioritize fun, too? Money isn’t everything in a marriage in any direction, whether saving or spending, but moderation between the two may help? Also, from a purely financial standpoint (please don’t take this as crassness, but just as my freakishly practical INTP showing), divorce is prohibitively expensive and can often add to one’s debt load enormously. Would you and/or she be interested in trying again, with a few dollars earmarked just for fun together every month? It would certainly be cheaper, less stressful, and possibly even fun.
I wish you all the best, with whatever happens.
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Thanks for the thoughts. I am trying to stave off a divorce, since the emotional toll as well as the financial toll, will be more than I would wish on anyone. Having just gotten out of some credit card debt, I am not anxious to incur any more if I can help it. She looks at it as a blank slate that I can charge up again to make her happy. I preach moderation, but my parishioner is singing a differeny hymn.
To make a long story short, my wive’s brother has ceated a very successful business and is doing very well. She has become jealous of his success and wonders why I haven’t done as well. He has an entreprenurial bent and it has paid off handsomely for him.
My wife is going through a period of “Fear Of Missing Out” (FOMO) and has made no bones about her unhappiness that we don’t have new cars, a big new house, a pool and we don’t vacation in the right places.
I continue to try to work things out with my wife, who I love dearly. Time will tell if my efforts will bear fruit.
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David not trying to pass judgement or even give advice, everyone’s financial situation is different. That being said, often times in a relationship, one person maybe be a saver while another is as spender. I dealt with this with my wife, when we first met. Lots of credit card debt, we paid it off, and she started to rack it up again. So we paid it off, close the cards and then she opened up a small card and I got wind of it. So after a long discussion we decided that she would not have a credit card at all. Even though she has one in her name, it only leaves the house on agreed upon occassions. Instead she has a bank account with a debit card with “X” amount of dollars in it every week she can spend on what she wants. (you have to agree on an amount that works for your budget). I also purposely tied the mortgage to that account so she knows if she overspends the mortgage will bounce. Furthermore, we discussed what really makes her happy, what she did with all the stuff in the past she bought (mostly gone)and it typically is new experiences and time together. We have been like this for about 5 years now and the only debt we have now is the mortgage. She also has seen a lot of her peers and family struggle with financial issues even though they have a lot of stuff. That being said she still has a consumerist mentality and occassionally have to let her go back to her natural habitat. Now its more selectively choosing, instead of trying to do it all. But I can be a problem as well because I almost never want to spend and would love to extinguish the mortgage A.S.A.P., thus rarely can I enjoy myself, which I am trying to deal with, having her around makes us take the occassional vacation and keeps me from being a lonely miser. Of course, I am always trying to find ways to decrease costs or increase income to offset expenses, so we have more money to spend on stuff we can enjoy together, but once again we lean towards less junk and more experiences.
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“She has become jealous of his success and wonders why I haven’t done as well.”
How nice that she doesn’t wonder why she hasn’t done as well…guess that entrepreneurial thing isn’t genetic.
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David,
Wow – that’s way too bad, especially if you still love her. I was in the same position a few years ago. I was trying desperately to pay off our debts, up our retirement funds and make sure our kids got thru college debt-free. My spouse just wanted more and more – toy cars, finished basement, fancy deck etc. I agreed to the deck and said no to the rest. It would have been reckless. I told her when she had the cash to pay for those things, she was more than welcome to buy them. I also gave in on a toy car for her – but we bought it used and cheap and paid cash for it. Once she started driving a paid for car (that she loves) she quit saying she wanted all these other things. Maybe she just needs one thing and then the others will drop by the wayside (just make sure that one thing is paid for in full with cash). That seemed to have broken the “we’ll just charge it” mentality for her. And, now, we are still happily married after 32 years.
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I would just like to add in my two cents from the other side: When I complain about not having any fun, I don’t mean we need to spend a lot of money — I want my significant other to spend some time and effort making me feel like I’m worth something. If all I hear is, “you’re not worth $6 or 2 hours to go see a movie” – yeah, I’m going to be pissed. If I hear, “instead of going to the movies, let’s take a sunset stroll through this beautiful garden and follow it with a quiet drink, just the two of us” (the drink can be as simple as water with lemon)… that’s a whole different story.
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Diana,
If your spouse literally tells you you’re not worth spending $6 on to go to a movie, your problems are marital, not financial. Have you told him how this makes you feel? Maybe he’s not aware of the effect it has on you.
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Looking at my spending trends since January, I’ve only spent about $200 on entertainment which, broken down, consists of concert tickets and a trip to the aquarium. I try to limit my eating out to $100-150 per month (usually go a little over), which I don’t view as all that fun but necessary for sanity (we cook 95% of our meals, including a big breakfast, every day). Alcohol was starting to be a big expense for me, but I no longer find it much fun and have dropped my alcohol budget down to $0.
Most of my real fun comes from the gym and running (health budget) and most of my extra money goes toward the business I’m starting. The business is definitely fun, but hard work, and hopefully one day it will be my primary source of income. I view it more as an investment in myself.
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I have no idea. Not enough. My SO is in night school and until he finishes, we do very little in the way of fun.
My family has a checking account for bills and an attached savings account which is used as a slush fund and easy access savings. If we have money available in the slush fund and the cost isn’t too crazy, then we go for it.
We do have a few standing fun expenditures. Each year for the holidays we buy season passes to the local amusement park for the family and a membership to one of several excellent local museums. We go on vacations every summer, either staying at a timeshare condo or at a state park.
This year I am going to be deliberate about starting to save for my dream trip. Last week I opened the savings account, and will be making regular deposits.
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My entertainment spending varies but typically it isn’t much. We usually:
- go out to eat once a month or so
- pay $7.99/month for Hulu
- pay $7.99/month for Netflix
- go see a movie in the theater once a month
I get to see a lot of theatre and eat out a lot for free through work so our entertainment spending is small. I would rather save my entertainment money for the vacations we take each year…but that is just my personal preference.
And I agree with someone that posted above that saving money is fun. My favorite day of the month is payday (we get paid once a month) and I LOVE making my budget and seeing what I can spend/save for the month. That is entertainment to me!
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Interesting question. It’s hard for me to calculate… my partner and I each get $50 a week in personal money, but that covers a lot (clothes, coffee out, fitness classes). From that, I probably spend maybe $100 a month on ‘fun’ (live shows, movies, coffees out, my aquafit class, that sort of thing). We also budget $50 a month for eating out, $100 a month for entertainment (we generally only spend part of this), and have Netflix. But a lot of our fun activities, like hiking, or walking through the trails in our city’s parks, or going up to a friend’s cottage, don’t cost anything besides the gas to get to where we’re going. And often stuff we buy for the house (gardening supplies comes to mind right now, or food for cooking) is used for my hobbies, although they don’t really fall under a ‘fun’ category. It helps that a lot of the things we like to do just tend to not cost much. I imagine this will change a bit once we’re out of debt and more financially secure… but hopefully not too much! It would be nice to be able to go to see more plays and live music and to have more money for travelling, but it’s just not something we can really swing right now.
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I could basically name any figure and justify it since this category is so variable. Most of our outings could be called entertainment or could be called educational. A trip to an amusement park is probably just “fun,” but we prefer going to museums (we are a family of nerds and/or geeks). Even our vacations are usually to historical hot spots. What about books? A trashy novel is definitely entertainment, but most of our reading is non-fiction. Even our Netflix subscription is questionable–we watch a lot of documentaries, and our older son is into film history.
So I would say anywhere from $0 to $10,000 a year!
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This is an easy one for us to answer because we use targeted savings accounts. Our budget and savings for each month includes:
eating out, $60 – since we do this so rarely, it is fun when we do
entertainment, $55 – this goes toward our season tickets to our university’s men’s basketball games and our season tickets to a Broadway musicals series at our local theater, plus incidental concerts and movies
travel, $300 – this is spent on traveling almost exclusively to weddings
That adds up to a bit less than 10% of our income. Of course we don’t spend it with regularity every month or we wouldn’t need the targeted savings. We mostly do free things for fun, like hanging out playing games with friends and playing video games.
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I have no idea how to calculate my “fun” money. I have an entertainment category in Mint and that is $200/month for two of us but that doesn’t include eating out or vacations or our bikes. All those things I consider to be highly engaging and fun.
As long as I am able to max out my 401k and put another 10% or more into savings, then anything remaining is for life and I work hard to make sure my life is always fun!
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Goodness, it just depends. I’m fortunate in that I find my job awfully fun, and I have access to a lot of things that I would spend money on anyways (kayaking, sailing, arts and crafts, gaga ball, swimming). I also am much better about getting books from the library instead of buying them, making coffee (not fun, but one of my splurges that I get a LOT of enjoyment out of!) at home, etc.
I want to say that travel is my biggest budget item for fun. Worth it, IMO.
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According to other readers, my husband and I probably spend “way too much” on “fun” stuff. I’d guess we spend between 5 and 10% of our take home on “fun” stuff.
On the other hand, why does it matter? We pay off all of our bills, pay off our credit cards each month, save some, pay an extra $800 a month on student loans.
I absolutely *love* my life. And if I’m doing everything I’m “supposed to”; if I’m living well below my means, why should I be looked down at for eating out?
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You go girl, we are not lookin down, but looking up.
It all depends on how much you make. If you make 50k and your expenses are 50K, big issue, but if they are 30k its all good. Of course if you make 200k and your expenses are 80k its great.
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I seem to be coming out in the 5-10% range as well.
But I include my exercise expenses in the fun category since I could exercise (I’m self motivated, and we have a home rack and bench, my ergometer, and a stationary bike in the exercise room plopped in front of the tv) but since I spend $200/month on non-essential exercise classes (they’re fun!!!) for martial arts and gymnastics and don’t have time for much else, I consider exercise money my fun money.
Other fun goes into vacations, about 4 movies a year (dining+viewing), other sundry.
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For a family of four (with little kids, though), we spend an ave of $60 a month. 95% of that is on restaurants, about 2/3 of which is probably spent on take-out date nights.
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My husband and I budget $275 for restaurants/alcohol (for when we host parties) per month and $45 for entertainment. Our Hulu and Netflix streaming subscriptions go under our utilities budget as they are supplemental/replacements to cable. I say we usually blow our budget for restaurants and alcohol, but hardly ever blow our budget for entertainment. We don’t go to movies or concerts as much as we did when we were dating.
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We spend $100-$200 for eating out once a week or so. That’s about it, but once baby can travel, we would spend more on traveling. I haven’t gone to see shows or paid for other entertainments in a long time.
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We just graduated from aggressive debt payoff to aggressive savings in December so our fun is limited. DH and I each get $60/mo in fun money and that encompasses coffees, gas station stops, lunches out, anything we buy that’s not essential (clothing, movies, etc), bars, and individual dinners out with friends… we do have a separate fund for dinners out together which is an additional $50, so basically one a month.
Additionally, now that the debt is gone we budget about 5% of our take home for vacation. All together it comes out to be less than 10% of our total income but this will change once DH is done with school — right now with him a FT student and DD in preschool we have to be careful with our spending. I look forward to the day I don’t have to think quite so thouroughly about each little purchase.
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My husband and I recently enacted a new fun money system because we both felt like we were being too tight with our money and not letting ourselves enjoy the fun in life. We based our system on a link that was posted here earlier this year–the Conflict-Free Family Budget: http://pocketmint.net/2012/01/the-conflict-free-family-budget-introduction/.
We both have totally different interests: he doesn’t see new clothes as a necessity, and I feel the same about video games. So, we opened our own separate debit card accounts in which we deposit around $200 per month (each, $400 total). That seems like a lot but it goes quickly because we use our fun money for lots of stuff: clothes, coffees, eating out, movies, date nights, concerts, alcohol, things for our house, running shoes, gym memberships, and pretty much anything we both agree is “nonessential” to life. So far the system is working really well for us! It cuts out most of the “miscellaneous” spending from our budget and makes us accountable to ourselves for what we are buying. We are actually able to save more money now than we were before we kept such a close eye on our fun money spending and neither of us feel deprived because we both get to buy whatever we want. It’s great!
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This is almost exactly what we do! It works really well for us too… it’s nice to have a chunk of money to do whatever I want with, and it’s true, it makes it a lot easier to keep an eye on the rest of our spending.
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We are DINKS, and we spend about $150-$200 per weekend for local climbing trips almost every single weekend. Call them mini vacation, whatever. This looks like a lot compared to other people that posted. It is still about 12%-13% of our take home pay. We just make sacrifices on other parts of our lives.
This is broken down to the following:
$70-100 on gas for the weekend, depending on where we are going (3-4 hours each way)
$40-50 on two breakfasts and one dinner out (we don’t eat lunch much when we are out)
$15-25 on beer, groceries for one dinner
We sleep in our Impreza or camp, so it doesn’t cost anything.
I also want to add that these breaks are great for our mental health. We look forward to Mondays at work
I actually enjoy sitting in front of the computer and have air conditioning.
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I can’t seem to answer the question. Coz from time to time, I also make sure not I’m not always working and that I should give myself time to relax and enjoy. And since I can’t answer the question, then I realize I should start watching how much do I really spend on this stuff. Thanks for sharing this article.
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Fun is definitely in the eye of the beholder. I was trying to see how to answer this question and reading the comments and getting new insights as to what to consider “Fun.”
I have 2 young kids and I had created a line item in the budget for $50 per weekend and this involves anything from going out for a cheap dinner {pizza most likely) to a local park (one of those that you pay to get in that has kid friendly stuff going on), to buying ice cream at the community swimming pool, etc.
We also do Netflix ($8/mo), library late fines ($2/mo – I know, I know, I’ve tried), hardly ever do a date night but occasional “sushi takeout after the kids are asleep” which is $50. I go out to lunch with work friends a couple times a month for $20 a pop.
We are doing one week long trip cross country to visit relatives and attend a wedding and that will be easily a $5k trip. That plus a bunch of day trips to a local beach this summer for $25 parking fees.
I guess overall, I’d say we pay an average of $350/mo for “fun” with the exception of the $5k trip this coming August.
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I buy books. Oodles and oodles of books. Probably about $200-$300 a month worth, which is probably way too much given my income.
They’re all real, solid objects, as well. A Kindle does not furnish a room.
I also travel to crossword puzzle tournaments, but that’s a different story.
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I stop buying books a while ago, They are free from our wide system of libraries whenever I want to read them.
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I used to spend a fair amount on books back in the day. When I relocated from the Bay Area to Portland, I sold and gave away hundreds of book that were no longer relevant to my life or that I didn’t want to move.
I then made it a goal not to purchase anymore books unless I get it from the library first and decide I really want to have a copy of it. I’ve only purchased two books last year
(one is a workbook) that I refer to on a regular basis.
I still own a fair amount of books, including a few books by authors I admire (Howard Zinn, Malcolm Gladwell, Alex Haley), Spanish and French language reference books, health related books, and my small antique book collection, but I no longer “mindlessly” collect books just because…
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I’ve taken the same approach as Carla, not buying a book unless I’ve read it first and enjoyed it (with the rare exception of getting a used book that is not available from my library system). The other exception is when I get books for professional use, but then a good bit of those can be written off directly as a tax credit (I’m a teacher).
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About $2500 a year.
That includes eating out once or twice a month with friends, some movies or tv, a small gadget here and there, a trip somewhere.
Some months we might spend $0 others $600 but $2500 a year is about the total.
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Definitely a hard thing to calculate!
Our budget includes general categories like “Shopping” which includes fun things (books for me or video games for my husband) and gifts for family and friends as well as critical items like underwear. We also have a “Vices” category for things like alcohol (in PA you can’t just buy it at a grocery store) and a “Restaurants” category that includes both socializing with friends and coffee or lunch at work. Magazines, Netflix, SiriusXM, and travel are all in the budget too.
Overall, I’d estimate we budget $400 (~6% of take home) per month toward fun for two people, but most months we spend less than that. Although I enjoy my YMCA membership, I don’t count it as a “fun expense” like some commenters did – I consider it as a life expense more like groceries or health insurance.
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About $1000 (30% of take home) during winter months, I love to ski! During spring/summer/fall, about $200 per month (mostly spent on hiking/camping).
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This is tough, because what some people consider fun other consider a necessity or they put into another category like J.D. did with the exercise and spanish lessons and it takes away from the discussion. What we are really talking about is discretionary spending. Money that doesn’t have to be spent but even that is getting murky because people can argue your fixed expenses are due to choices and is atleast partially discretionary. Did you need that size house, new car, 3 kids instead of 2/1, that particular college, organic foods, large data plan etc., it goes on and on. Now your circumstances may be what they are, so you view it as discretionary, which is atleast a place to start.
How you break fun out of discretionary is just mental accounting, what you should do is focus on your discretionary budget total and decide what you want to do with that money. Say you have $400 a month to spend on whatever you want, gyms, eating out, dating, spanish lessons, paintball, whatever, booze, casino, anything really.
Personally, I don’t track discretionary spending, what I focus on is my savings goal. Savings and bills come right off the top, whatever is left over can be spent on anything. For instance I know I want to have X amount dollars saved for retirement, car replacement, college for daughter, future vacations, evenutal mortgage annihilation and save aggressively.
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I agree. I spend my discretionary money on food–good ingredients because I love to cook. So a $35 bottle of aged balasamic seems extravangant but we eat it…so is it food?
Whatever brings you joy after you’ve taken care of everything else.
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I plan on spending ~$100/month on fun, but sometimes I spend much less. For me “fun” is eating out, coffee (in a cafe), movies, etc. There’s so much that’s low-cost it can go pretty far if I’m careful. The theaters I go to are around $4 a movie for instance. Other times, I’m the one being treated like a date or someone deciding to treat me.
Last night I had coffee with a friend and then we went to a local wine bar to meet friends and hear a band preform. I spent $3.00 at the cafe and $16.75 at the wine bar including a glass of wine, snacks, tip for the band and tip for the wine bartender. That’s less than $20 for a wonderful evening. I still have a fair amount left for the rest of the month if I’m careful.
There are certain things I don’t consider as “fun”, including anything having to do with nature or fitness, but I do consider alcohol purchases (in a bar or store) “fun”.
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I’ll be the GRS spendthrift.
Over the last year, we spent ~$1200/month on “fun”. That would include eating out, travel, hobbies, books, and pure entertainment expenses – tickets to games, shows, Netflix, etc.
It may have been a slightly higher than normal year due to an internation vacation, but not really by that much I wouldn’t think.
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Sigh – got the ‘you are posting too quickly error message for no reason again :-/
Trying again – I was worried we were the only ‘spendthrifts’! We have our budget overview separated into needs-wants-savings, and ‘wants’ are about 24% of our take-home pay or roughly $2300 a month. But that includes things like charitable giving, gifts, vacations, entertainment, non-necessary monthly or annual commitments like cable, netflix, satellite radio, yoga studio membership, etc. Basically anything non-essential that isn’t savings.
I would estimate that our ‘fun money’ for joint and solo entertainment and vacations makes up about half of that total.
(I should add that our ‘needs’ category is only 34% of our take-home…so everything else is going to savings.)
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Overall, I would say I don’t spend nearly as much as I would like to. That’s something I’m working toward
Don’t worry though, I still do have fun.
In the past I spent much more though, and I don’t regret it one bit. At this stage of life, I’m putting needs first, and then just carving out a smaller amount for fun. Actually, if creative, we can all find some fun things to do and places to visit that will cost very little. Life can be as rich was we want it to be, and as rich as we perceive it to be.
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I don’t think I keep track — I have fun at the grocery store! But I do keep money for the times when friends suggest concerts or something. MAYBE $50 a month, some months. $5 others.
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I agree, this is the impossible question. If I look solely at my entertainment line item, that accounts for my monthly netflix, treasure hunt, movies, concerts, books, music, and averages $60/month.
If I throw in my hobby, booze, eating out, and travel expenditures … well, let’s just say it adds up quickly!
But I’ll stick to the purely entertainment line item and say I spend a very reasonable amount
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Hmm. We have “yours, mine and ours” accounts, so I can only answer for the “mine” and “ours.”
I spend about 2% of my gross pay each month on “fun” – and that includes lunches out, beer after work with friends, dinners or books or mani/pedis, makeup, etc.
“We” spend even less, since most of the fun money gets spent from our individual accounts. We have cable, Netflix, and some occasional rentals from Amazon Prime.
We spend most of our discretionary non-bill money on DIY projects or furnishings for the house. And we have an annual budget for that, about about 7% of our combined gross incomes.
We also have a vacation fund, which totals about 3.5% of our combined gross incomes.
Of course, the two above funds don’t get contributions unless and until the 18% of gross income goes to retirement savings, and another percentage goes to kids’ educational savings accounts and an additional amount is set aside for elderly family members on a fixed income.
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A lot. I have my 10 or so surfboards, at $500-700 or so each (I buy maybe one or two per year). Half a dozen or so RC airplanes at $100-$300 each. A $1500 road bike. I’m spending $3000 to rent a lake house fora vacation later this summer. I’ve been building a chicken coop, which isn’t really that fun, but I’m doing it just because I thought it’d be fun to have chickens, and I’ve spent at least $1500 on that so far. I had a boat fora while (probably the most expensive hobby except for airplanes).
Plus plenty of smaller things.
But my required expenses are maybe half my take home pay, so I have a lot of discretionary income to use on whatever I want.
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I think we have similar ‘fun’ definitions
It’s been a while since I’ve seen on you GRS! We were also thinking about trying surfing to change it up from climbing, but the waves are pretty small on the east coast from what I hear.
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We spend a lot on fun but it is erratic too. My husband spends $49 a month on a Massage Envy membership consistently though. We also spend at least $2000 a year on travel. Other than that, I would say we keep board games, video games, and movie expenses to less than $50 a month overall…
YES, set up a dating category. We spent way more on dating than any other fun expense ever, lol. It’s amazing how much time and money is put into the very start of a romantic relationship. Once we were long-term, we seemed to cut back immensely…got tired of going out all of the time…could wear sweats and hang out in front of the tv…
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I’m 23 & single and I would say I spend roughly $300 a month on fun (~7-8% of my take home). I enjoy playing sports so I am in 4 different sport leagues all of which require equipment and entrance fees and if I go out to the sponsor bars (which I usually do) that adds on as well. But arguably I could count part of this as personal development as I do use these times to help me stay in shape and part could be said to be spent in a “dating” category as this is where I do make new friends and dates. I don’t count travel for our competitive games in this number as that will come out of my money devoted to traveling.
I’m sure I actually spend more on going out with friends and doing things but really I don’t think these expenses are too much seeing as I am new to the city I live in and single (dating really is expensive).
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I spend up to $500 per month on coaching. Depends on our timeline to next competition. Average is probably around $350 during a competition year.
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My wife and I each get a $400 “allowance” each month to spend on whatever we want. She usually has money leftover, I routinely run out of mine with several days to go.
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$300 a month for my wife and I (yes we are dinks) and we live on the north side in downtown Chicago. For the most part our entertainment is used between dining out, going to street festivals during the summer, drinks if we go out to see live music (we avoid covers like they are plagues), movies (we rent alot from the library but every once in a while head to the theatre) and random food treats when we are out finding cost free fun!
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I don’t know how to answer this question.
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Probably more than I should. Mostly focused around going out to eat or spending money on food to have people over. Or gas to go camping or skiing. All worth it experiences though.
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“During December, I might spend $75 to download a few seasons of TV shows from iTunes, but then not spend anything else on iTunes purchases for the rest of the year.”
Ha, that isn’t saying much!
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I don’t have a budge per se. I just keep track of my chase credit card bill in total every two weeks. If I spend over 1000 between me and my wife then there is no budget for fun, but if we come in below that for about two weeks in a row, then game on! We’re saving to pay off the second mortgage so sometimes if we don’t feel like it, it’ll the extra will get tossed into that fund.
Other than that, the fun funds are sporadic. Sometimes we spontaneously decide to go on a weekend trip someplace. Or I find a super deal on dealnews.com/slickdeals.net/fatwallet.com/craigslist.com and I just dive in. Not very often though, It has to be worth buying and at a great deal.
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