Personal spending money...

Please note this sub-forum does not provide professional finance advice. You should seek advice from a licensed financial advisor.

To post in this sub-forum you must have made 100 posts or have Trust status or have completed our ID Verification.

If investing please consider our affiliate link for new accounts: Sharesies.

Forums › Finance and wealth management › Personal spending money...

Nety

2584 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#32035 9-Apr-2009 09:52

Ok interested in everyone’s feedback but in particular those that are married with children.

How much money do you get to spend on:
Yourself (this in things like cloths)
Your hobbies (things like your PC, media centre or other hobbies)
Going out with the boys or girls if a female (this includes going away for weekends etc without the family).
Anything else that you spend on yourself.

Do you have a budget and if so what is it and what does it cover?

Media centre PC - Case Silverstone LC16M with 2 X 80mm AcoustiFan DustPROOF, MOBO Gigabyte MA785GT-UD3H, CPU AMD X2 240 under volted, RAM 4 Gig DDR3 1033, HDD 120Gig System/512Gig data, Tuners 2 X Hauppauge HVR-3000, 1 X HVR-2200, Video Palit GT 220, Sound Realtek 886A HD (onboard), Optical LiteOn DH-401S Blue-ray using TotalMedia Theatre Power Corsair VX Series, 450W ATX PSU OS Windows 7 x64

mjb

996 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#206153 9-Apr-2009 10:01

This is something you should be negotiating with your wife, not asking a bunch of geeks for advice on :)

To put it succinctly, "Too Much".

I spend virtually nothing on clothes/stuff for just me, over a year it's probably $200-$300 ish. I mainly buy house stuff, that's for us, not just me.
Geek stuff? Waaaaaaaaay Too Much. I need to cut down considerably. Unfortunately I like shiny things, so I always have my eyes on some new toy that I want to get, and I know that once I start looking at it, I'm inevitably going to buy it. :(
As for going out, it's usually just things like friday drinks, or liquid lunches - so the cost of maybe 3-4 beers a week.

No budget really, but the word from SWMBO is that I'm not to buy expensive stuff anymore when I should instead put it towards debt/mortgage.

contentsofsignaturemaysettleduringshipping

xpd

Geek @ Coastguard NZ
13765 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#206160 9-Apr-2009 10:52

Im similar to MJB... house first...wife second... child 3rd... pets 4th.... Im in there somewhere but since obtaining a 42" TV, Xbox and "new" PC in the past 6-8 months, Im way down on the list for money to spend

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

LinkTree

davidcole

6029 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#206184 9-Apr-2009 13:56

At our house we get spending money to our own accounts. No guilt/oversight. Works out to $50 a fortnight.

Mine is alwyas empty, the wife always has bunch on money in her account. We find it works well, and have done this since we got married.

Previously known as psycik

Home Assistant: Gigabyte AMD A8 Brix, Home Assistant with Aeotech ZWave Controller, Raspberry PI, Wemos D1 Mini, Zwave, Shelly Humidity and Temperature sensors
Media:Chromecast v2, ATV4 4k, ATV4, HDHomeRun Dual
Server Host Plex Server 3x3TB, 4x4TB using MergerFS, Samsung 850 evo 512 GB SSD, Proxmox Server with 1xW10, 2xUbuntu 22.04 LTS, Backblaze Backups, usenetprime.com fastmail.com Sharesies Trakt.TV Sharesight

bazzer

3438 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#206204 9-Apr-2009 15:57

davidcole: At our house we get spending money to our own accounts. No guilt/oversight. Works out to $50 a fortnight.

Mine is alwyas empty, the wife always has bunch on money in her account. We find it works well, and have done this since we got married.

For spending on what? $50/fortnight seems a bit restrictive. It's a good idea though, I really need to make a budget. The problem would be sticking to it!

timestyles

424 posts

Ultimate Geek

#206206 9-Apr-2009 16:07

I don't have children but I'm on a benefit (also have a part time job) so maybe the two cancel each other out. My partner and I each have a $110 weekly allowance, that pays for everything personal (which includes food as we generally prepare food for ourselves). Per year, I spend about $200 on clothes, $1100 on technology, $60-90 a week on food. Pretty much zero for socialising.

alasta

6701 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Subscriber

#206215 9-Apr-2009 16:50

No budget but it probably averages about $150 a month on technology (excluding household stuff like heating and small appliances), $300 a month on entertainment and travel, and less than $20 a month on clothes.

After that I find that I have plenty of cash to spare, but I have a decent income and I don't have or want children, so my budget is pretty easy to manage.

davidcole

6029 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#206228 9-Apr-2009 17:59

bazzer:
davidcole: At our house we get spending money to our own accounts. No guilt/oversight. Works out to $50 a fortnight.

Mine is alwyas empty, the wife always has bunch on money in her account. We find it works well, and have done this since we got married.

For spending on what? $50/fortnight seems a bit restrictive. It's a good idea though, I really need to make a budget. The problem would be sticking to it!

not clothes and stuff. just crap, my toys etc, computer parts, games etc.

I just save up for what i want. Household pays for groceries and the big household stuff (tvs, appliances etc)

Equinox IT

Cloud spending continues to surge globally, but most organisations haven’t made the changes necessary to maximise the value and cost-efficiency benefits of their cloud investments. Download the whitepaper From Overspend to Advantage now.

bazzer

3438 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#206235 9-Apr-2009 18:56

davidcole:not clothes and stuff. just crap, my toys etc, computer parts, games etc.

I just save up for what i want. Household pays for groceries and the big household stuff (tvs, appliances etc)

I hope you didn't feel like you needed to defend yourself, it wasn't meant to be like that. I've just never needed to budget. I think my wife and I are pretty sensible with our spending, but I do like buying stuff. Still, the mortgage can always use a few extra payments, maybe I will look into the idea.

davidcole

6029 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#206256 9-Apr-2009 21:27

No worries i didn't feel like I was defending myself. We just put it in place as we had a floating mortgage so this gave us an outlet.

But again each to their own.