Usually, you can spend 10% – 30% of your take-home pay on wants. However, “fun stuff” is a little different. This usually means nights out at the club, pub or theatre, meals at restaurants, vacations, hobbies and other similar expenses.
We recommend looking at this a little differently…
If you like to have a date night with your spouse, include it in the budget. This isn’t a fun stuff activity, but definitely isn’t a need like a mortgage payment or an electric bill.
If your hobby is going to a Pirates game every Friday night, you can include that in the budget. Once again, it’s not a necessity.
One word of warning…
Impulse purchases should never occur. Any purchases that require some deviation of your budget could use 30 days to think it over and realize if it is a good purchase or not. Impulse purchases kill your budget, can be a factor in your building bad credit, and can build really horrible habits for you as time goes on.