Time to stop being so serious
Had a really great conversation with my wife today, and came up with an idea that is going to transform the rest of our lives.
We decided to create a fun budget.
This is new for us, and it’s not a concept I have seen written about elsewhere.
Basically every September we will sit down and decide how much money is going to be in our fun budget for the following year. Then we will decide what to spend that money on.
When I told my wife about this idea, her face lit up and she got really excited. I did too. It feels like the missing piece of the puzzle for us.
We’re pretty good with money now. We didn’t use to be, but over the last 15 years or so we have learned so much, adopted new habits, and changed our lives.
We are pretty frugal and our everyday needs are modest. We make more money than we need and save and invest the difference. Our default with extra money or a windfall is to invest it.
But we’re not getting any younger. And I think we’re going to be okay financially going forwards. So perhaps it is time to build some fun and excitement into our lives.
The fun budget
We’ll set the amount of the fun budget in September or so. This will be based on our finances this year, so basically using some of the extra to spend on ourselves the following year.
Once we have the amount, we will think about what to do with it. Anything goes, as long as we discuss it together and agree on it. We could spend it on travel, buying something special, an experience, or even giving it away. But we have to spend it. We’re not allowed to invest it or do something sensible with it.
As Bill Perkins writes about in Die With Zero, it’s all too easy to get fixated on earning and saving, and forget to live life. This might be a good way for us to avoid that.
We’ve already decided what to do with our 2023 fun budget. We are going to give some of it to family and use the rest to have a big family meetup in the summer. A couple of our kids live abroad with their families, so we want to take everyone to the same place and spend at least a couple of weeks there.
2024 is our 20 year wedding anniversary, so we’ll use the fun budget to celebrate that. Our 10 year anniversary trip was incredible (we went to Iguazu Falls in Argentina via New York City), so we’ll have to work hard to top that, but I’m looking forward to the challenge.
I get the feeling we should have done this sooner, but better late than never.
How about you? Do you have a fun budget, or something similar?
Lovely idea! Have fun!
Yes, this is a part of T. Harv Eker’s “6 Jars” budget format, which I use a variation of. This has really helped me, and I agree, having a portion of the budget you *have* to spend on fun (he calls it “play”) is great! (I also like building charitable giving into my budget as well.)
https://www.harveker.com/blog/6-step-money-managing-system/
For example, if we have any money left in the “play jar” at the end of the month, we make it a point to go out to dinner or a movie or something.
A fun budget is a great idea. We spend a few million yen a year for the basics of life: taxes, kenko hoken, manshon monthly costs, groceries & transportation. But since we are retired and without debt, every single yen leftover becomes our fun budget for eating out, travel, etc. After working for so long it’s been incredibly liberating to spend freely without a care about saving. No advice retirement column ever mentioned this – now the cat is out of the bag!
Great idea! I have read a similar concept on this before though through books such as “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind” by T Harv Eker, and also “I will teach you to be rich” by Ramit Seti—-but still a great concept to add in!
Last year I added a bucked list column to my personal “balance sheet”.
I add there everything I wish of doing during this life and the amount of money it would cost… it was an Excel perfect dream… until I added a column for the amount of time I would also need; that was a reality check.
Now I have one goal of making sure I get to pen off at least one item every year; I like to believe that list is more important than any other metric in the spreadsheet.
I have a bucket list document too, but I like the idea of adding it to the financial spreadsheet ^-^
🙂 I go as far as having a net worth figure calculated after the total from the bucket list has been deducted.
I think a fun budget is a great idea! I personally find it can be difficult to balance aiming for FIRE and enjoying nice things, so a fun budget is a great way to find a way to do both.