Money Matters
rbecca89
member
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Seriously saving money and having a life too?
My fiance and I are trying to really crank up our saving money efforts. We have our wedding on Oct.11,2014 which we will be paying for most of. We are also very interested in buying a home sooner rather than later. That being said, I have come up with the idea of putting almost all of my monthly income straight into our joint savings account, and use my fiance's income to pay our rent, bills,food/grocery, etc. We have been following this method since the beginning of this month BUT life is just getting in the way. We have multiple birthdays coming up to celebrate, including mine, and well..not spending any money on "fun" things can get dull very fast. I know the easy solution to this is just suck it up, sit on your couch and watch a movie instead of going out and enjoying life, but that just seems so unrealistic. Im not entirely sure what kind of question I am trying to get at here but basically, should I feel guilty for occasionally spending money on the "unnecessary, fun things"? Has anyone here really been successful at not spending any money on leisure activities, while saving?
Re: Seriously saving money and having a life too?
I would go crazy if I never got off my couch, but not everything in the world that is fun is expensive. I think you should budget for some 'fun' money, but then aim for a lot of cheap/free activities.
Things OUTside
Public parks
Take walks
Free museums
Festivals
Public concerts
Tennis at free public courts
etc
Things INside other than TV
Snuggle with tea and books
Board games
Build/make/craft something out of 'trash' or scrap materials
Also, cancel your cable and spend that money on getting out and doing things!
I think these ladies have already given you a lot of great ideas. Other ways to find fun, cheap things to do that I know of:
If you are a Bank of America member- you get into a lot of museums free the first weekend of the month.
Groupon- we buy our movie tickets from here, they go on sale every couple of months for $5. sometimes this comes with a drink, sometimes it doesn't
Check out local flee markets, farmers markets, etc. They can be fun places to just get out of the house and walk around even if you don't spend any money. Depending upon the farmers market, you may have the added bonus of saving money in your grocery bill.
Rent movies from the library- a lot of libraries have a good selection.
Rather than going out with a group of friends, invite them over for a wine tasting, game night, pot luck something like that.
Thanks for the feedback! I never knew about bank of america perks like that, will definitely check that out.
What would be a fair/realistic amount to budget for "fun" money? (% of total monthly income)
I don't know if eating out is considered fun money but it is for us. we budget $100-$150 a month on eating out. I like to get out and not feel like I;m cooking all the time. Honestly we find so much fun stuff to do for free I think we literally spend no more than $40/month on fun stuff. Things we do for fun: buying groupon movie tickets, water park with DD, walking around the shopping center, swimming, having friends over for cook outs, a happy hour occasionally, letting DD go outside and play with the neighbor kids.
We don't go that bare where we don't spend any money on fun things. What helps is both of our families don't need expensive items for gifts so that helps a lot. Also, we did get a membership to the local zoo so it was a one time medium expense but is good for a year. We are not huge going to the movies people or concert people so we can find a lot of lower cost items to do that are not free but will be cost effective. Just the other weekend we went to our local Irish Festival and it cost us roughly $30 including dinner and a few beers.
I wouldn't do it as a % of total monthly income but as a dollar amount per month and I would include eating out in this. My wife and I budget $80 into fun activities and eating out a month. If we have extra in our individual budgets we may go out to eat more. One of the things we found out is that going to Olive Garden is more expensive then going to a local Italian eatery. We also got to less expensive places such as Steak and Shake to help my ILs out also.
My husband and I are going through that! We already had and paid for the wedding and honeymoon and we are now saving like crazy to buy a house.
We can get by some months without spending on other activities because we are working a lot and weekends too. So enjoying a sunday resting and being together is enough. Other months we try to take advantage of free activities or weddings we attend. We do have a budget of around 10% of our income for entertainment activities.
Taking extra small jobs on weekends (for example I bake) is a good way of doing something you enjoy and get extra cash.
sign up for meetup.com. they have all sorts of groups to join dependant on your interests. one of the local ones here is a culture group and i never knew of all the free museum days, free concerts, free cultural attractions and such that are available on all different days of the month.
in our library system they have culture passes where you check out a pass for two people that can be redeemed once over the week for different musueums, architectural sites, the olive mill and etc.
my read shelf: