Budgeting pin money

[silver_moon]

This was inspired by the thread on supplemental income. Those of you who have pin money in your budgets - how do you decide on the amount? Does it fluctuate based on other bills?

I don’t want to get into details about our bills, etc. Just wondering how you allocate this money and what types of things do you spend it on. I tend to spend money every month on things like books, rather than saving money. But I also use the library as much as I can to avoid excess spending.

thanks.

 

[ejlo1]

My husband and I agreed on a fixed amount for each of us each month. That way we can plan on having x amount of money each month and we know how long it will take us to save up if we want something more expensive. There are no rules for spending the money, my husband has no say in how I spend my “blow” money and vice versa. Usually we spend it on things we want, but don’t need and things that are above and beyond the ordinary living expenses that the “house” pays for.

 

[Burt_Macklin]

We can spend whatever is left over after I pay the bills, put 17% in my 401k, and put 325 a month towards college for my kids. It’s usually about 600-800 month depending on unexpected doctor visits. For the really big unexpected expenses we use our emergency savings.

 

[eightydeuce82]

This was inspired by the thread on supplemental income. Those of you who have pin money in your budgets - how do you decide on the amount? Does it fluctuate based on other bills?

I don’t want to get into details about our bills, etc. Just wondering how you allocate this money and what types of things do you spend it on. I tend to spend money every month on things like books, rather than saving money. But I also use the library as much as I can to avoid excess spending.

thanks.

Dave Ramsey…The END…you’re welcome

 

[pensmama87]

For us, the “pin money” is only “fun money.” Things like clothing, medical expenses, and gas are other items in the budget, as are Christmas and other gifts, and actually so is date night.

So “pin money” would be for, say, going out with friends, a spontaneous lunch, a purchase for self that isn’t essential to the functioning of the household (so books for pleasure would fall in this category as well as video games), junk food or alcohol. Once the money is allocated the person can spend it how he or she wishes and spouse can’t say diddly (of course, nothing immoral or illegal and for going out we clear it with each other first). Sometimes one of us may save it up for a few months, or sometimes we will spend it every month.

Our allocation is very small - $20/month for each of us, plus another $25 for the two of us for date night (which we don’t always use that month, or use in full. We do a lot of free stuff or buy Groupons, etc. for dates, and we will swap babysitting or have DH’s parents babysit.) Ours is very small because we are on a very tight budget and paying off a significant amount of debt. But I think it’s unrealistic for us to not be able to have any fun money at all.

Once we are debt free, I’d be happy to have the amount be something like $50 each, with a larger amount for date night, too.

 

[Xantippe]

This was inspired by the thread on supplemental income. Those of you who have pin money in your budgets - how do you decide on the amount? Does it fluctuate based on other bills?

I don’t want to get into details about our bills, etc. Just wondering how you allocate this money and what types of things do you spend it on. I tend to spend money every month on things like books, rather than saving money. But I also use the library as much as I can to avoid excess spending.

thanks.

My husband and I set a “fun money” budget for both of us at every monthly budget meeting. It has to fluctuate based on other expenses and it runs between $30-50 for each of us every month.

My husband tends to save his and get large things (a large telescope or several sets of fencing equipment). I usually get a lot of small items (magazine subscriptions, newsstand magazines, and books) but when we were expecting our last baby, I saved for a number of months for a REALLY nice jogging stroller (20 pound aluminum frame) that turned out to be about $400. If I can’t get the monthly budget to work out, I will spend my remaining fun money on groceries. (I also tap my husband’s once in a blue moon, but warn him first.) We also get to spend any birthday cash as we wish.

We’ve been married 17 years but homeowners only for the last 2 years and the house has been such a money suck. We also added a third child 2.5 years ago.

 

[silver_moon]

thanks for all your (name removed by moderator)ut. I’ll check out Dave Ramsey.