Fun money is a good idea

It doesn’t matter if you’re single or married, there are going to be things that come around throughout the month that just aren’t in the budget… music you want to download, a book you’d like to add to your bookshelf, the opportunity to hang out with the guys or have a ladies’ night out.  Some of these examples might fall into specific categories in your particular budget, but some may not.

So, you’ve got to find some place to put these items or activities within your daily budget, otherwise you just might go crazy!  This is where something we call fun money comes into play.  You’ve probably heard it referred to in some other ways as well: “blow money”, “allowance”, “free money.”  It’s a designated portion of your budget that will allow you to buy things or do activities that you simply don’t need on a consistent monthly basis.

For us, this has been really important, because we consider our finances a joint venture.  We generally don’t make purchases (large or small) without consulting each other or at least considering thoughtfully how the other person will respond.  This usually works well, but when it comes to purchases which we’d put in the fun money category, more than likely the other person is going to be less interested, and that’s okay.  For instance, notice the difference between mine and Julie’s typical fun money purchases:

Andrew’s Picks

• iPhone applications (I gravitate toward 99 cent games)
• new music from iTunes or Amazon
• magazine subscriptions like Mac|Life [affiliate link]

Julie’s Picks

• Lattes with friends (caramel macchiato, anyone?)
• Jewelry (Target is her favorite)
• Lunches out (her favorite is a local taco place called Baja Grill)

In some cases, these items are going to be of different priorities for us, and we’re definitely going to agree that they don’t really fall into other necessary categories in our budget.

More than anything, having a “fun money” category provides us with freedom.  As important as it is to have a monthly budget, you can potentially become bogged down by those guidelines.  Having some money to burn each month provides for some nice breathing ro0m.  What’s interesting is that although Julie and I have this money available to us, we typically don’t even spend our allotted $30!  So maybe there’s even more to this little idea than we thought