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Do you relax your spending in months when you make extra income?

6 Responses to “Do you relax your spending in months when you make extra income?”

1. ceejay74 Says:
   September 24th, 2012 at 07:42 pm 1348515759
   1348515759
   It depends. If I'm approaching all my goals at a good pace, I sometimes use unallocated extra money for things we typically avoid -- home improvements, new clothes, a weekend trip.
   
   But if I've got big expenses looming that I don't want to use my EF for, I'll use extra money for that. Or, like right now I've got a goal that won't be attainable on my regular budget. So all extra money will go toward that, minus a few planned-for expenses that I'm planning to cashflow through windfalls -- my husband's 40th birthday bash, tax prep, holiday bonuses for service providers.

2. snafu Says:
   September 25th, 2012 at 12:02 am 1348531363
   1348531363
   I challenge myself to create 'extra' money by extra work, better than expected investment results etc. month in, month out as my personal challenge.
   
   I have a l-o-n-g list of items I'd like to buy if price, personal details and need line up together. For example, I've been planning to have the Lv Rm/D Rm wall to wall carpet ripped out and hardwood installed. Need good weather because furniture from 2 rooms will need to be stored outside on unprotected patio for the whole process. Need qualified installer available for 2 - 3 consecutive days, product available and on sale, no visitors, no events like birthdays, anniversaries, awards won, celebrations that cause everyone to gather here and most important the money to pay remain in place...not nibbled for an unexpected event like beloved SIL suddenly became ill and passed away as we rushed to visit in a far off city. We stayed for nearly a week for funeral and to help. Still very upset...
   
   This project will soon run into need to start rotation to paint rooms after 5 yrs. since previous major re-decoration... it gets complicated since DH & I accept out-of-country contracts and can be absent for several months.

3. wowitsawonderfullife Says:
   September 25th, 2012 at 01:36 am 1348536997
   1348536997
   In truth, I treat myself to something small, less than $20, usually less than $10, then apply the rest to whatever big debt I'm tackling. Unless I'm short on my budget.

4. EarlyRetirementJoy Says:
   October 1st, 2012 at 01:13 am 1349054031
   1349054031
   I wouldn't do it on a good investment - no guarantee it won't go sideways, or worse, south, at some point, but we would, and did, do it on our annual bonuses. Our bonuses were very, very healthy, so our method of extracting some joy from the lovely amount was to bank 90% and spend 10%. That 10% was enough to prevent us from feeling deprived that the majority was going bye-bye into a mutual fund.

5. Nika Says:
   October 1st, 2012 at 03:51 pm 1349106693
   1349106693
   EarlyRetirement, wow you are disciplined -- I could do 50/50 at best.
   By investments, I mean realized gains, not investments I'm still holding.

6. EarlyRetirementJoy Says:
   October 1st, 2012 at 08:20 pm 1349122847
   1349122847
   I think the difference may be where we are (were) in our respective lives. You and your DH are at the beginning of the family/career cycle, and may still be accumulating stuff, whereby we were toward the end and focused more on reaching financial independence so that we could resign. Since we already had the house and cars and possessions, there wasn't much left to "want" when the windfalls occurred.

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