Leave Wiggle Room for Treats and Incidentals

by Sam
(Phoenix, Arizona)

By far, the hardest part of sticking to a budget for me (and my boyfriend) are all the incidentals that come up in the course of a month.

It's easy to lay out fixed expenses on paper, and even budget for a certain dollar amount to go to groceries each week--but when my college sorority Mom stops by on her way through the area on a Friday night and wants to get dinner and drinks...I can't plan for that!

The first budget I made had absolutely no wiggle room for eating out or shopping trips or movies or any of that fun stuff that keeps life interesting.

It took me about 2 weeks to be unhappy and left with a broken budget.

The second time around, I worked $10 into each week for "I wanna". It's Friday, and I wanna rent a movie--the money came from my allowance, which I kept as physical cash in a piggy bank.

Keeping my spending money as physical cash prevented me from going overboard while using credit cards, and at the same time gave me a tangible cost for the things I wanted.

So far it's been 6 months, and I've stuck to the budget 99% of the time!