Don't you hate it when you are
trying to live frugally in order to meet some important and long-cherished
financial and personal goals, and your spouse goes out and buys something
stupid that he or she plans to use frequently, but that you know perfectly well
they will be bored of in a week? After
all, little things add up.
Our solution: allowances. It sounds a wee bit juvenile, no? But it is figured into the budget. And I know as long as we are staying roughly
within our budget, we are making financial progress. So if my husband wants to buy complicated card/board games with
too many rules, wizards, odd-ball dice, and creatures called Feral Ferrets,
that's OK. He is probably equally mystified
by my spending my entire month allowance on a haircut and eyebrow wax.
Allowances are done in cash, and can
accumulate over time in order to save up for big purchases. They do not include necessities, and semi
necessities, like razors, socks, and getting ice cream together. (If you're curious, the first gets lumped in
with groceries, the second is in the fluid category "J./The Magician’s
personal," in the last goes under "entertainment.") The allowances need not even be the same
size. When we were first married, my
allowance was $200 a month, and his was $35.
Now we both get $40 a month, although now we tend to just use allowances
for things that we want to get that the other person thinks are silly, whereas
before things like clothes used to come out of one's allowance.
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