Somtimes I’m so focused on winning with money I begin to take a hardcore approach to personal finance.  Yes… I’m a self admitted nerd/tightwad who would live in a cardboard box if I thought it would help me achieve the financial success that I’m working toward.  A potential problem with this is that I forget to take time to enjoy the money that I have.  Thankfully I have a wonderful wife who knows how to work a budget and also knows how to relax a little and spend some money from time to time.

Today I came across an article at Get Rich Slowly which caused me to stop and think about it for a few minutes.  The question in the article is this “What do you splurge on?”.  After all, if you can only give, save or spend money, I should probably talk about spending as well.  I enjoy spending money, but I enjoy saving it even more… BUT, here is how my wife and I enjoy spending our money.

  1. Paying for a babysitter and going out on a date with my wife.
  2. Eating out a couple of times a month.
  3. My wife likes buying things for the house.
  4. She also likes to buy things for use in her crafting.
  5. I’m a bit of a geek and enjoy computers, software and electronics.
  6. I also enjoy music, creating music, and musical gear.
  7. Vacationing.  We try to take a trip or two a year and pay cash for the whole thing.
  8. Kids.  Guilty as charged.  We try not to spoil our kids but like any parent we like to do nice things for our kids.  (Although you would think that the college fund would suffice! ;-) )
  9. Repair man for the washing machine.  Our youngest son’s socks have shown up in the water pump.  TWICE… unbelievable!  I realize this really isn’t a splurge… certainly felt like it when we wrote the check!  In the spirit of this list, we splurge on the lowest end cable tv.  We’ll probably upgrade later this year.  It’s just so expensive per hour of viewing!
  10. Miscellaneous products.  We’ve found that there are some products worth paying a premium for the quality.  Notice I didn’t necessarily say pay the full price but rather pay for more for a quality product rather than pay less for some cheap knockoff that doesn’t stand up to wear and tear.

How to wrap this up… well, bottom line is that you need to enjoy some of your money.  You may need to cut the budget to the core to get out of debt, however, once you’re out of debt (except the house) you can and should loosen up a little.  I’m still finding it difficult to loosen up.  Hopefully in a few months that will not be the case. 

How do you enjoy your money?  Are you a complete nut like me and have trouble enjoying your money?  Are you a complete free spirit without any trouble spending money?  Either way, it’s absolutely okay to splurge as long as the item is in the budget and the difference between the income and expenses is 0.