Money Monday: Allowances – yes or no?
Source (that links to an article on this very topic!)
I’m not talking about allowances for your child.
I’m talking about an allowance for your or your partner.
As in… you each get $____ / week to spend however you want.
Is this something you do? Don’t do?
Alex and I budget so we kind of have allowances, but mostly it’s just a ballpark number that we allot to spend each month on things we feel like spending the money on.
The dumb part is I don’t really track it. Haha.
I don’t really need too, though. Neither I nor Alex has a problem with overspending. I would say this wasn’t always the case – especially early on in our marriage. I had a problem with shopping and tended to go a little nuts from time to time.. especially when I would find myself at Anthropologie. Over time, though, I’ve just stopped. It helped that Anthropologie moved its location a couple exits further up the highway. It’s really only an extra 5 minutes or so, but it’s just enough to feel so far away that I rarely visit. Plus their new location has a terrible parking situation.
What’s weird is that, while I enjoy shopping, I can’t figure out what I’d even want to spend my money on. I think because I don’t go shopping as often, it’s more of a treat now and I kind of stress out about picking the wrong thing to buy. What if I regret the choice? Yeah, I could always return it but that’s kind of a hassle. This same thing happens to me with gift cards. I hold onto them for so long, just waiting for the perfect thing to spend them on…and that perfect thing rarely comes so I end up just breaking down and getting something, just to spend the gift card.
Alex’s favorite things to spend money on are all musical-equipment-related, which is synonymous with big amounts of money, so he can’t really go crazy on that without us compromising the money for our mortgage. Those are purchases we save up for, or we work on selling stuff we already have to get the funds for something he wants.
So to answer my own question… I guess we really don’t have an allowance. We just have a general idea of what we should be spending on entertainment/fun stuff, but that money, in all actuality, usually goes to bills or savings or, now, Ezra. And, knowing that I only have a set amount of money to spend on something kind of makes me resentful – it’s like a mind game that only makes me mad so I overspend. Not very effective!
Do you give yourself an allowance?
Related posts:
- Monday Mondays: We’re (almost) debt free!
- Money Mondays: The Case for Brown Bagging
- Money Mondays: 5 Tips for Saving up for a Newborn
- Why money makes me nervous, and what I’m doing about it
- Learning how to food budget
Tags: adult allowance, allowance, budget
One thought on “Money Monday: Allowances – yes or no?”
Hello!
My name is Amanda, and welcome to my blog. I'm a work-at-home wife, married to my best friend, mom to 3 babies (2 covered in fur...and the other an actual human :)), and thoroughly enjoying my charmingly modern little life. Learn more about me and this blog here.
An interesting idea. We don’t do that, because money is so tight right now, but whenever we have some extra cash, we tend to spend it on food…because we’re cool like that.