Budgeting for a hobby...

[prodarwin]

I have a somewhat expensive hobby (cars).  I would like to set aside money in my monthly budget for this.  I would like the money to be invested and grow with my normal taxable investments, but somehow track its accumulation/value/spending    Any recommendations on how to do this?

[prodarwin]

bump.  anybody?

[apoclater]

Personally I'd just put it into a high yield savings account where you can make "sub-accounts" like Capital One 360, you can call it "Car hobby" and that money will be marked as a sub-account of your savings.  You can budget $X amount for it each month by using YNAB (just google it). 

If you want to put it into something longer term like an individual investment account, I don't know if Vanguard or Fidelity allow you to create sub-accounts.  Fidelity doesn't, at least.  If you're absolutely set on doing it this way though, just budget for your contribution for it using whatever budget software you use, and look back at your contribution statements from the previous years and add it up.

[Nords]

bump.  anybody?

We saw the subject line and thought that you were one of those guys who enjoys the hobby of creating budgets.  Even among this group, that's a few standard deviations out along the bell curve...

Do you want to track it in a spreadsheet and just apply the growth of the annual after-tax returns reported for your taxable investment portfolio?

When the stock market has a down year, will you cut back on your hobby budget accordingly?

[Joel]

I use ynab to track my savings dollars like that.

[prodarwin]

bump.  anybody?

We saw the subject line and thought that you were one of those guys who enjoys the hobby of creating budgets.  Even among this group, that's a few standard deviations out along the bell curve...

Do you want to track it in a spreadsheet and just apply the growth of the annual after-tax returns reported for your taxable investment portfolio?

When the stock market has a down year, will you cut back on your hobby budget accordingly?

Hmm... I should've worded that better I guess.


I could track it in a spreadsheet, but I was hoping there was a simple free online tool that would do the work for me (aside from subtracting expenses).  Mint allows me to create a budget and roll-over unused expenses at the end of each month... but doesn't allow that budget to grow with my investments.

Yes, the if the market is down, I will dial back my hobby budget accordingly.

[Cromacster]

bump.  anybody?

We saw the subject line and thought that you were one of those guys who enjoys the hobby of creating budgets.  Even among this group, that's a few standard deviations out along the bell curve...

Do you want to track it in a spreadsheet and just apply the growth of the annual after-tax returns reported for your taxable investment portfolio?

When the stock market has a down year, will you cut back on your hobby budget accordingly?

Hmm... I should've worded that better I guess.


I could track it in a spreadsheet, but I was hoping there was a simple free online tool that would do the work for me (aside from subtracting expenses).  Mint allows me to create a budget and roll-over unused expenses at the end of each month... but doesn't allow that budget to grow with my investments.

Yes, the if the market is down, I will dial back my hobby budget accordingly.

Spreadsheet is pretty easy.  Just keep track of the amount of shares purchased that you will allocate to your hobby.  Have a formula that updates the value based on the number of shares and the share price (which you would have to update manually).  You just have to remain diligent on updating it to keep it accurate.