How much Entertainment money needed to FIRE? Poll

[DollarBill]

This "Entertainment" expense would include all fun, travel, eating out, hotels, airfare, events, movies, booze for a month and per person... so if you have a spouse then divide by two.

Edited: For the people that say $100-500; Are you including the amount you spend while at home and traveling??

[WYOGO]

$500 is plenty. I assume it rolls over each month if you don't spend the total? Very workable...

[Goldielocks]

Ack!  Zero. As I intend to earn money in ER to just cover my fun. Does that count?

[DollarBill]

Ack!  Zero. As I intend to earn money in ER to just cover my fun. Does that count?

What do you think you'll average? Or will you just earn the money and spend it as it grows?

[DollarBill]

$500 is plenty. I assume it rolls over each month if you don't spend the total? Very workable...

I think it's workable too. I would like to have a bit more myself so I can take more trips since airfare and hotels can rack up quick.

[iamlindoro]

$100-500 is a pretty wide open range!  I spend close to $100, which I consider pretty reasonable, but $500 would be pretty facepunch-worthy in my case.

[Mr. Frugalwoods]

This "Entertainment" expense would include all fun, travel, eating out, hotels, airfare, events, movies, booze for a month and per person... so if you have a spouse then divide by two.

Edited: For the people that say $100-500; Are you including the amount you spend while at home and traveling??

Non-travel related entertainment expenses for us are around ~$30 /mo.  Total, so I suppose $15 a person.  Living in a big city is great for free entertainment!

If you include travel we're probably closer to $150 /mo total.  Airfare is expensive, and we love to travel!

[maricela]

For once Im retired, I plan to have enough to loosen the spending reigns, especially entertaining and travel. Otherwise I might as well work.

[DollarBill]

$100-500 is a pretty wide open range!  I spend close to $100, which I consider pretty reasonable, but $500 would be pretty facepunch-worthy in my case.

But you seem to catch some killer travel deals. I need to go back to some of your travel hack threads to re-read. Most of my trips are with non frugal friend type. I try to keep them to a minimum. I'm trying to plan a New Zealand trip soon and the airfare starts about $1300 but that's one of those once in a life time trips.

[DollarBill]

For once Im retired, I plan to have enough to loosen the spending reigns, especially entertaining and travel. Otherwise I might as well work.

I'm kind of the same way. I'd like to have enough to take about 6-12 trips a year or go full time RVing. Camp fee's alone would be about $600-$900 a month. I know there is cheaper ways but I want have the cushion to let go.

[DollarBill]

This "Entertainment" expense would include all fun, travel, eating out, hotels, airfare, events, movies, booze for a month and per person... so if you have a spouse then divide by two.

Edited: For the people that say $100-500; Are you including the amount you spend while at home and traveling??

Non-travel related entertainment expenses for us are around ~$30 /mo.  Total, so I suppose $15 a person.  Living in a big city is great for free entertainment!

If you include travel we're probably closer to $150 /mo total.  Airfare is expensive, and we love to travel!

Would you take more trips if you had $500 a month or would you keep it at $150?

[caliq]

I put $1000, to be shared between DH and I.  That's probably kind of high but I want to have horses at home, plus we have dogs -- I don't know if pets are considered 'entertainment' but they're not necessary expenses.  We don't spend much on anything else but I would like to be able to have them and also be able to travel more and go out some (a couple times a month is enough for us).

[Zikoris]

I put the lowest because we plan to merge our travel and living expenses - ditching our Vancouver apartment and getting an apartment in France for a few months, moving on to the next place, etc.

In 2014 our travel expenses averaged out to around $700/month combined, and our total non-basics spending (entertainment, shopping, gifts, snack foods, restaurants) averaged $260/month combined. So even with our current exorbitant travel spending, we're already in the lowest category at $480 per person per month.

We do two big overseas trips a year and one shorter long weekend trip.

[RetiredAt63]

One of my major non-travel entertainment budgets is memberships.  There is more time to participate in groups that do activities you like when you are retired - budget accordingly.

[DollarBill]

Thanks for the input. I basically look at it like this...If you saved enough to cover basic living expense + inflation. Then you need to cover the entertainment expenses last. At that time you need to figure out if you want to have a frugal/regular/extravagant lifestyle when FIRE'd. Which could make you say OMY (One more year) to give you that buffer.

[DollarBill]

I have about $800 a month just for one person. BUT I also include everything that is not included in my bare bones living expense. I call it Checking/Fun/Other fund.

These are the funds I have set up:
House paid off and no other debts
- Taxes and insurance (House, vehicle, insurance for both, revolving budget)
- Bills (all utilities, food, gas for vehicle, revolving budget)
- Travel ($100 a month but would like to be more, revolving budget)
- Emergency ($150 a month, revolving budget. I use it for unexpected repair or purchase)
- Checking/Fun/other (Fun and everything else like: re-did my flower bed, new passport, 2 new tires, bought hitch for car, x-mas, clothes, electronic replacement, travel if it fits in the budget if not it comes from the travel fund, same for the emergency fund)

 For my - Checking/Fun/other fund I plan $800 a month...but normally only spend about $700. I would like to bump it up to $1000 a month.

[Goldielocks]

Ack!  Zero. As I intend to earn money in ER to just cover my fun. Does that count?

What do you think you'll average? Or will you just earn the money and spend it as it grows?

Work for a few months, quit or seasonal only, spend it all. Repeat.

Living fully covered by ER funds so work is fully optional. If I want a fancy vacation for $5000, just work a bit to get there. If I want to just SAH parent- no work, just no entertainment.   I would rather shave grocery money for a movie ticket, etc..

[looking for FI]

I said 1k because we plan to travel alot.

[Cherry Lane]

This is an interesting question, that I hadn't really considered before.  I'd no idea what my answer should be, so I looked at my last two years of expenses (two years because travel and recreational equipment purchases are sporadic, and that timeframe seems to cover a good range).  Over that two years, I spent about $17k (whoa!  really?  whew knew?  Thanks again for providing the impetus to look at this...) on the non-essential categories of:  clothing, crafts, dining, entertainment, garden, gifts, recreation, subscriptions, and travel.  That's ~700/month on average. 

Some of my personal travel is subsidized by work (for example, last year I went to CA for work, then took a vacation from there to OR, with much cheaper airfare than VA to OR would have been), so in retirement my travel expenses would be higher.  Some of the other expenses in that category might be lower in the future, but I'd guess I'd still want to be closer to $1000/mo than $500/mo.

[Ganon91]

Assuming the money rolls over monthly, I could easily handle a $1,200-$6,000 a year "Fun" budget. I project about 3k yearly for that sort of thing once FIREd.

[Dr. Doom]

$100-500 is a pretty wide open range!  I spend close to $100, which I consider pretty reasonable, but $500 would be pretty facepunch-worthy in my case.

Yeah, too broad.  $100/mo means you need appx 30K of invested assets to cover, $500/mo, you're looking at 150K.  That's not a small gap.

I expect to be around $300 here.  During my working years I've averaged $150 but it'll go up in ER, for sure.

[Mr. Frugalwoods]

This "Entertainment" expense would include all fun, travel, eating out, hotels, airfare, events, movies, booze for a month and per person... so if you have a spouse then divide by two.

Edited: For the people that say $100-500; Are you including the amount you spend while at home and traveling??

Non-travel related entertainment expenses for us are around ~$30 /mo.  Total, so I suppose $15 a person.  Living in a big city is great for free entertainment!

If you include travel we're probably closer to $150 /mo total.  Airfare is expensive, and we love to travel!

Would you take more trips if you had $500 a month or would you keep it at $150?

We have more money available (we save about 70% of our take home) but this is our happy level of consumption.  We're always on the lookout for cheap trips, and we've traveled a decent amount internationally.  I think traveling and being frugal comes down to being opportunistic.  If you can get a good deal, then go!  If not, wait a couple of years and keep an eye on prices.

[Captain and Mrs Slow]

New to YNAB so numbers are still a work in order

120€ eating out during the week
150€ Weekend fun money
300€ Tax Travel money
150€ personal money

First one is we tend to eat out once a week and when the wife is in the office (usually works from home) I tend to eat out. Just got YNAB running so working on reducing these

Weekend money is still a work in progress but typically it's when we go out hiking for a day it typically we'll take the lift to the top and walk down and eat out. My goal is to see if we can reduce the cost of a day out (started by taking snacks and drinks with us)

Tax Travel is simple, I either set aside money or taxes or use it to create tax deductible travel. The key here is understanding that a dollar spend is only 50 cents in tax savings so need to balance the need to reduce taxes with wasteful spending

150€ typically for holidays, but is a bit on the low side as we flights home usually run about 1500€ if we travel in Europe than it's more.

Again only been using YNAB for a few months but it has already transformed my budgeting process

[2Birds1Stone]

I answered $1k, That would allow much freedom as far as international travel, gifting, helping others, and safety net during unforeseen hardship is concerned.

[DollarBill]

I answered $500/month but that amount is highly variable month to month. Some months (maybe the majority of months) I spend zero, nada, nothing on entertainment, travel, eating out, gifts, etc... Don't really buy anything but the basics I need (food, gas for the car, toiletries) and generally do free or super low cost activities and entertainment. Other months I do long camping road trips so spend much more - maybe $1500/month for fuel, campsites or budget motels.  I expect that to change in the spring when I sell the house and travel full time for a bit before settling down somewhere again (or maybe not). Then I won't have many living expenses but my entertainment money will be much higher. But then entertainment and living expenses will be the same.

ETA: When I didn't travel so much (budget travel) my entertainment expenses were usually around $100/month or less on average.

I kind of do the same, all of my trips so far have been road trips and staying with family/friends. I have a buddy making his way to New Zealand and I want to meet up with him but keep having cold sweats when I think about spending that kind of cash. It will take a while to build it back up again.

[Cassie]

For the both of us it would be about $800/month. That would include one big trip a year, a few weekends away & going out to eat 1x per week, movies or concerts,etc.