For some context, I am a 30 year old man. I have a pretty large amount of savings, definitely in the 99th percentile for people my age, but possibly not much compared to folks on this forum. I've been doing a personal version of MMM style saving for years before I discovered this site. I have no problem saving 50% every month and I have no debt. I have an emergency fund of cash that is about a year's worth of living expenses.
Now my question is about extra expenses -- things you do for fun, out of interest, or just because it makes you feel good. For me, this is exercise. I started taking martial arts training over a year ago and I love it. I'm not going to be competitive obviously, but it makes me feel great, keeps me in good shape, and helps with my mental attitude. It is not cheap, however. On top of that, the martial arts gym doesn't have weights, and I like to do some weight training, so I have been considering joining yet another gym that specializes in strength conditioning and weight lifting. That would bump up my monthly allowance for fitness pretty high, much higher than I thought I would go several years ago.
Is this "lifestyle creep" in your view? As I find myself trying to justify the expense, I find that I'm making similar arguments that I hear people make for buying fancy clothes and going out to expensive dinners -- e.g., "you're worth it," "you're only young once", "why else do you work?"
This is obviously nonsense in many cases. But clearly there are some cases where the pleasure you get from an activity is worth the expense. What is a good, sane, rational way to do this calculus?
(IMO, the martial arts gym I belong to is *definitely* worth the cost, though I'm not sure the strength conditioning gym would be. It's almost twice the cost of the martial arts gym, and I can only reasonably hope to work out at one each day. Hence my conundrum.)