How much of your budget do you spend on entertainment / wasteful / fun / etc

[SyZ]

So we're halfway through the year and I found myself wanting to pick up a $40 game on Amazon, struggling with the idea that I'm spending $40 on myself when I'm still $15k in debt

Then I realized I've paid $8,000 on loans so far this year, about $5500 extra in principle, and other than food, gas, insurance, rent, etc. I've spent maybe $500 on myself, with a $57k income

Too much, too little, just right?

[2Birds1Stone]

Only you can answer that question.

Generally speaking about 50% of my spending is on necessities and the other 50% on wants (cell phone, nice car, eating out, travel, entertainment, etc).

That being said I maintain a savings rate between 50-75% the past 2 1/2 years.

[ohsnap]

At your current payoff rate, it looks like you are on track to be out of debt in about a year?  If so, I think your current rate of fun money is about right.  Spending at your current rate of $1k/year will keep you from paying off the debt for maybe 1 extra month out of a year.  But it will allow you to have some fun along the way.

[Cornbread OMalley]

2B1S kind of hit on it with his reply.  But "entertainment/wasteful/fun/etc" is really subjective to each person because each person defines that category differently.  For me I average $79.30 monthly for 'fun' as I define it for the grand total of 1% of my monthly paycheck.  But I get a lot of fun out of my educational pursuits as well.  YMMV.

[Metric Mouse]

This thread reminded me that insurance is due on my fun machine.  Suppose I should chock that $300 into the 'fun' category, but then I'd have to start tracking categories...

[Zamboni]

Can you see if the library or redbox has the game to play for a bit? Then, if you are really into it and not just bored with it already, you can buy it with no remorse.

[Cassie]

Now that we are semi-retired we spend more on fun then we ever did. Not counting vacations we spend about 600/month on fun experiences. However, when we were younger we did not because we were saving, etc.

[Zikoris]

About 15-20% of our income goes towards fun stuff - heavily skewed towards travel, followed by concerts, movies, shows, and other experience-type stuff. We also buy a lot of video games, but have gotten that to the point of being basically cost-neutral.

We didn't pick that percentage out or anything, it just kind of worked out that way.

[SilveradoBojangles]

I agree, every one is different. We budget $80-100/month (2-3% of monthly spending - covers eating out, shows, spotify, etc.) for entertainment, but, we spend a huge proportion of our budget (~30%!) on travel, which many people would say is frivolous but we feel is the whole reason we are on this budgeting/FI journey. We scrimp and save in other areas to make this happen while maintaining our savings rate. Of course, we have no debt, so there's that. But I would say that rewarding yourself when you reach certain milestones can be an important motivator and keep you from getting burned out.