During my non-mustachian days my wife and I would argue about how much money I would spend on my hobbies - the hobbies would always change, but the one constant was that I'd always want to spend money on them. As a solution I proposed a "hobby budget". Since we use Mint.com, we set it up where I would get $100 per month to do whatever I want with, and she couldn't give me a hard time about it. Also if I went over that budget she would have every right to get upset.. so that made sense at the time and worked for the last year or so.
Another way that I would add to the hobby budget was to do side-jobs or buy/sell on craigslist for a profit.. we agreed that 30% of the funds from these things would go towards hobby budget, 70%.
Anyways, now that I've become more financially responsible I dont really feel the need to spend tons of money on "hobbies" that are expensive and that I get bored with over time. Instead, I would like to take the money that I have wrapped up in hobbies and invest it seperately from my 401k or Roth IRA. I want a Vanguard account where I can constantly add small amounts of money to it, invest that into VTSMX, and have access to it if needed. We have emergency funds, and this would be looked at as more of a long-term investment, but I'd like to know I can get access to it before 59.5 yrs old (I'm 28 right now).
When someone says they're investing, does that assume that it's through a 401k, IRA, or Roth IRA? Is there a SMART place to put a small but consistant stream of money over time? I do realize that I could just cut off the hobby budget, put all of the side-job money into savings, and call it a day.. but that takes away a lot of fun/motivation/excitement.
Thoughts?