I have done pretty good with my impulse spending since joining this site. I have completely turned my life around in the last year.
I work a lot. 50 hrs a week minimum but more often 60-70 as of late.
In addition to work, my wife and I spend another 7-8 hrs a week at the gym. On our 3 off days we usually just relax and watch movies and such, occasional nice dinner. That's our life which I enjoy for the most part. We don't have kids other than an older dog and she doesn't work aside from teaching spin classes. Thus, my time not working is 100% free time. No laundry, cleaning, cooking, errands, etc. it's a trade off for the less income, but worthwhile with how much I work and my income.
Fast forward to last Sunday. My first day off after 13 days of consecutive 10 hour shifts. Standard Sunday routine. Wake up, eat, relax a bit, hit the gym. Come home, relax some more, then around 1 pm I started to get stir crazy. I was genuinely bored. This became almost depressing as I had just worked 13 days in a row, and working the next 13, and here I am, bored on my one day off??
We travel for my work often to places without a ton to do. Right now we're in a town of around 25k people. I love snowboarding, mountain biking, hiking, etc., but often can't do those things, so the gym has always been our hobby.
I read enough at work and listen to audiobooks to/from I'm not interested in more of that. I am starting to think of other things to fill my time, hobbies I've loved or would love, but at the level I'd like they all cost money. I used to play the guitar a ton and was decent but sold my equipment. I've had several motorcycles over the years and enjoyed those. I thought about getting a rifle for the range, but the closest rifle range is over an hour. I haven't purchased any of these things because I'm starting to be so focused on savings. I'm not at some crazy low spending level (we aim for $5500/mo) and do afford myself some nice things (just bought a very nice pair of steel toed work boots). I just bought us plane tickets to two weddings on the other end of the country soon, so that will be fun.
I guess I'm just looking for ideas to fill those voids, or maybe some push to even justify spending some money.
So far this year, I've saved around $40,000, and will save another $20,000 just in the month of April. So dropping a couple grand on a hobby really "shouldn't" hurt me, but it still does. This savings is not always standard, but my current contract saving $10,000/mo is reasonable still.
Any suggestions? I just work so much and do need time to recover, but that feeling of "bored" really got to me. Fortunately that doesn't happen much, but I don't want it to happen again either.