Define a “special Case” to Avoid Excessive Spending Every Month
What is considered a special event in your world? Ideally, the most expensive things you spend money on should be the things you only do from time to time. If you’re not careful, these habits can become blurry.
As personal finance site The Resumé Gap explains, treating each day as a special occasion can ruin your budget. Spending $ 100 in one night is okay if you only do it once a month. If it happens every other day, your budget skyrockets. We all know this instinctively, but many of us still don’t have a plan for how often “special cases” should really happen. We just let them happen:
We recently met my college friends in Istanbul. For them, it was the only real vacation of the year, for which they could occasionally stay in an upscale hotel, restaurants with sunset views, and a two-hour Bosphorus cruise for $ 80. Nothing crazy, but much more is spent than a typical week at home. For us, it was just one week out of many spent in a beautiful new city. We loved their company, but we cannot treat every day as a special occasion.
If you establish a definition of how often “special cases” can occur — say once or twice a month — and stick to it, you can keep that budget in check. However, if you identify special occasions (and the associated costs) with when people around you are doing something, you will see your monthly budget disappear pretty quickly.
When did my friends become so dear? | The resumé gap