Can we be happy without an entertainment line item in our budget?

August 3, 2010 4:36 AM

Can we be happy without an entertainment line item in our budget?

Every budget worksheet has an entertainment line item, but is it necessary for a happy life? It certainly seems like less stress is better; how do you justify spending money on entertainment at all, especially when money is tight? (I know of free things that are fun and do those as well, I'm looking at things that specifically cost money.)

Is it healthier to have a small monthly entertainment budget or does it make more sense to save up a little bit at a time for something special at the end of six months/a year? Is there any formula for how much money should be set aside for entertainment (such as what percentage of income vs rent)?

I'm also pondering the mindset of "have fun while you can" since who knows what may happen tomorrow (i.e. get hit by a bus, cancer, etc) but realize that saving up for something bigger and better may also have its merits.

Bonus question: Do you consider internet access an entertainment expense or a utility like heat and electricity?

posted by Wuggie Norple to Work & Money (21 answers total)

Best answer: Can people be happy without an entertainment line item in their budgets? Absolutely.

Can you? I'm not so sure.
posted by box at 4:49 AM on August 3, 2010

I suppose a big thing to look at would be how social you are...and if you need a lot of networking in your career. Would continuously skipping out on the invitations of others because it is not in your budget something you would be willing to do, and would this passing on events help or harm you in the long run?
posted by haplesschild at 5:10 AM on August 3, 2010

Another way to look at it: Having a long list of entertainment expenditures does not directly relate to an increase in happiness.

Practically speaking, I think some expense is required, it's really hard to promote happiness in an environment by being a cheapskate.
posted by gttommy at 5:14 AM on August 3, 2010

Every budget worksheet has an entertainment line item, but is it necessary for a happy life? It certainly seems like less stress is better; how do you justify spending money on entertainment at all, especially when money is tight?

What do you plan on doing, outside of work? It's not just a "have fun while you can" philosophy that makes you rush to entertainment, it's looking at the hours between 4-11pm every day and trying to find a way to be happy. If you can do that without a budget (much of what I do is run, workout, cook good dinners, read, snuggle with the lady, watch free movies off the internet and go for walks in our scenic location) but at some point, you need a little variety. That's where the entertainment line is.

It's safer to budget for expenses in this area than to have no budget at all. A goal can be to come in under budget, which is a lot more of a tangible goal than to have zero budget for things to do.
posted by Hiker at 5:14 AM on August 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

Seconding box - different people have different needs. Some people would happily live without electricity, others would go mad knowing they couldn't go to an amusement park again in the foreseeable future. For me personally, its easier to deny myself solitary luxuries, but I feel super-deprived if I have to miss out on dinner with friends for budgetary reasons. It also depends a lot on what you and your loved ones like to do - my favorite entertainment expense is restaurant meals, which almost always cost money, but I live in a city with lots of free entertainment options like jazz concerts and outdoor plays, so a jazz aficionado might be very happy here not spending any money.
posted by fermezporte at 5:17 AM on August 3, 2010

Given the number of jobs that require email submissions if not web submissions, I'd consider internet a utility for that alone. Last time I was really broke, I paid my internet before my rent.
posted by restless_nomad at 5:22 AM on August 3, 2010

I think it depends on whether your friends are into the same free things as you. I saved a lot of money in college by not spending a lot of money on entertainment. I didn't make very many friends and no I wasn't happy.
posted by aetg at 5:23 AM on August 3, 2010

There was a study -- too lazy to find and cite, but should be pretty easy to look up -- that money spent can indeed make people happy if it's spent on experiences rather than objects. So if you deprive yourself of a DVD you want to watch, it will likely not make a dent in your happiness supply, but if your friends plan an amazing evening out, you are more likely to feel the pain of deprivation as you're reading at home.

There are, of course, ways to drastically reduce your budget without cutting it out completely (or even cutting down on the experiences). Go with friends to a dinner but compromise by ordering something small, maybe an appetizer. Look for free events you can go to with people, especially if you live in a big city. There is the cost of transit, but in my opinion, a life without free time spent with friends is not much of a life at all.

(Note: I have cut back on my budget by not ordering in when I eat alone; I reserve restaurant spending for social meals.)
posted by aintthattheway at 5:40 AM on August 3, 2010

it's really hard to promote happiness in an environment by being a cheapskate.

I disagree with this comment as it's very easy to be happy without spending big bucks on entertainment. You can always try managing your entertainment in a different way, e.g. I gave up drinking for a month and saved about £250, which I then spent on a new TV. - Or if you wanted advice without trying that, I'd suggest trying to explore ways of enjoying yourself without the need of money..... There are endless amounts of things you can do without money. e.g. cycling, walking, sports, renting a DVD.

The idea that if you have to go somewhere that your friends do seems to just relate back to the young days of school where you feel the need to do something because it's 'cool'.

Hope this helps.
posted by sockpim at 5:41 AM on August 3, 2010

It depends how many of your actual entertainment preferences fall under other line items. Like others have said, if you have internet and cable as utilities and groceries and gym as line items, you can get a lot of entertainment accomplished and not need a specific allocation. You don't have to go to the movies or eat out to entertain yourself.

Everyone needs down time and clearly entertainment is an instinctual pursuit, but it isn't necessary to allocate money to it. BTW, there was an episode of 30 Days that dealt with extreme thriftiness and Morgan and his girlfriend nearly lost their minds with boredom.
posted by parkerjackson at 6:02 AM on August 3, 2010

You should budget what makes you happiest and what is easiest to do.

Ramit Sethi talks a lot about this. His example is always about coffee. If you are a big coffee person, it is irrational to not budget in your coffee and think 'I'll just cut it out and never buy $6 lattes again', because doing so will be something you constantly have to fight against. It is going to make you unhappy and drop your budget. But, let's say you buy magazines weekly, but never read them, that would be a better thing to cut in your budget because you aren't going to miss it.

So, same thing applies with entertainment. Figure out what entertainment you can't live without. Would money for a couple DVD rentals plus one movie out be enough to keep you from straying from your budget? Could you do less? Do you need more? Remember, you can adjust as you learn things about your self and your money habits.

Moral is: Make a budget that you can stick to.
posted by chiefthe at 6:07 AM on August 3, 2010 [3 favorites]

Depends on what makes you happy. When I was very poor I budgeted myself a latte every week, because it made me happy but was quite an extravagance. Nowadays I like to order in food and buy books, so I budget for those. If I want something big, like a vacation, it's a separate budget item.
posted by L'Estrange Fruit at 6:13 AM on August 3, 2010

There are endless amounts of things you can do without money. e.g. cycling, walking, sports, renting a DVD.

Cycling requires a bike and maintenance. Taking up a new sport requires equipment. Renting a DVD requires, well, renting a DVD. These costs might not be huge, but they are still costs to be budgeted for.

This is a good example of why you need a budget, because without it, these are simply expenses that happen and go unaccounted for. If you allow for that, it can bleed into other parts of your budget. The point of the budget is to account for as much money as you can, in order to reduce the amount of aimless spending that you do.
posted by Hiker at 6:13 AM on August 3, 2010

Best answer:
Not to duck yor question, but it's all a matter of definition; how does one define entertainment?

I could argue that my monthly internet is an entertainment expense even though I do (also) use it for work. I could also argue that cooking interesting and fun meals is entertainment, even though I also, most definitely, still have to eat. So eating gruel, meal after meal would probably not be entertaining.

So, entertainment would seem to be, in it's broadest sense, something that adds VARIETY to our lives in a pleasing way. And the fact that most higher animals also play, I think that it's pretty inescapable to conclude that we all need distraction and variety in order to stay happy (or at least, to not get depressed).

So no. I would say you should not ignore entertainment. However, that does not mean that entertainment need be expensive, nor that the more one spends on entertainment, the happier one will be. It just means that our need for entertainment/play should not be ignored, nor should it be a point of ruthless "economization."

If you can entertain yourself--from day-to-day--for cheap, then I really like your idea of still taking some of the money you save and turning it into a bigger, "something special".




posted by DavidandConquer at 6:30 AM on August 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

Even when my budget was very tight, I made sure to spend some money on fun -- a matinee movie ticket every other week or something like that. For comparison, I was making $25,000 before taxes and living in New York City. My rent was 3/4 of my take home pay. I still had a 'mad money' category in my budget.

If you are too strict with your budget, you will end up blowing the whole thing. When you look at it that way, $20 or $40 is very much worth it to spend on yourself.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 6:42 AM on August 3, 2010

Best answer: This is something you'll have to figure out for yourself; there's no one answer that works for everyone. My partner and I have figured out over the years that we cannot function well without planning for some meals out and take-out--neither of us loves to cook, and we are often too tired at the end of the day to want to. During a tight budget period we have managed to learn to eat out a lot less, but we don't even pretend we're going to get through a whole week without at least getting takeout of some kind one night. If we try, well, peanut_mcgillicuty is right: If you are too strict with your budget, you will end up blowing the whole thing. Or choosing not to stick with it because you chafe too much under its restrictions.

Now, we have friends who literally never eat out, and other friends who do it once a month at most. So clearly some people can eliminate the "eating out" budget line almost completely. Not us. But there are other things we can do without much more easily--I read about 300 books a year, for instance, but buy almost none. But most people I know read a lot less but buy almost every book they read, and would feel deprived if they couldn't own their books.

You asked about how much of your budget it's reasonable to set aside for entertainment. For people who aren't used to budgeting or money management, I really like Elizabeth Warren's newest book, All Your Worth. She and her co-author propose a plan where you try to get your expenses as much as possible into the following proportions: 50% for "needs," 20% for savings, and 30% for wants. They don't recommend budgeting at a super-granular level ($x for eating out, $x for groceries, $x for car repairs) but instead this kind of bigger-picture organizing. So, if you had your expenses into their proportions, you'd have about 30% of your income every month to spend on a mix of entertainment, eating out, hobbies, clothes, and so on. But you get to choose the mix.

My partner thinks of high-speed internet access as a necessity. During our recent period of very tight money, I would have considered giving up our cable (which is TV, landline phone, and internet in one package) but he wouldn't hear of it. I do know I would have missed it terribly--we use it, especially the internet, all the time. But I would have been willing to do without it. He thinks of it more as an essential utility.

As far as whether it's OK to spend money on entertainment when money is tight: I find that people can get really moralistic about things they find it easy to do without. Sometimes I'm around people who make these smug little speeches about how they never eat out because it's so much cheaper, healthier, and tastier to cook at home that eating out is a huge waste. I get that they're right about all of that, to a point, and yet these are always people who like to cook, who find it easy, and who are good at it, and they make a mistake when they imagine that their experience can be extrapolated to everybody else.

I fall into this, too, sometimes, with regard to books. I love books, and yet consider very few of them worth owning, either as physical objects or in terms of content, and if I forget myself I can get judgmental of people who "waste" money on books they're only going to read once and then leave on the shelf to gather dust for 30 or 40 years. Both when making judgments and when on the receiving end of others' judgments, I need to remind myself that people have different values and needs, and we're going to make very different decisions about how to maximize the pleasure we get from a spare $10.
posted by not that girl at 7:26 AM on August 3, 2010 [3 favorites]

As far as budgeting goes, since you mention budget worksheets: Over the years, I have found that that kind of "quantify every little thing" budgeting never works. For one thing, I've never been able to come up with a budget, itemizing like that, that didn't exceed our income by a large margin! Or I always think I've got it, and then remember four categories I forgot about. It's just discouraging, and fussy.

The reason for this, I think, is that a lot of budget categories have "flex" built into them. For instance, I could budget a certain amount for groceries, a certain amount for entertainment, a certain amount for eating out, a certain amount for taking cats to the vet, a certain amount for clothes.

But in practice, those categories shift in relation to each other. For instance, in a recent week we bought my partner a good pair of shoes, which he very much needed to address some foot pain. In response to that expense, I cut my grocery budget for the week to the bone. Another week, I might really stock up on groceries, including splurging on some treats, and in response our "out" dinner might be $10 worth of burgers instead of $40 worth of steaks. If the oil needs changing this week, we don't see a movie; if we take the kids to a movie, that's probably not also going to be the week I buy a nice new shirt. See what I mean?

So I much prefer systems like Warren's in All Your Worth, or a method Jane Bryant Quinn discusses in Making the Most of Your Money, where you figure out how much you need to be saving, and once you have set that aside and paid your bills, you get to spend the rest however you want without micro-managing or feeling guilt, because it seems to me to better fit the way money works for people in the real world. At least for the subset of "people" that live at my house.
posted by not that girl at 7:36 AM on August 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

My budget has a line for internet, as a utility. Netflix has its own line because it's recurring (I don't have cable.). It has a food budget based on my average spending; same with medical and auto maintenance. And it has a "left over" area, where I see my unplanned, no-monthly-bill wiggle room. That's my clothing, splurges, toys, gifts, and "if you're going to Spain next year, spend less than this, duh," line (really three lines: monthly, weekly and daily.)

So I don't have an "entertainment" line, but it is represented within the budget. Happiness is not spending more than I can or should and knowing what those numbers are.
posted by SMPA at 8:57 AM on August 3, 2010

If you have a halfway decent library near you, you're golden. They should have books, movies, music, internet access, even puppet rentals, and its free! All the money I save by going there, I take a night out with a book, go to a restaurant, and eat a meal all by my lonesome, and I like it.
posted by ducktape at 11:14 AM on August 3, 2010

Response by poster: Thanks so much for everyone's answers; I think you all really hit home what I was needing to hear in terms of entertainment depending on the individual situation.

The internet often does feel to me like it ought to be considered entertainment because I use it for fun, but it does have its uses as a utility too (I hear more from my distant family via email, etc).

I don't really do a lot of social stuff because I'm hard of hearing, which makes movies/restaurants/bars difficult for me nor do I have social requirements due to my job, so that certainly saves money. A lot of my friends are out-of-town, but we connect online.

I guess the "have fun while you can" worries from the lack of longevity in my family and trying to decide between something small now or saving up for something bigger later. But overall, I think asking this question has given me a lot of good things to think about. Thanks!
posted by Wuggie Norple at 5:26 PM on August 3, 2010

As long as you're keeping your internet connection active then you have an endless supply of entertainment at no additional marginal cost.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:05 PM on August 4, 2010