Re:Living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common
by Yen on Monday December 31, 2018 @07:51PM
(#18798179)
I haven't solved this for video games, youtube, etc. I'd be interested in a solution!
For disposable income purchases, we budgeted out income, necessary expenses, savings, travel, etc., everything that requires long-term planning. The surplus (a fairly small portion) we then divided out into a per-person, per-day allowance.
I use a simple Google Form to record discretionary purchases, tracking the results in a Sheet, to account for whether this discretionary budget has a positive balance.
This has the nice effect of translating dollar values into time values, and giving a reference point for trading off the relative hedonic value of small frequent purchases vs. large infrequent purchases.
For disposable income purchases, we budgeted out income, necessary expenses, savings, travel, etc., everything that requires long-term planning. The surplus (a fairly small portion) we then divided out into a per-person, per-day allowance.
I use a simple Google Form to record discretionary purchases, tracking the results in a Sheet, to account for whether this discretionary budget has a positive balance.
This has the nice effect of translating dollar values into time values, and giving a reference point for trading off the relative hedonic value of small frequent purchases vs. large infrequent purchases.