Learning to Accept a “Bad Budget Item”

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What are some of your money vices? “Bad budget” things?

I can tell you two big ones I see the personal finance community target over and over: lattes and gym memberships.

If I had a dollar for every time an article told me to cut lattes and my gym membership, I would have enough money to be a millionaire right now. I mean, some of the articles talk about how if I cut lattes and gym memberships, I will be a millionaire before I know it. Right? Yeah…okay.

With lattes and gym memberships so often being looked at as “bad budget items”, it made me wonder what small things people spend money on every month that wouldn’t be considered part of a “good” budget.

The idea behind the whole “ditch the latte and gym membership craze” centers on cutting out the unnecessary expenses in your budget and focusing on the expenses you need and that really matter.

Cut the unnecessary expense and you’ll have more money to put towards debt or retirement, they say. You don’t need it. Yada Yada Yada.

Now, I have done a good job of not taking on unnecessary expenses into my monthly budget over the years. I only get lattes from coffee shops occasionally, so they aren’t a detriment to my budget.

My bad budget item is having a gym membership.

So many articles about cutting back and saving money mention ditching the gym membership. There are workout videos you can do yourself! Gyms are expensive! Do yoga at home!

How about…no. Good habits die hard my friend. I’m one of those people that actually uses their gym membership. *Shivers*. At $20+tax per month, It isn’t an overtly expensive item to keep.

What are some common bad budget items?

• Eating out (don’t we all want to try out the most amazzzing restaurants and be an amateur foodie?! Also, apparently brunch is a legit thing now)
• Endless subscriptions (magazines, Spotify, Neflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, subscription box services)
• Excessive ready made food, snacks, and drinks
• Small purchases that add up (I had a issue with this for a while when I kept ordering $10-25 dollar things on Amazon, 🙁 )

Having one or two bad budget items isn’t going to break your budget and keep you from reaching your financial goals.

So often people get caught in the mindset of “If I just reduce my expenses to basic needs” them I can achieve my financial goals.” This logic is part of the equation but not the whole thing.

On the other hand, there are the articles centered around not focusing on cutting your bad budget items and instead increasing your income. This, again, is part of the equation but not the whole thing.

Achieving financial goals involves a healthy mix of getting into a good mindset of what/when to save and when making additional income is more practical.

Having one or two bad budget items (as long as they aren’t big ticket things) are okay for a budget. They are useful even. They become that little incentive that keeps you going and helps maintain your day to day happiness.

A bad budget item keeps your happiness up while also keeping you in check from spiraling into a multitude of bad budget things. After all, saving money is rooted in a person’s mindset. It’s not about depriving oneself.

When bad budget items ruin your monthly budget…

Little money wastes can be fine in a person’s particular situation. The key is to not let a bad budget item ruin your budget completely. For instance, if your bad budget item is having cable, what happens when the cable bill increases?

What happens when you start getting a little to comfortable with getting lattes and start purchasing them more frequently?

Best thing to do is to temporarily eliminate the item from your monthly budget. Try a 30 day challenge where you go without it. At the end of the challenge, you will have a better idea if you really need it or not.

For me, I loved having Hulu and Spotify. The assortment of playlists on Spotify was kinda life changing (kidding, not kidding). However, as time went on, I found Spotify to be a time suck better served for reading. I also wasn’t using my Hulu subscription as much.

After temporarily eliminating them for one month, I realized I didn’t have a big use for them anymore and got rid of them. $17 bucks a month saved! (Now I just gotta stop buying pretzels from the mall so frequently!)

The good thing about personal finance is that it’s personal. Figure out what works for you.

What “bad budget” do you have in your monthly budget? Do you keep the expense because it helps bring happiness? 

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Colin // RebelwithaPlan

Colin Ashby is the writer behind Rebel with a Plan, a website dedicated to people who choose to rebel against the norm of living in debt and feeling financially unenlightened. He believes everyone has an eccentric quality to embrace and that lattes are sometimes a necessity (despite what the personal finance community tells you).

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