When/how do you splurge?

[Bamaman]

For me, it's one good trip a year. We travel fairly often anyway, but once a year, we go all out. Business class flying, the best food we can find and usually rent a house instead of staying in a hotel. I think with our next trip like this, we are going to get a chef for a few of the meals. It's definitely a splurge for me!

We try to eat out no more than once per week, and we sometimes eat at a medium price fern bar restaurant.
We never fly business class, and often will fly on economy airlines going to great places.
Our accommodations are never in expensive hotels, but we prefer B&Bs and sometimes AirBnB.com.

With what we save by living frugally 365 days a year is two or three great vacations--often overseas. One nice vacation is not enough for us.

 

[SteveNU]

Went to the farmers market tonight and splurged on a fancy grilled cheese sandwich with bacon on it followed by some maple crunch ice cream. Chased it down with a bottle of tap water from home. Life is too short to buy cheap ice cream and not enjoy a little bacon now and then!

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Early Retirement Forum mobile app

 

[mamadogmamacat]

Having funds, separate from those funding my retirement, set aside for home repairs, car replacement, appliance replacement, etc along with allowing for on avg 60% of max OOP for health care each year, takes away a lot of the uncertainty on a year to year basis. Therefore, I do not feel I need the complexity of a separate fund for "splurges". Just splurge with whatever remains from the SWR each year. Having a cushion for modest splurging already built in (fairly frugal anyway most of my life except for spending no pets and some charitable giving) helps too, with such thnigs as eating out a bit more than I expected to. So far, 7 months into ER, this works fine for me.

 

[mamadogmamacat]

meant spending on pets....like the ingredients fro the homemade log roll I hope to entice my dog with dementia with later this evening as her appetite is waning.

 

[Souschef]

Norlan Whisky Glasses

I saw a write up here on these glasses and just HAD to have them. I have been drinking my single malt in a glass I got from Glenlivet free that was octagon shaped and unusual.
These glasses intrigued me, so i bought two-one for me and one for my copilot (no-they are for AFTER flying ). They came packed in a cylinder, just like my scotch does, and they are beautiful!. My wife (who HATES scotch) thinks they are very unusual.
They were over $30 each, and for someone who gets glassware at the dollar store (although we have a cabinet full of Waterford glassware), they were a splurge.

 

[2017ish]

I saw a write up here on these glasses and just HAD to have them. I have been drinking my single malt in a glass I got from Glenlivet free that was octagon shaped and unusual.
These glasses intrigued me, so i bought two-one for me and one for my copilot (no-they are for AFTER flying ). They came packed in a cylinder, just like my scotch does, and they are beautiful!. My wife (who HATES scotch) thinks they are very unusual.
They were over $30 each, and for someone who gets glassware at the dollar store (although we have a cabinet full of Waterford glassware), they were a splurge.
...

Glassware is weird. We have the mandatory Riedels, but the Zaltos Universal wine glass is amazing. Like drinking from an imaginary glass. I don't know that I can taste any difference (in fact, I'm happy with a plastic beer cup), but defer to our family's palate, DW. Revolting to be drinking from $60 glasses though--and I'm dam* careful when I do the dishes each night!

 

[RobbieB]

My Norlans are on the way -

 

[traineeinvestor]

I do a monthly accrual for "luxuries". It was originally done as means of making sure I didn't go off the rails and spend too much. What actually happens is that I underspend the budget just every year (probably helped by not telling Mrs Traineeinvestor about it), but I can't think of anything I want.

I really should loosen the purse strings a bit.

 

[Bestwifeever]

We started ER with a chunk in a Vanguard money market fund within the IRA. We take $ from this for splurges as it doesn't deplete the dividend generating funds. Still a nice chunk after eight years of ER. RMDs start for DH in 3 years and may use that event to trigger a change in our splurge-funding strategy.