How to Organize Entertainment Expenses

"I'm going to present a topic on budgeting. Again, with the help of Expert Village, I hopefully will be able to help people and assist people in terms of developing a budget. In this clip we're going to talk about another budget item and this is entertaining and dining out. And again, this is one of the budget items that you do have control over and some flexibility depending on your situation and how tight your budget is. Basically, you can look at this in two categories....food, which is always going to be one, and dining out and then entertainment. You know, most families, you may go to a movie, you may go to the park, you may have an outing...a day trip or something like that. So again the food's probably the biggest item in terms of entertainment and dining out that you're going to have. In our household, normally we're going to go out to eat twice a month I'll take the kids out once a month and then me and my wife go out. So we've got that kind of plan in our budget that you know, there's a kids outing, and then I take my wife out once month. She'd like to do it every week, but I have a budget. So this is an item that can have a big impact on your budget depending on where you go. If you're going to a five star restaurant, that food and dining out expense can be huge. If you're going around the corner to the burger shop, it can be relatively small. But it can have an impact and just to show you what my budget is, on a month to month basis is anywhere from a hundred to a hundred and twenty dollars. Again, I'll take the kids out, and we like to go to a place that's kid friendly, and then I'll take my wife out to a decent restaurant. So again we budget about one hundred dollars a month on dining. The movies are the same situation. Normally, you want to put something in your budget for movies and entertainment... something like that.... going to the zoo (if you have a local zoo) or there's an aquarium or there's a museum. Normally in our family budget we'll put about twenty-five to fifty dollars per month to cover those items. And that includes at the movies, if you're buying a box of popcorn or something like that, movies have gotten really expensive so again, we try to go to the matinee or we'll buy tickets at discount through a credit union or something like that. So again, you don't think about this budget item but it really does have an impact. The food, dining out and also movies, it can have an impact depending on your situation."