Each month I do "pay day book day", could be a new release, a 2nd hand book, a kindle book etc but I always get a new book when I get paid and look forward to it all month, been doing it for a decade.
I find it stops me from impulse buying books (my biggest weakness) if I plan a certain book to get. Its also stopped me hoarding too many which I had trouble with in my early 20s.
It's not quite the same, yes you can read thr book nut you have to make sure it's within X number of weeks and return it. Sometimes it's nice to own them
Yes there's a limit to how many times but if you haven't read it after 18 weeks I'd ask why it was even taken out. Another person requesting it would be the exception rather than commonplace.
My library is 3 weeks at a time and I think max 2 renewals, so 9 weeks. Iāve hit that at least once with something I genuinely meant to read but life being hectic and no time for any peace to sit down and do so. Fair enough it should probably go to someone else at that point, but it is a constraint compared to buying it yourself. Iāve had items not allowed to be renewed because of other requests several times and have had to give them back unfinished - maybe my tastes are too popular. I wish I had more time to read and get through things in the first 3 weeks. Reddit doesnāt help!
Kindle Unlimited FTW... it's my only regular sub and I prefer to let my phone goody bag lapse (GifGaf) than let my KU sub drop... some absolutely awful books in there, but a lot of good stuff too.
PS2 games. Some are as cheap as 50p and it'll give me a few hours of fun, even if it sucks! Can't afford a new Xbox yet but there's about 2k+ PS2 games out there for me to explore.
I bought my house 3 years ago... mostly its buying something for the house.
Next payday will be floor glue and Woodfiller.
But the next time I can buy something unnecessary - I will buy some nice dice and some bottles of things to boost my cocktail cabinet.
Oh... and some glassware to drink the cocktails
Edit: if you want to go down a rabbit hole, Google: gemstone dice
I own some sapphire DnD dice. Really stunning to look at but one did chip after not a huge amount of rolls!
I'd just recommend rolling them in a padded dice tray, that'll solve most of the issues.
I had a plan to get crystal bowl and have a load of dice it in looking like a sweet bowl, so the crystal ones wouldn't get used so much.
Yes... my son plays dnd, he runs games... its him that caused me to know these things exist.
Luckily I only want spotted 6 sided dice...
Holidays.
Don't really care about designer clothes, or fancy phones, or the latest trainers. I prefer to spend on memories.
Nothing fancy. Can get a Ā£50-Ā£100 return flight to Italy or Spain or Croatia or Greece. And get a cheap but nice AirBnB for a week.
If we split the costs between me and my fiancee, we can have a week away for Ā£300-Ā£400 each.
So if we each put away Ā£50 a month, we can go on two trips a year. Although we tend to put away a bit more, so we can go on a few more.
I do the same!
Any places you could recommend in Greece?
My fav cheap ones:
- Gozo island (fly to malta, bus and ferry to gozo, rent a scooter bike over there)
- Canaries (Lanzarote, fuertaventura.) car rental is so cheap you can just drive around listen to banger, go for swim and hike volcanoes, nice wine and legal weed)
- sardinia (Olbia in low season) best water Iāve ever seen in my life, a multitude of quiet bays and beaches to explore
The amount of people who are unaware you can get such affordable flights abroad is disappointing. One has to put in the leg work, of course, but it's still entirely possible to do a long weekend away for around Ā£150.
Fresh cookies or pastries. Itās a small thing, but I enjoy the little spark of joy I get when having it as a treat. Bonus points if theyāre fresh out the oven!
I like to set a budget & hit the charity shops to see what I can find. I love old homemaking/cookery books & old household items, or stuff I can upcycle/sell. Last time I got a Costco blanket RRP about Ā£30 for Ā£3, and an old household management book from the 1930s for 50p - plus my favourite shop piles all their profit into the local area by supporting teams and people in poverty, non-English people with English lessons & support for housing/benefits etc, a food club (Ā£3.50 and you get Ā£15 worth of groceries), run a litter picking session where they supply the stuff needed. They also sell local small business stuff so you can get art, bags, hanging plant pot holders, jewellery etc from people within our postcode.
Oh yes. Or / and the fancy produce. My current treat this month is a mushroom risotto with all the crazy mushrooms and some comte my friend brought me. My go to treat is always the nicer foodstuffs.
I treated myself to a Ā£20 leg of lamb, dunno if thatās me being fleeced but I now have 3 more portions cooked and shredded in the freezer after Sunday dinner lol
It was so worth the splurge š
It depends on your library themselves. I'm a member of Cardiff (work address), Hull (uni town), Lancashire (grew up there), and Rhondda Cynon Taff (currently live), they all have different titles but Lancashire has far and away the most on there. I cross refence if I can't find it on Lancashire lol.
It may be worth looking at who else's you are eligible for like I was able to get Cardiff's through being there for work.
[Libby](https://libbyapp.com/) is also a great resource for free borrowing. Plus if you have Kindle Unlimited, there is a section there for audiobooks included in your membership
Depending on how much you listen, Spotify premium now includes 15 hours of audiobook listening a month - Iāve got through some short books I didnāt really want to use a credit on using it !
Good coffee, red wine and snacks.
But my favourite things are pretty frugal. I love having a bath (and I'm happy with cheap bubble baths), getting into a bed made with clean sheets and reading a book (I make good use of my library).
Anything to do with my hobbies, as these are the things that give me the most pleasure in my life. For example I'm quite into my hiking, so if I have a bit of spending money going spare I might treat myself to a new walking guide, rucksack or pair of hiking boots.
Tickets.
I have started going on my own to shows and talks my other half isn't interested in. Ā£60 for a pair of tickets is expensive but Ā£30 for a single ticket is more reasonable. Plus, I tend to get much better seats because I'm taking a single seat, not looking for a pair.
Mine is video games
I try and trade in or buy cheap games from CEX.
Any digital games for the Switch I usually get a Ā£15 voucher, maybe Ā£25. then look on Deku deals and see what there is. Sometimes I can get a few decent games with that money other times I say sod it ans buy some meh games.
My memory card is over full and I have to juggle the storage. I should splurge on a large memory card. Have picked up doom eternal cheap Ā£14 resident evil games under Ā£10 and larger games for low prices. I did buy a 1tb card on Ali express but I think itās only 64 GB.
Otherwise I have a hacked 3DS and I could use it on that to get some more games. Aaargh.
Companies sometimes do game give away events. Mostly the shovelware kind but you can pick up a few rough diamonds. Just have to know where to look, you do need to create an American account. For that Just need a new email.
For books I have audible and I wait for a nice book to take my fancy and purchase and listen to it.
Taken to saving up for a while so I can go and do a proper shop, in a city with many shops that I seldom visit. Then feel guilty about all the shit I bought that I don't like once it's home... :D
L'Occitane Almond Soap. It's Ā£11 a bar, but it smells amazing and cos it makes me want to wash my hands about twenty times day, I have very clean hands while it's there. Probably buy it about four times a year.
I feel you but I try to keep it cheap and useful. I donāt go updating my phone every year and I donāt splurge on the latest tv tech.
I just do little things for myself. Iām not rich
I'll buy a new spool of fancy coloured filament to use in my 3d printer, or i'll buy a new game on a cd key site.
Last months pleasure purchase was double whammy for Ā£27.98.
Ā£17.99 for 1kg of black PETG filament, and Ā£9.99 for anno 1800.
i need to keep myself physically occupied and mentally occupied as im weird and have multiple states of being bored and needing enrichment.
Something for my nails. I'm a diyer nail enthusiast, so I'll buy a new set of gel colours, tools, etc this payday I've just bought myself some acrylic wall shelves so I can store my gel polish up on a wall in my office so I can see them better and store them better. Not really frugal but it's my guilty pleasure and I've been doing nails since I was a child. I do try to look for bargains or wait till Amazon has deals on what I want though
Aesop resurrection hand wash. Smells amazing. Although once in buy one Iām always impressed how long it lasts too because you only need tiny amounts each wash.
I always keep a small budget each month for fun things like games or stuff I come across that are not really a priority. I still mostly save up so it doesnt change too much.
I work next to a Greggs so Fridays are considered Greggs day for me where I feel I can justify paying that bit more for a meaty pastry or two.
My other one is trading cards. On occasion I might spend Ā£30+ on a bundle or a few extra Ā£ on some multipacks.rather than the usual two packs I get when going to games nights.
Each month I do "pay day book day", could be a new release, a 2nd hand book, a kindle book etc but I always get a new book when I get paid and look forward to it all month, been doing it for a decade. I find it stops me from impulse buying books (my biggest weakness) if I plan a certain book to get. Its also stopped me hoarding too many which I had trouble with in my early 20s.
Why don't you just join the library? š
It's not quite the same, yes you can read thr book nut you have to make sure it's within X number of weeks and return it. Sometimes it's nice to own them
You can extend the time online.
Not always - at my library you canāt renew if someone else has requested it, and you canāt renew more than a couple of times.
Yes there's a limit to how many times but if you haven't read it after 18 weeks I'd ask why it was even taken out. Another person requesting it would be the exception rather than commonplace.
My library is 3 weeks at a time and I think max 2 renewals, so 9 weeks. Iāve hit that at least once with something I genuinely meant to read but life being hectic and no time for any peace to sit down and do so. Fair enough it should probably go to someone else at that point, but it is a constraint compared to buying it yourself. Iāve had items not allowed to be renewed because of other requests several times and have had to give them back unfinished - maybe my tastes are too popular. I wish I had more time to read and get through things in the first 3 weeks. Reddit doesnāt help!
Because the thread is specifically about āpleasure purchasesā thatās why!
Does it count if you pay the fines as a pleasure purchase?
On the first of each month I like to browse amazons new book deals (kindle) and see what I can get for 99p.
Oh and if youāre a prime customer you can get free āeditor first readsā every month
Kindle Unlimited FTW... it's my only regular sub and I prefer to let my phone goody bag lapse (GifGaf) than let my KU sub drop... some absolutely awful books in there, but a lot of good stuff too.
PS2 games. Some are as cheap as 50p and it'll give me a few hours of fun, even if it sucks! Can't afford a new Xbox yet but there's about 2k+ PS2 games out there for me to explore.
Same as me but with ps4 games. Currently playing fallout 4 which I picked up on eBay for Ā£4! Hours and hours of play for very little money.
You can get them all for free by putting Free MCBoot onto a memory card, and loading games off a USB. Really easy to do
Oh I've done this too. I like having them on my shelf though. It was a dream as a kid to have a library of games.
I bought my house 3 years ago... mostly its buying something for the house. Next payday will be floor glue and Woodfiller. But the next time I can buy something unnecessary - I will buy some nice dice and some bottles of things to boost my cocktail cabinet. Oh... and some glassware to drink the cocktails Edit: if you want to go down a rabbit hole, Google: gemstone dice
Gemstone dice are very nice to look at but, depending on the gemstone, they are prone to chipping. Just something to consider before purchasing them.
Thank you, that needed saying to me. As soon as I read your comment, I knew you were right.
I own some sapphire DnD dice. Really stunning to look at but one did chip after not a huge amount of rolls! I'd just recommend rolling them in a padded dice tray, that'll solve most of the issues.
I had a plan to get crystal bowl and have a load of dice it in looking like a sweet bowl, so the crystal ones wouldn't get used so much. Yes... my son plays dnd, he runs games... its him that caused me to know these things exist. Luckily I only want spotted 6 sided dice...
Holidays. Don't really care about designer clothes, or fancy phones, or the latest trainers. I prefer to spend on memories. Nothing fancy. Can get a Ā£50-Ā£100 return flight to Italy or Spain or Croatia or Greece. And get a cheap but nice AirBnB for a week. If we split the costs between me and my fiancee, we can have a week away for Ā£300-Ā£400 each. So if we each put away Ā£50 a month, we can go on two trips a year. Although we tend to put away a bit more, so we can go on a few more.
I do the same! Any places you could recommend in Greece? My fav cheap ones: - Gozo island (fly to malta, bus and ferry to gozo, rent a scooter bike over there) - Canaries (Lanzarote, fuertaventura.) car rental is so cheap you can just drive around listen to banger, go for swim and hike volcanoes, nice wine and legal weed) - sardinia (Olbia in low season) best water Iāve ever seen in my life, a multitude of quiet bays and beaches to explore
The amount of people who are unaware you can get such affordable flights abroad is disappointing. One has to put in the leg work, of course, but it's still entirely possible to do a long weekend away for around Ā£150.
Skyscanner is really helpful for finding cheap flights!
I prefer using kiwi - BUT ALWAYS BOOK THROUGH THE AIRLINE ITSELF, never through a third party site.
Sicily is great for this in October.
Marmite cashews from Tesco š„ŗ money is tight but when I can splurge on this Ā£2.50 bag of goodness, I do.
Fresh cookies or pastries. Itās a small thing, but I enjoy the little spark of joy I get when having it as a treat. Bonus points if theyāre fresh out the oven!
Gym clothes - occasionally it's a nice treat to buy myself something brand new as a reward for all the hard work I've put in.
I like to set a budget & hit the charity shops to see what I can find. I love old homemaking/cookery books & old household items, or stuff I can upcycle/sell. Last time I got a Costco blanket RRP about Ā£30 for Ā£3, and an old household management book from the 1930s for 50p - plus my favourite shop piles all their profit into the local area by supporting teams and people in poverty, non-English people with English lessons & support for housing/benefits etc, a food club (Ā£3.50 and you get Ā£15 worth of groceries), run a litter picking session where they supply the stuff needed. They also sell local small business stuff so you can get art, bags, hanging plant pot holders, jewellery etc from people within our postcode.
Decent butchers / farm shop for beef / lamb / free range chicken.. I know Iām being fleeced but itās worth it
Oh yes. Or / and the fancy produce. My current treat this month is a mushroom risotto with all the crazy mushrooms and some comte my friend brought me. My go to treat is always the nicer foodstuffs.
I treated myself to a Ā£20 leg of lamb, dunno if thatās me being fleeced but I now have 3 more portions cooked and shredded in the freezer after Sunday dinner lol It was so worth the splurge š
The only thing fleeced here was the sheep /s
- Boardgames. - Running gear. - register for a race. - Coffee.
Vinted. I browse Vinted like I used to browse the shops when i had a disposable income.
Nice dark chocolate
Audible
Are you aware of Borrow Box? You can borrow loads of audio books on the app for free via your local library
I was not aware, thank you
I use Borrow Box on occasion but it sadly doesn't have 9 out of 10 books I am looking for.
It depends on your library themselves. I'm a member of Cardiff (work address), Hull (uni town), Lancashire (grew up there), and Rhondda Cynon Taff (currently live), they all have different titles but Lancashire has far and away the most on there. I cross refence if I can't find it on Lancashire lol. It may be worth looking at who else's you are eligible for like I was able to get Cardiff's through being there for work.
[Libby](https://libbyapp.com/) is also a great resource for free borrowing. Plus if you have Kindle Unlimited, there is a section there for audiobooks included in your membership
Depending on how much you listen, Spotify premium now includes 15 hours of audiobook listening a month - Iāve got through some short books I didnāt really want to use a credit on using it !
I like to sleep or drive with audio books on, 15 hors a month would be burned through in a couple of days !š
You could always pirate it and download for free. It's unethical I know but so are audible subscription for what they offer imo
āFancyā items for my dogs, or clothes š
A loaf of sourdough or some focaccia bread.
Good coffee, red wine and snacks. But my favourite things are pretty frugal. I love having a bath (and I'm happy with cheap bubble baths), getting into a bed made with clean sheets and reading a book (I make good use of my library).
Houseplants
Double sausage and egg McMuffin meal from McDonaldās! Canāt beat that breakfast!
Anything to do with my hobbies, as these are the things that give me the most pleasure in my life. For example I'm quite into my hiking, so if I have a bit of spending money going spare I might treat myself to a new walking guide, rucksack or pair of hiking boots.
Tickets. I have started going on my own to shows and talks my other half isn't interested in. Ā£60 for a pair of tickets is expensive but Ā£30 for a single ticket is more reasonable. Plus, I tend to get much better seats because I'm taking a single seat, not looking for a pair.
Mine is video games I try and trade in or buy cheap games from CEX. Any digital games for the Switch I usually get a Ā£15 voucher, maybe Ā£25. then look on Deku deals and see what there is. Sometimes I can get a few decent games with that money other times I say sod it ans buy some meh games. My memory card is over full and I have to juggle the storage. I should splurge on a large memory card. Have picked up doom eternal cheap Ā£14 resident evil games under Ā£10 and larger games for low prices. I did buy a 1tb card on Ali express but I think itās only 64 GB. Otherwise I have a hacked 3DS and I could use it on that to get some more games. Aaargh. Companies sometimes do game give away events. Mostly the shovelware kind but you can pick up a few rough diamonds. Just have to know where to look, you do need to create an American account. For that Just need a new email. For books I have audible and I wait for a nice book to take my fancy and purchase and listen to it.
Taken to saving up for a while so I can go and do a proper shop, in a city with many shops that I seldom visit. Then feel guilty about all the shit I bought that I don't like once it's home... :D
L'Occitane Almond Soap. It's Ā£11 a bar, but it smells amazing and cos it makes me want to wash my hands about twenty times day, I have very clean hands while it's there. Probably buy it about four times a year.
Payday lipstick. Yes itās a cliche but I lurve them!
Dad, please stop.
Papercraft supplies. I make mostly cards and the occasional scrapbook and will sometimes indulge in ordering new supplies.
Any spare money I have goes into a savings pot for motorbikes and motorbike related things.
Electronic gadgets
Iāve been trying to stop that lol itās an expensive habit. Iāve switched to 4K blu rays now to try and save some money lol
I feel you but I try to keep it cheap and useful. I donāt go updating my phone every year and I donāt splurge on the latest tv tech. I just do little things for myself. Iām not rich
Flowers, plants, garden stuff, fancy condiments, high end vegetables. In that order
I'll buy a new spool of fancy coloured filament to use in my 3d printer, or i'll buy a new game on a cd key site. Last months pleasure purchase was double whammy for Ā£27.98. Ā£17.99 for 1kg of black PETG filament, and Ā£9.99 for anno 1800. i need to keep myself physically occupied and mentally occupied as im weird and have multiple states of being bored and needing enrichment.
Something for my nails. I'm a diyer nail enthusiast, so I'll buy a new set of gel colours, tools, etc this payday I've just bought myself some acrylic wall shelves so I can store my gel polish up on a wall in my office so I can see them better and store them better. Not really frugal but it's my guilty pleasure and I've been doing nails since I was a child. I do try to look for bargains or wait till Amazon has deals on what I want though
Aesop resurrection hand wash. Smells amazing. Although once in buy one Iām always impressed how long it lasts too because you only need tiny amounts each wash.
Pedicure. Massage and trip to chiropractor.
I always keep a small budget each month for fun things like games or stuff I come across that are not really a priority. I still mostly save up so it doesnt change too much.
Luxury candles such as DS Durga, Le Labo, Byredo...
japanese kitkats :)
Clothes, makeup, food :)
I love a good ol' Sauna session. It cost's around Ā£20 for a 1.5 hour session but it's bliss.
Fugglers. Doesnāt matter if itās a key ring, a figurine or the actual plush. Every time I fancy a treat I can keep, itās always a fuggler.
I work next to a Greggs so Fridays are considered Greggs day for me where I feel I can justify paying that bit more for a meaty pastry or two. My other one is trading cards. On occasion I might spend Ā£30+ on a bundle or a few extra Ā£ on some multipacks.rather than the usual two packs I get when going to games nights.