How to plan in a budget for those less frequent but mid-range expensive buys?
You would simply plan for misc. expenses in your budget, and allocate a small amount to this every time you do your budget, eventually building up a pool of money that you can then use whenever you have to make a purchase such as that. "I use a ""sinking"" fund.  If you want to buy a $1000 bicycle, you put $100 per month into a savings account.   10 months from now, you can buy your $1000 bicycle. If you get a $500 windfall, you can either put it in the sinking fund and buy the item earlier.  If you lose some income, you can put $50 per month in the fund." Personally I solve this by saving enough liquid capital (aka checking and savings) to cover pretty much everything for six months. But this is a bad habit. A better approach is to use budget tracking software to make virtual savings accounts and place payments every paycheck into them, in step with your budget. The biggest challenge you'll likely face is the initial implementation; if you're saving up for a semi-annual car insurance premium and you've got two months left, that's gonna make things difficult. In the best case scenario you already have a savings account, which you reapportion among your various lumpy expenses. This does mean you need to plan when it is you will actually buy that shiny new Macbook Pro, and stick to it for a number of months. Much more difficult than buying on credit. Especially since these retailers hate dealing in cash. "We have what we call ""unallocated savings"" that go into a fund for this purpose. We'll also take advantage of ""6 months no interest"" or similar financing promotions, and direct this savings towards the payments."
What you are describing is called following (or going over) a budget. There is no debt or loans in the scenario you are describing. Simply put a budget is when you allocate a certain amount of your income for expenses in various categories, and a certain amount for savings.  So lets say you earn $100 a month. If you budget $50 in expenses every month, then that means you try not to spend more then $50 a month, and the rest you save. In any given month, you may go over your self-imposed budgeted amount for expenses. That simply means you are over the budgetted amount for that month, but that does not make you 'in debt'. It just means you didn't meet your goal for that month (or whatever time period you created). However, if you do this habitually then you clearly don't have a realistic budget, because the idea behind a budget is a plan that you can realistically meet on a consistent basis. Sometimes you may have to break it, but it should be made in such a way that if you work at it, it is consistently achievable. If not, then you need to rethink your budget. Instead of thinking in terms of taking loans from yourself, I would encourage you to think in terms of saving up for goals and only spending money from those 'goal funds.' In this way, you are not arbitrarily spending money that would instead go into savings, but rather explicitly setting money aside for those goals. This will also help you to see where exactly your money is going and also help you to prioritize your financial goals. "The key to this is budgeting. Without a budget, you don't know what you are spending your money on.  Let's say you would like to go to a movie with a friend.  Can you afford it?  Without a budget, it is difficult to answer this question.  Yes, you have enough money in your wallet, but if you don't go to the movies, you could be saving that money for a house.  ""But,"" you might say to yourself, ""surely one movie with my friend won't prevent me from saving my $10k for my house.""  And you might be right, but when you add up all the movies, coffees, and other discretionary spending up, it very well could.   At this point, you might be discouraged.  ""Do I seriously need to give up every single extravagance to make this work?  I don't have that kind of willpower!""  Luckily, here is where budgeting comes to the rescue. Budgeting is simply a plan for your money.  You have some monthly expenses that are more or less fixed: your rent, your utility bills, etc.  You have other expenses that are not exactly fixed, but are still necessary: groceries, fuel for your car, etc.  You also have longer-range expenses, such as insurance premiums that you only pay once or twice a year, but need to be accounted for.  List all of these expenses, and figure out how much that comes to each month.  What you have left over is available to you for other things. Next, you need to figure out how fast you want to save for this house, and balance that with the other things you might want to spend money on, such as entertainment.  If you start from $0 and want to save $10k, you could do it by saving $100 a month: in a little over 8 years, you'll have your $10k.  If you can increase this to $300 a month, you'll be there in less than 3 years. Now that you have a plan and everything is accounted for, very little willpower is needed.  You don't need to feel guilty every time you buy coffee; if the money is there in your coffee/snacks budget, go for it.  If you've got extra money for the month in your entertainment budget, take a date to the movies.  Your budget allows you to spend on those things, because you have a plan in place, and are not in danger of spending your rent money or your home savings. This can all be done on paper, in Excel, or even by placing cash in different envelopes.  However, it is easier to use budgeting software, such as YNAB, Mvelopes, or EveryDollar." There was a book written by Harry Dent in the early 90's that talked about the approaching demographic problem. The simple version of his theory is that people spend the most money between 45-49, after which people begin to become a drain on the economy as they utilize government benefits and begin draining retirement plans.   Boomers are moving out of this range and there is no group substantially large enough to follow them, according to him, until the mid 2020s when the Echo Boomers come through.   While he had some things way off and, u fortunately, seems to be overcompensating as of late and only hawking his newsletters, he had some great points in his first book.   To me, you can't fudge those numbers and what he said makes a lot of sense. That seems to be very similar to this article. "It's not quite as bad as the comments indicate. Form 1040ES has been available since January (and IME has been similarly for all past years). It mostly uses the prior year (currently 2016) as the basis, but it does have the updated (2017) figures for items that are automatically adjusted for inflation: bracket points (and thus filing threshhold), standard deductions, Social Security cap, and maybe another one or two I missed.  The forms making up the actual return cannot be prepared very far in advance because, as commented, Congress frequently makes changes to tax law well after the year begins, and in some cases right up to Dec. 31. The IRS must start preparing forms and pubs -- and equally important, setting the specifications for software providers like Intuit (TurboTax) and H&RBlock -- several months ahead in order to not seriously delay filing season, and with it refunds, which nearly everyone in the country considers (at least publicly) to be worse than World War Three and the destruction of the Earth by rogue asteroids. I have 1040 series from the last 4 years still on my computer, and the download dates mostly range from late September to mid January. Although one outlier shows the range of possibility: 2013 form 1040 and Schedule A were tweaked in April 2014 because Congress passed a law allowing charitable contributions for Typhoon Haiyan to be deducted in the prior year. Substantive, but relatively minor, changes happen every year, including many that keep recurring like the special (pre-AGI) teacher supplies deduction (""will they or won't they?""), section 179 expensing (changes slightly almost every year), and formerly the IRA-direct-to-charity option (finally made permanent last year).  As commented, the current Congress and President were elected on a platform with tax reform as an important element, and they are talking even more intensely than before about doing it, although whether they will actually do anything this year is still uncertain. However, if major reform is done it will almost certainly apply to future years only, and likely only start after a lag of some months to a year. They know it causes chaos for businesses and households alike to upend without advance warning the assumptions built in to current budgets and plans -- and IME as a political matter something that is enacted now and effective fairly soon but not now is just as good (but I think that part is offtopic)." "I see you have posted other questions regarding household budgets.  This is a huge first step.  Once you see what is coming in, then list everything that goes out regularly...and then try to break down what is leftover into spending, household maintenance, gifts, haircuts, whatever...it becomes very obvious if you have x to spend and you spend 3x. I budget a certain amount of discretionary money for both my husband and myself to spend each month.  All of our basic expenses are covered under other categories, but I found out long ago that we each need some money to blow on Starbucks, DVD's, books, etc without having to defend or explain it.  If we spend too much, it digs into the next month's amount, or if we are careful, we get to carry it over. I can impulse shop guilt free because it's budgeted in. Long story short, if you set up a budget and have an amount budgeted for most reasonable expenses, and see what is left over...it becomes harder to ""unwittingly"" overspend.  When you are paying attention to your money, and start looking carefully at how you are spending it, you'll notice." Make a deal with yourself. You can buy the things that you want, but only after you've read three books on behavioral economics. You should probably start first with Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational, which will help you understand why the discount makes you covet the products even more than you would without it. Then find and read two more high-quality books from the same genre.  If you gain self-awareness from this, you will begin to understand why you are conflicted (hint: you really don't want the things you think you do). And you probably won't purchase anything in spite of the fact that you kept the first part of the bargain. The $1300 turns into $2817/mo over a year. You've identified just over $1700 in expenses, but clearly missed a lot. Use what you wish, Mint, a spreadsheet, a notebook, I don't care. Just track every penny for a time. My property tax is due quarterly, so 3 months is minimum. It takes a year to get a full view of the items that are seasonal. Unless of course, the winter is mild (and your plowing expenses are low) or the summer is rainy (and the water bill for the grass is low.)  Even the above doesn't capture the things that are less regular. The house painting, the heater repair, etc.  The exercise itself is a great first step. As others stated $280 for cable/phone? Once you add the missing $900/mo, we'll know more.  What's really important is that you look at 100% of where the money goes and decide what the priorities are. No one's judging you, we chose the bigger house over eating out and expensive vacations. It's about knowing and understanding your choices. Plan all your needs and put priority based on need & urgency. New Habit: Rethink. Rethink. Rethink. whenever your going to buy something. rethink before going to buy. remember what is your priority one than that and will this affect on your plans. if that affect, than dont buy. Lets leave it to that habit, that will take care of your budget yar.............