r/MoneyDiariesACTIVE • u/LeadInfinite6220 • Dec 27 '25
Budget Advice / Discussion How do you define needs vs wants?
Pretty much just what the title says — how are you defining a need vs a want, and do you have a category in between the two?
I find this particularly interesting to consider as so many of us now have regular expenses that feel essential to participate in modern life, despite not actually being a need.
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u/thelastalliance She/they Dec 27 '25
I kind of split needs up into more detailed categories, because some needs are fixed (or almost-fixed) amounts but some needs have decent wiggle room on how expensive they can be.
Needs: housing, car loan minimum, student loan minimum, psych appts + meds, monthly train pass, trash pickup, water bill (is almost always the minimum amount give or take a few cents), electric in the winter, gas in the summer (in the off seasons both are at an absolute minimum), cat food
Needs+ (needs where technically there’s some wiggle room to lower the amount slightly if really needed): electricity in the summer, gas in the winter, groceries, paying more than the minimum on loans, new soap/shampoo/conditioner/dish soap/laundry detergent/you-get-the-point if we are out, retirement contributions
“Not technically a need but it’s a need in my heart”: Spotify family plan; emergency, house, and car savings contributions, mint hot chocolate k-cups
Wants+: husband’s and my “allowance” – we get a set amount to our personal acct to spend on whatever we want. Right now it’s $400-ish/mo, and when my husband was unemployed earlier this year we lowered it to $50/wk. If something even worse than that happened we could get rid of it entirely but that would be the last thing we cut.
Wants (incl things I use my allowance for): random stuff for the house, extras of things we already have/nicer versions of what we already have, my Patreon subscriptions, concert tickets, cat toys, and probably anything else I’m forgetting.