Calculating Your Gaming Budget

How much should you spend on gambling? Well that’s a big question, isn’t it. The short answer is no more than you can afford. But that’s not very specific. How do you work out what amount suits your budget?

We’re going to help you do just that, with a no-nonsense guide to working out your gambling budget. Then you can answer that question of how much should you spend on gambling for yourself.

How much should you spend on gambling?

Well here are the basics of how much should you spend on gambling. You should never, ever get yourself into debt when you’re gambling. There’s never a good reason to do it. You should only gambling with money you have in your account and you are comfortable losing. Because, as we all know, there’s no such thing as a sure thing in gambling.

And you also need to make sure that you can afford what you spend on gambling, both online and offline. That means the amount you spend doesn’t have a negative impact on your life. You can still comfortably pay your mortgage, rent and all other expenses.

Take an honest look at how much you spend right now

Not sure how much you currently spend? First off, go to your online gambling accounts and take a look at your account activity. Note down your deposit history, withdrawal history and overall balance. Then ask yourself how you usually gambling offline. If it’s via your bank account, take a look at your transaction history there. Or if it’s via cash, remember to keep betting slips and receipts so you can monitor how much you spend.

Once you add up all your online deposits (minus withdrawals) and offline bets, you’ll get a picture of how much gambling costs you. Whether it’s more or less than you thought, you should make a plan for how much you spend on gambling in the future.

Working out your gambling budget

Now it’s time to think about all your non-gambling ingoings and outgoings and work out how much money you can afford to spend on gambling on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis.

Some online gambling sites have budget calculators. But in our experience, they aren’t that comprehensive. So we’d recommend a DIY method.

First up, add up all your income. It’s probably easiest to do this per month. That’s any money you receive on a regular basis. That can include:

• Wages after tax and deductions
• Pension
• State benefits
• Other income (rental income, investments, etc.)

Then deduct any essential living expenses, which could include:

• Rent/mortgage
• Utility bills (electricity, heat, phone, TV, internet, etc.)
• Loans or credit card repayments
• Transport costs (fuel, public transport tickets)
• Childcare costs
• Groceries

And also deduct any non-essential living expenses, such as:

• Takeaways, coffees and meals out
• Entertainment (tickets to gigs, the cinema)
• Presents for friends and family
• Clothes for yourself or your family
• Money spent on hobbies (record collecting, arts materials, books, etc.)
• Gym membership

Then have a think about savings goals. If you’re thinking about doing work on your home or want to take a holiday, pick a target date and make sure you save enough every month to cover your future purchases. So make sure you deduct:

• Regular savings

If you’re unsure about how you spend on any of those things, comb through your online bank statements for the last few months and come up with an average from that.

So once you’ve added up all your income and deducted all your essential, non-essential and savings items, you’re left with an amount of money that you could gamble.

When you see that figure, it’s not necessarily the amount of money you should gamble. Maybe you could use that in a different way to reach your savings goals earlier? But this is what you could lose without impacting on your current quality of life.

Sticking to your budget

Once you’ve decided how much you should spend on gambling, the next thing you need to do is stick to it.

A lot of online gambling sites have deposit limit tools. So once you’ve decided how much you want to spend on your online gambling, we’d recommending making sure you have that as a limit set on your account. Of course, if you gamble on several sites or gamble offline, you should take all that into account when you’re setting your limits.

When it comes to offline gambling, our advice is to withdraw only the amount of money you’ve budgeted for your gambling session. Then spend only that money on your bets.

Gambling problem resources

Of course, if you have or suspect you have a gambling problem, you should not spend any money at all on gambling. The answer to the question, “How much should you spend on gambling?” should always be nothing at all. You need to stop straight away and get help so you can stay away from gambling for good.

There are lots of free resources to help you stop gambling and address your problem head-on. For those based in the UK, take a look at the Be Gamble Aware website or call 0808 8020 133. If you’re based in another country, you can find international gambling help resources here.