What is your monthly hot rod $ budget?

I can laugh about it five years later.

 

Exactly. Too much but not enough.

 

Why?
What ya got?

 

My regular paycheck always went for household stuff ,anything extra was mine.
After 41 years doing this stuff I have three hot rods,a garage full of tools,and $27 grand in the hot rod account.
My wife always liked me being in the garage a lot more than at the bar.

 

I usually figure what my monthly income is ($2000-$3000) subtract car payment($0), food/beer ($300), house payment($0), leaving me with my parts/car project budget ($2000-$3000) No matter how hard I budget myself, I'm always in the negative no matter what! Bad math maybe...........

 

If I am lucky... $30-$50 per month.... IF I AM LUCKY!

 

I used to ***he 10% to my cars. Now it is whatever s****s are left after paying all the essentials.

 

wow, i don't know how some of you lo buck guys manage!

me, if i had to guess, it'd probably be around $1000 a month. that's not including the $300 i pay for a decent shop to work in.

but really the point of my post isn't to say how much i spend, but rather how i get that much to spend.

no car payments, my old cars are my daily drivers. so between me and my girlfriend, you can figure half of that grand comes from the non existant car payments. there's been times in my life when that thousand dollars would have been 90% car payments, never again. insurance is cheap on old cars too, at least when you have a whole fleet of ****boxes, the nicer cars cost more. registration also, i laugh at people who ***** cause they have to pay $300 a year or more to register their newer cars. also, no credit cards whatsoever. if i don't have cash for it, i don't buy it. i'm a renter, i don't care to own a home in the inflated real estate market in my town, so i have a fixed housing outlay, if something breaks, it ain't my problem. and last but certainly not least, is my very understanding girlfriend. she has cheap hobbies. as long as there is money when she asks for it, all is good.(i'm no control freak, she's bipolar and not good with money so...) she would rather have new chrome for her car than a diamond ring. oh, and no offspring helps a lot too!

 

When I rented an apartment, I had money to piss away on my cars. Since we bought a killer house with all the niceties my cars haven't been quite as big a priority. If I have the choice of swimming in my pool or sweating in the garage, I will be in the pool even though the satellite big screen in the garage is nice, the pool is more inviting during the summer. Come fall, we are back to turning wrenches pretty much every evening.

 

Well, my project 49 Caddy has a $5000.00 limit on it.
That will be engine and body.
Am I the only one that thinks a $10,000 rat rod is kinda silly?

 

Depends on what's broken. I've probably spent close to 8k in 3 years on a car that cost 3k to begin with...

 

Including my shop?? At minimum, $1500 a month. I've got a pretty good day job, have no bills except a mortgage and utilities. More importantly however, I don't permit my wife to have credit cards or to make more bills. SHE decided she wanted separate accounts...mine's always over $5k with $20k cash on the side and hers is always $0 balance and whining why she can't afford anything.

 

Everything I make minus 10% to live on.

 

Looks like IM not the only one trying to s****e by. $20-$100 a month. Tax return is when I buy a couple of big items for my build or replinish my paint supplies.
Babies and Medical bills keep me tapped. Hopefully thing will look up.

 

I spend about $150 to 300 a month but it's getting pretty tight with the new baby and my wife at home. I have a bunch of parts that I need to put up on the cl***ifieds or ebay to keep the spare income coming in. It's nice to see other guys in the same boat.

-Rich

 

500$ on average unless its a tight month, or more if its a good month.

 

My paychecks go into the general household account and our joint savings. We typically try to save about 20% or more. The car money is what I make doing professional surveys, consulting,etc. which is probably 2K a year. The money is there,fortunately if I have a big demand, but the hotrod's just fun. Right now I am short on time, and know-how, more than I am short on funds.

 

No Budget ...

I just work along and try to buy the stuff I need. Sometimes it is $1,000 to $1,500 and some months almost nothing. I have most of the 32 Ford parts and pieces I need ... from over the years ... and I am retired ... with a retirement check monthly.

I work at the real estate game a little ... and it funds my car habit. When it is good ... it is REAL GOOD ... ... May only score two or three times a year but when you do ... the score is MAJOR

 

Wow. Yeah, I'm in around the maybe $50 range on average. I'm patient. I use what I have. Salvage stuff...

 

Used to be $300/mo for my hobbies and $300/mo for hers. Then the kids came. Then the whopper mortgage came. Now the budget is about $5/mo to support the HAMB Alliance and that's all. In fact I've been slowly selling off spare parts that I bought in fatter times.

 

I too am self employed. The last two years have been pretty rough. My hot rod is my summer driver, fortunately, I work out of my garage at home, so I don't have a lot of driving I have to do. My budget is what ever is left after all the bills are paid, which hasn't been a lot lately. The important things are being taken care of, the hot rod is still a toy. Not having any money sure takes the fun out of playing with it. Fortunately my wife is as into it as I am, so there is never any thought of getting rid of the toy. Gene

 

Wow. I can't believe how much some people get to spend on their cars. I don't feel so bad about not making any progress on my car anymore. It turns out you need to have money.

 

Currently on my project If I average it all out I think it is somewhere between $0.34-$0.43, maybe I just need to go build a model for myself and sell the car.

 

I got about $6.37 in my bank account...so that's my budget.

 

Budget?