How would you handle a bonus at work?

[disneysteve]

Let's say you don't typically get a year-end bonus or only get a very modest one and this year, the boss hands you a bonus about equal to your regular bi-weekly paycheck, so basically an extra two weeks worth of pay. What would you do with it?

[Coronet]

This scenario basically happened to me this year. It's my first year working out of college and I received a pro-rated bonus of about 2 weeks worth of work (after the 40% tax get taken out that is).

I plan on putting this toward my 6-month safety fund. I am up to 3 months safety and I want to boost it to 6 months. So all in savings!

[wincrasher]

Since it is kind of "found money", I'd treat it as such. Buy yourself something you really wanted or treat the family to a trip or something.

Since your regular savings and budgeting is on track, you can splurge.

Since an unexpected bonus is to show appreciation, you should enjoy the money and feel appreciated.

[Justlev]

Save Most, spend some

I usually save pretty much all of my bonus, if I get one. My first bonus I've paid off a private student loan. I've also paid off a car (still have the car years later). However, I would take a couple hundred dollars and buy something that you really want. Or put it in a vacation fund. Reward yourself for hard work.

[EconoMutt]

I'd go out for a nice meal and then take the rest and put it in a sinking fund for car replacement.

[happygirl]

This scenario basically happened to me this year. It's my first year working out of college and I received a pro-rated bonus of about 2 weeks worth of work (after the 40% tax get taken out that is).

I plan on putting this toward my 6-month safety fund. I am up to 3 months safety and I want to boost it to 6 months. So all in savings!

I agree with this idea. If I had debt other than my mortgage, it would go toward debt. If my emergency fund wasn't fully funded, it would go toward that. If you can afford to splurge it on something fun though, that's nice too.

[MonkeyMama]

It would never happen, but this year I'd put it to cash savings (lots of medical bills). Any other time, I'd put it to my mortgage (assuming retirement was maxed out).

I usually get $250 every Christmas, and use it towards boss's gift, any work clothing I may need, and the rest to charity.

I suppose I'd consider giving some to charity since that seems to be where the bulk of my bonus usually goes.

[disneysteve]

We'll probably do some practical and some splurge. We need a new freezer in the basement so we'll probably buy that. We also just found out we have to upgrade our cable plan (well, we don't have to but because of the switch over to digital we lost a bunch of channels that we used to have and enjoy watching so we want to get them back) so this will cover that for a while.

As for the splurge, my wife and I were already planning a trip in February when our daughter will be out of town for a few days. We can use the bonus toward that, have a couple of nicer meals, etc.

[elessar78]

My wife got hers earlier this year. Token amount, a couple of hundred... so we had some weddings coming up at that point so we just hung onto it and spent it on wedding gifts and travel expenses.

[littleroc02us]

That would be awesome if that happened to me. What my wife and I do is we treat all extra money as money that can go towards retirement or something that we are saving for that is large. In fact we get 26 paychecks a year, but budget for 24 and use the extra 2 to help complete our Roth IRA's.

[Slug]

A small one time bonus to our "Play" accounts (less than 10% of total). The rest goes to the emergency fund.

[feh]

I'd treat it like regular income; it would be saved.

Coincidentally, this may happen to me this year. My company surpassed our budgeted revenue this year, and some of that overage will be given to the employees. I don't know what dollar amount that will come to.

[jpg7n16]

Same thing we do every night Pinky, try to take over the world!
-Brain

Bonus comes in: this is income, tithe 10%, remaining is left in my checking account

Okay, so I only need X in checking (for expenses, Christmas gifts, $100 of celebrate-bonus-money, etc.), and I only need Y in EF; so... I have Z too much in cash.

Transfer majority/all of Z into Fidelity account. Buy some more PG stock.

[yugugelizer]

I would split it between paying debt, funding EF, retirement savings, and splurge items.

[DebbieL]

At my previous job I got pretty generous Christmas bonuses (say 10% of yearly wage). It was always at Christmas time, so I'd usually spend a portion on gifts, spend a portion on charity (usually buy the presents for the needy kids), and the rest would be either saved, or used for something I needed.

I miss those old Christmas bonuses. They were such fun! My favourite part of all was buying the presents from the "wish" tree for local needy kids. I usually picked the older kids, since I figured most people want to get presents for the little ones. Teens need the love too!