"Discretionary items" refers to things that are not necessary or essential, but rather optional or based on personal choice. It includes things like luxury goods, entertainment expenses, vacations, and non-essential purchases.
Full definition
To overcome this challenge, retailers must make every effort to drive impulse purchases
of discretionary items.
In my view, parents should pay for necessary things such as bus fare and lunches, and the allowance is for
more discretionary items.
First, go through all the
major discretionary items on which you spend money and order them in terms of expense and importance.
Making a career change may require cuts to spending,
especially discretionary items (like travel, furniture and entertainment) until you have established your new career.
For each day of controlled feeding, the subjects recorded their intake
of discretionary items (beverages and salt).
The consumer's unwavering demand for necessities drove shopping center REITs into positive territory while miserly purchases of
discretionary items such as apparel cut into earnings among mall REITs during the first quarter...
In the Twin Cities, consumers» willingness to spend more on
discretionary items like clothing, entertainment and food is helping landlords avoid large concessions, says Tricia Pitchford, senior real estate associate at United Properties in Bloomington, Minn. «We realize the market is a little bit quieter,» she says.
If we were forced to pay much higher interest rates to borrow, that number could easily rise to $ 1 trillion or more, which would «crowd out» spending on defense, entitlement programs, and so -
called discretionary items (government agencies, schools, infrastructure projects, NASA, etc).
Where the respondent's income comprises a base salary and discretionary bonus, the award can be equivalently divided, with needs of strict necessity met from base salary and
additional discretionary items met from the bonus on a capped percentage basis.
A surprise fall in retail sales in November due to a drop in spending on
discretionary items does not necessarily mean an interest rate cut in February, economists say.
Charging discretionary items such as electronics, video games, and computers can add up debt quickly, if you can't pay them in full each month.
Determining how much to spend on
discretionary items requires making decisions, such as how much to shell out for cellphone coverage and whether to eat out or cook at home.
This online tool allows you to enter 50 different expenses in a variety of categories ranging from household expenses to medical costs to expenditures
for discretionary items like travel, entertainment, hobbies and charitable contributions.
Factors affecting the level of spending for such
discretionary items include general economic conditions and other factors such as consumer confidence in future economic conditions, fears of recession, the availability of consumer credit, levels of unemployment, tax rates and the cost of consumer credit.
So pet stores rely on toys, treats, accessories, furniture and the many
other discretionary items on the market as a way boost their stores» overall income.
Moylan J made it clear that the wife in AR was entitled to have sufficient resources to enable her to spend on
additional discretionary items, which would vary from year to year and which were not reflected in her budget.
Pricey gas hikes the cost of getting to and from a weekend place, of course, while also diminishing cash on hand for
discretionary items such as cottages.
For the Big Sky Country retailer, adjusting meant redirecting the stores focus away from
more discretionary items and toward commodities like food.
Dollars saved at the pump are being directed to personal savings or on non-retail activities, such as holidays, instead
of discretionary items.
Without clear guidelines forward, it's far too easy to overspend
on discretionary items as well as miss opportunities for wealth creation.
Then they doubled that number, following the 50-30-20 budgeting rule of 50 percent for necessities, 30 percent
for discretionary items and 20 percent for savings.
Millennials — Americans born in the 1980s and 1990s, also referred to as Generation Y — will spend $ 69 billion on
discretionary items this year alone, according to data from a recent Harris Interactive study.
If they're skating on the edge already, higher rates could force them to seriously curtail their spending on
discretionary items, which could send the economy into a tailspin.
Through conversations, we decided that $ 20,000 or more of this would go for
discretionary items; an amount they realized would decline over time and did not reasonably believe they needed to fund beyond 12 to 15 years.
While hospital - grade pumps should still be available to customers with a documented clinical «need» for them — such as an infant in the NICU — the idea that a breast pump is
a discretionary item for new mothers, and that «access» to medical equipment is something an insurance company can toggle up or down to suit its bottom line, is dangerous.
A dietary pattern containing fish, meat, chicken, and fruit and some whole grains is associated with reduced likelihood for preterm delivery, whereas a dietary pattern mainly consisting of
discretionary items, such as takeaway foods, potato chips, refined grains, and added sugar, is associated with preterm delivery and shorter birth length.
You may be better off simply investing your retirement savings in a mix of stock and bond funds that makes sense given your risk tolerance and then withdrawing funds as needed to pay for any basic expenses not covered by Social Security as well as
any discretionary items and unanticipated costs that might pop up.
Write down every charge you made or check you wrote last year for
discretionary items — things you didn't need to purchase — and total that amount.
What are some other examples of
discretionary items that perhaps would be areas where I could cut back in?
If that means waiting to buy
a discretionary item, so be it.
Now that these consequences are gone (and we are no longer building this equity each month), it is significantly more tempting to spend what used to be our monthly mortgage payment on more
discretionary items (vacations, furniture, etc.).