Let’s start at the start before you work out your gambling budget, shall we? A gambling budget is the maximum amount you’re willing to spend in a particular timeframe on gambling. It should include all types of gambling (from sports bets to casino to poker) and apply to both online and offline gambling.

Everyone knows that winning isn’t guaranteed in the world of gambling. So when you work out your gambling budget, it should only include money that you’re willing to lose 100%.

But you might win. We’d recommend not increasing your gambling budget to include wins. Instead, withdraw your winnings when they reach a certain amount and put them into savings or use them to treat yourself to something unrelated to gambling.

Yes, there are. If you gamble online, most good sites offer deposit limit tools.

That means that you can set a limit on the amount of money you can deposit into your account during a week or a month.

It removes the possiblity to increase your budget on a whim, which is great.

Obviously, it only covers the one site. So if you gamble in multiple places online or offline, you’ll have to stick to your budgets there yourself.

It’s pretty simple to work out your gambling budget. First off, you add up all your expenses (including both vital living expenses like bills, rent, groceries, childcare), the money you want to save and the money you want to spend on fun stuff. Then take that figure away from your total income.

Then you’re left with the money you could spend on gambling without it majorly affecting your life. You don’t need to have all of that as your gambling budget. Perhaps you want to up your savings a little. But this is a rough guideline as to what your budget could be.

There are online tools at various responsible gambling websites that can help you work out your gambling budget, including this one. This one even breaks down the percentage of your income you spend on each thing, including your current gambling spend.

These calculators can be handy to get a rough idea of what you should aim for, but remember to really rack your brains on how much you actually spend on all the different parts of your life.