How You Can Set a Betting Budget, and Why You Should

Establishing a betting budget is one of the best ways to avoid betting impulsively and chasing losses. They’re also straightforward to set up: decide what you can afford to lose, stick to that amount and track what you expend.

You maintain control by creating boundaries, and in doing so keep betting as a form of entertainment instead of letting it become a problem.

This article explains how to set a budget yourself, how to stick to it and how they can help you keep on top of gambling responsibly.

Why betting budgets are important

No matter the sport or outcome you’re eyeing up, any type of betting involves risk, and there’s never a guarantee of winning.

By creating a betting budget, you’re recognising that reality and putting measures in place to ensure no loss affects your finances beyond what you decide is acceptable.

Betting budgets prevent emotional decisions by removing the desire to bet bigger in an effort to recover losses. You’ve decided already what you are willing to lose. Once that’s gone, you know it’s time to stop.

Budgets can help keep betting fun. Stress can come from spending money meant for rent, bills and food on betting instead. With a budget, you are ring-fencing disposable income, so real-world consequences from a loss are minimised.

They can help make you disciplined. Self-control is needed when sticking to limits, and that self-control can carry over into how you approach your bets. When working inside the constraints you’ve set up, you’re less likely to place thoughtless wagers.

Getting started

First, make sure all essential expenses are covered – things like rent, bills, food, transport and savings must be prioritised and accounted for. What’s left is discretionary spending.

From that amount, decide what you’re comfortable allocating to betting. The number depends on your circumstances – for some, it may be £10 a week; for others, it may be £100 a month. Regardless, the principle stays the same: only bet what you can afford to lose.

Set a timeframe. Weekly budgets suit most people as they’re short enough to track but long enough for multiple bets. For those who bet less often, monthly budgets can work. Choose the option that best fits your habits.

Keep it fixed. A budget should not fluctuate depending on whether you’re winning or losing. A £50 weekly budget should stay that way no matter the results. A winning bet should not justify increasing the budget, nor should losing mean adding more to even things out.

Separate betting funds from everything else. Whether it’s setting aside real money or using a different bank account, some people find it helpful to physically separate their betting budget. It establishes a clear and tangible line between funds meant for betting and funds meant for other purposes.

How to stick to your budget

Setting a budget is the easy part. Sticking to it requires discipline. Here’s what you can do to avoid overspending.

Use spend limits. Most betting platforms, including Bally Bet, let you set spend limits. These stop you from adding more funds than your budget allows within a certain time period, so you remain in control of your money.

Track your spending. Keep a record of every bet you place. That’s the date, stake, odds and outcome. This creates accountability and makes how much you’re spending harder to ignore. At Bally Bet, you can access your play history through your account, making tracking automatic.

Stop when you hit your limit. As soon as you’ve spent your budget, you’re done until the next period. This is non-negotiable. Chasing losses turns what entertainment should be into a problem. With account time-outs, you can block access to your account for a certain time, helping prevent the desire to bet beyond your limit.

Avoid chasing losses with a betting budget

Chasing losses is when you increase your wager amount or spend more than planned in an attempt to recover what you’ve lost. And it’s the most common way to undo a betting budget.

Each bet is independent – from the ones before it and the ones that may come after it. That’s why chasing losses doesn’t work: betting more, or betting bigger, doesn’t improve your chances of winning. It just increases how much you can lose.

If you’ve hit your budget and lost, accept it and walk away. The next budget period may be a fresh start, but only if you don’t create a deep hole by trying to recover losses now.

Consider single bets

Bet builders and accumulators are popular because there’s a chance for big returns on small stakes. But they’re also high-risk, and one wrong selection causes the whole bet to lose.

Single bets, however, are lower risk. With them, you’re backing one outcome and one outcome alone. That makes budget management much more straightforward, as you aren’t relying on multiple events with varying likelihoods aligning.

Sticking to single bets doesn't guarantee wins, but it can reduce the volatility of other bets that can quickly drain a budget.

We cover the ins and outs of single bets – and why they're a solid foundation for disciplined betting – in our What Is a Single Bet? article.

Betting units and how they can work with your budget

To help maintain discipline when betting, you can standardise your stake sizes so they become what’s known as a ‘unit’. Rather than playing with random amounts, you define a unit as a fixed percentage of your budget and play with multiples of it.

So, if you had a monthly budget of £100 and a unit value of 1-2%, one unit would be £1-2.

Taking this approach can offer more consistency than placing £5 on one match and £20 on another, depending on how confident you are. Confidence can be misleading, and varying stakes can lead to bigger losses when instincts are wrong.

With units, you can also protect your budget during a bad run of results. If you lose five bets in a row with one unit each, you lose 5-10% of your budget. That’s arguably more manageable than if those bets were placed with varying stakes.

Unit betting is a great addition to fixed budgets and bet tracking. It’s not a system that guarantees success, but rather a way to further enforce disciplined betting.

How our Responsible Gambling tools can help

While betting budgets can help you adopt a discipline approach to betting, it’s difficult to maintain perspective if you’re doing it continuously. That’s why taking time away from it helps you reset and assess whether you’re enjoying it or if it’s becoming a chore.

At Bally Bet, we have a range of tools designed so you can stay in control:

• Spend limits let you cap how much you add to your account within a certain timeframe

• Session reminders let you know how long you’ve been playing, while session limits log you out of your account after a certain amount of time

• Account cool-offs let you take a break from your account for up to 6 weeks, and account self-exclusion closes your account for up to 5 years

Final thoughts on betting budgets

Betting budgets are simple. You decide what you’re comfortable losing, set a limit based on that and stick to it. You can use the tools we have on offer to further enforce that limit, whether by tracking your bets or taking breaks when needed.

Betting can work as a form of entertainment as long as it’s kept within your boundaries. If you exceed those boundaries, it can become a problem.

If you're struggling to maintain control, step back and reassess. The tools and support are there. Use them.

In the mood for more knowledge? Head on over to our Bally Bet Sports & Casino blog and find a range of insightful guides and explainers from our team of writers.

All offers mentioned correct at the time of writing but may be subject to change.