How many months of salary do you consider affordable ?

I pay for watches with "funny money", anything from interest income, dividends, or other forms of investments. I do not touch my salary, neither have I spent any bonuses on them. But I also only own affordable watches. (< $1000)

I make it a point to never spend more than a Daytona's worth of money on watches in a single month...

The (very) rough rule-of-thumb I use is that, for most people, about 1/8 salary figure is disposable income; that is, money not spent on bills, food, travel, etc.  So, for somene earning £24K a year (about what the minimum UK wage is), they may have about £250 per month in disposable income; for someone earning £100,000 a year, it's about £1000.

It's probably unlikely that any person could (or would) put all that money into watches.

So, for someone looking for, say, a Tudor Black Bay 58, the person on minimum income would have to save - to the exclusion of everything else - for about a year to afford it.  I think most reasonable people would consider this achievable as a long-term goal (say, over several years), but hardly affordable.  For the person with £1000/month disposable income, the BB58 becomes a much shorter-term target; and likely considered much more affordable as a result.
 

That's pretty good, I wish I could save 1/8 of my salary every month haha

If you've got children you can divide your disposable income by N + 1, where N is the number of kids :-D

It's funny, but I would say for me that I don't budget at all for watches.  That is, EVERYTHING was totally unaffordable to me throughout the entirety of my life until very recently.  Something could cost the equivalent of 1 man-hour of work or 3 months of salary, and if it weren't toilet paper or milk, I wouldn't / couldn't buy it.  

Only now that I'm older and have savings and "funny money" that I buy ridiculous stuff.  

I also realize that that's no way to live.  If I could give advice to my younger self, it would be:  "Dude, it's okay.  You can buy Charmin.  Even though the Marathon toilet paper costs 1/10th what the Charmin does, it'll scratch up your anus so bad you won't be able to sit for the next week."

A huge factor to take into account is whether you chip in for your retirement automatically. That alleviates a headache if you do.

I do my best to be reasonable with it by calculating whether I could buy it again within a year  Besides from that, I don't think about the sum that much, especially if you purchase watches from 'established' brands like Vacheron, Rolex, JLC, etc, as they retain their value as a whole.

3 weeks salary, which is around 5.75%

It's interesting to see all you guys' approach to the problem, I personally always think in hours worked, everytime I buy anything I'm always thinking "I had to work X hours to afford that", and then decide if it was worth it or not

Very interesting question. I think your definition of half a month of salary being affordable does make sense. However, I feel that affordable tends to get equated to cheap. Say a random Joe earns 100k a year, his half month salary after tax would be give or take 3000. If he chip in a bid more, he can buy a Tudor BB 58 which I don't think will be considered as an affordable watch even by his standards. 

Well you say that but I know a lot of people wearing gmt master and Royal oaks as beater watches, as in, actually beating them, because, and I quote "nah that's just my cheap watch" (By a lot I mean like 3 or 4) 

That is very well thought out, at this point in my life I can't even spare enough to invest but it's definitely something that is on the wait-list for when I start earning money more regularly, and I agree, learning is fun, but I'd like the chance to briefly experience some of them someday, just a tryout for a day for example

First off that Daytona is beautiful! I'm more partial to the black over the white SS, so kudos to you. Anyhow, my general rule is to take money from my bonuses. Salary is for living expenses, investments, general life stuff. Bonuses are used for whatever I want them to be for. I also will maximize the gamification of Credit Cards so that I can get perks (SkyMiles for instance), so I'll buy on the card get the points and then pay off the balance. Win Win for me. 

Like @Omeganut , I too, used to not have a budget but would go out and buy. I'm also a bit older and shall I say wiser, and make more money than I did when I was younger. Time is the great equalizer...or so they say.

Ah thanks, it's not mine, it's owned by the father of one of my drivers, he bought it new at retail amazingly. It's interesting to see how different all you guys' with jobs approach is. Because I don't always get a salary at the end of the month being freelance I don't have that train of thought with the monthly paycheck and bonuses. I suppose it makes sense that less freedom also means less financial safety. I'm having a lot of fun getting those insight into your thought processes. I've been told I'm very mature for my age but I only started earning significant sums of money last year, and broke my hand 2 months ago so all the money I had saved disappeared when I wasn't able to work, gotta get back to it slowly but surely. 

You know the entrepreneur and W2 mentality are very different and both have rewards from my view. A buddy of mine is a realtor and is self employed for the first time and he's struggling with it as he's always had a W2 type job. I think certain people are wired for it and others not so much. I've tried my hand at entrepreneurship and found that I'm more a of a Corporate guy (W2). That works for me. 

I think you'll do great as it sounds like you have a bright future ahead of you!🍻

Haha thank you, only time will tell whether I succeed or not. I worked a W2 job as you call it before and it was fine, but in my current field it's very difficult to find those kinds of jobs  people are usually called on a need-to basis, and paid per race. But so far the flexibility it offers is great, although the finances are just as flexible and that's not so great.