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signalnoise posted:Reality check: I have spent over 200 dollars on gaming poo poo in the past week. Ok. Would you say you have a problem? If you can say to yourself "I spend too much on gaming poo poo, I think I could be happy spending substantially less", you can at least get started on this. I understand that you're trying to be realistic when you say this will take years. Actually it won't because you'll always spend some money occasionally on stuff you don't need, your "stupid poo poo" fund over a long enough period of time will always be non-zero. So all you need to do is "spend substantially less". It would be helpful if you could explain your current state of mind about games and such- what does buying that stuff do for you emotionally? Are you happy with how much money/time you put in to gaming? Is your wife? There's no wrong answers to those questions, you just need to know the answers. edit: remembered you have a steam backlog Ok here's some ideas on how to spend less on gaming: 1. Un-save your payment details from steam. Make it so that in order to make any purchase, you have to manually re-input the details every time. 2. Don't buy any games this week. Just this one week, just to prove to yourself you can. 3. You won't need to buy any new games, because: 4. You are going to play through again your absolute favorite game. I did this, last month I went back and replayed Half-Life 2 from the beginning on difficult trying to get achievements (normally I hate these) and you know what? It was a loving blast. drat that's a good game. 5. Paint your miniatures. 6. Set a goal for yourself: "I am going to beat opponents with the least-powered army possible". Get creative with only what you already have and see what you can come up with. 7. When you finish your favorite game, go play one of the AAA titles you have in your backlog that you never even installed. I have Bioshock 1&2 and Dead Space 1&2 that I've barely installed. If I ever want a fresh challenge I can play one of them. I bet you have similar games. The key to helping cut down on game purchases is realizing that (barring other factors) you can still spend the same amount of time on gaming, just not money. Good games (which I'm sure you have tons of) have lots of replay value. Take advantage of that. You can play video games as much as you want, and you have this huge selection of them sitting right there! Just click a button, wait for a progress bar, and play them. Uncle Enzo fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Jul 20, 2015 |
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Jul 20, 2015 17:55
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Can you tell us a little bit about the house buying process? If my parents told me to buy a house with a hundred thousand dollars in debt and one of the two potential breadwinners still in school, I would explain to them that I would buy a house after I had paid down my existing bad debt. Was that not an option for some reason? I'm betting it's the common prodding from boomer relatives that "rent is throwing money away" and the true way to build wealth is real estate so get on that before it's too late!
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Jul 20, 2015 18:11
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We were relatively comfortable and even nesting in our basement apartment. One day, seemingly out of nowhere, father in law shows us a house that's for sale in the same neighborhood. It is important for my inlaws that we live close by because they are aging. We didn't get that one, but it put the idea in our heads that there was a chance we could have our own space and our own life. I have never had my own space. After the possibility raised its head I couldn't shake it. Also, we are getting some financial help for agreeing to live nearby. I am presently cancelling an order for Bluetooth lighting for the new house.
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Jul 20, 2015 19:06
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Did you just completely ignore the cost and affordability aspect, or what? If you really wanted your own place, there are people who own houses that will let you rent the house with limited financial risk.
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Jul 20, 2015 21:04
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A house is just another debt commitment, and without a decent deposit you throw a lot of money away on interest. Don't get more debt without improving your financial literacy. Buying a house should be a calculated decision with consideration for the risks of home ownership.
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Jul 20, 2015 21:12
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I don't know if you ever solved the prepaid debit card problem, but I've never had a bank account where I couldn't decline overdraft "protection" on the debit card. It would have just gotten declined instead of overdrafting
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Jul 20, 2015 22:15
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Did you just completely ignore the cost and affordability aspect, or what? Well, at his point the house is purchased, so it sucks that it may not have been fully thought through, but nothing to do about it now (as far as I know).
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Jul 20, 2015 22:37
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Duckman2008 posted:Well, at his point the house is purchased, so it sucks that it may not have been fully thought through, but nothing to do about it now (as far as I know). Yeah badgering them about the house purchase doesn't add much here imo. Better to help them get a handle on their regular spending + stay within their means for furniture and other new homeowner stuff.
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Jul 20, 2015 22:46
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Thanks for that
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Jul 20, 2015 22:51
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While I agree that the house is purchased so you can't do anything about it specifically, what happens if your father in law decides you should have a new car? Or go on a cruise with the rest of the family? How do you plan to avoid being convinced to spend money you don't have?
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Jul 20, 2015 22:54
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:While I agree that the house is purchased so you can't do anything about it specifically, what happens if your father in law decides you should have a new car? Or go on a cruise with the rest of the family? How do you plan to avoid being convinced to spend money you don't have? Tell him to gently caress himself I guess
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Jul 20, 2015 23:20
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signalnoise posted:Tell him to gently caress himself I guess This is quite important to do. So long as you are aware you can't afford it you can use that as an out for everything expensive.
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Jul 20, 2015 23:48
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Devian666 posted:This is quite important to do. So long as you are aware you can't afford it you can use that as an out for everything expensive. Oh, definitely. And I'll say this. I don't regret buying the house one bit. If nothing else, it's in great shape and it appraised at 170k, 10 full more than we paid for it. New double-pane windows, new roof, a gutter system that cost 10k on its own, new A/C. Also, my FIL respects me enough that when I say I can't do something, he won't push it. He's all about me not spending money, and I'm sure he'd be really positive in this thread. He just needs to be told we're being more frugal these days. And if he ever tells me to go on a cruise with him and I say I can't afford it, he'll just pay for it himself. I have to reinforce one thing here. Other people convincing people that I should spend money is not THE problem here. The problem is me spending the money. Moreover, it's me convincing MYSELF that I can afford poo poo. It's my own bad decisions that got me here and I won't be blaming anyone else. When I got my master's, it was ultimately my decision. I filled out the paperwork.
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Jul 21, 2015 00:02
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signalnoise posted:I have to reinforce one thing here. Other people convincing people that I should spend money is not THE problem here. The problem is me spending the money. Moreover, it's me convincing MYSELF that I can afford poo poo. It's my own bad decisions that got me here and I won't be blaming anyone else. When I got my master's, it was ultimately my decision. I filled out the paperwork. Ok that's quite clear. It does come down to habits. You need to try a few techniques to find what will stop you from spending. Get a budget together. If you look at the budget prior to spending you'll know what you can and can't spend. Often the budgets in various BFC threads are not even looked at prior to spending. You probably need to find a way to deal with impulse buying as well. Whatever you spend on is money you could put towards debts and if you buy non-essential stuff now you're paying interest on it instead of reducing interest payments. I'm not sure what will work for you.
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Jul 21, 2015 00:20
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Well, it's a paradigm shift. Between today and yesterday, I had the following series of thoughts- "Hell yeah, bluetooth lights" "If I don't buy those, I can spend half that on a new workbench instead. That'll be the deal" "If I buy some CLR and spend some time I can clean a lovely bench and just use that" So I went from buying something I don't need to wanting something I could really use to just not buying much of anything. It's being happy with what I have and reusing the stuff I have. The problem is going to come two weeks from now when I stop giving a gently caress. I can build up hype for self improvement but staying on course permanently is gonna be tough. We'll see. I'll probably lean on my wife heavily to stop giving in to my stupid requests. Might lead to some fights that are my fault. I dunno. Hopefully I can lose the magnets on my head and the inside of my rear end.
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Jul 21, 2015 00:28
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Something that helped me when I was in ye early days of married budgeting was dividing stuff out to a daily level. People think about things a day at a time. You don't think on Sunday night "I will spend 40-50 hours in the next 5 days at work", you think "I'm working from 8 to 5 for the next five days, and will probably have 3-5 hours of leisure time each day after work". Thinking of big sums a month at a time can be abstract, and that's when the surprises hit you. I divided up my income to a daily rate. I'm salaried, so that's easy to do. Prioritize them in order of "most necessary" to "least necessary" OK, so out of the $150 of gross income today: $24 goes away for taxes $25 goes to rent $18 goes to my car payments + registration/insurance (all of which are easy to estimate) $6 goes to fuel for commute + whatever else $4 goes to my student loan minimum payments $9 goes to to health insurance/HSA $20 goes to food $20 goes to retirement & long term savings $4 for phones and internet ... I only have $20 left after everything else that MUST HAPPEN has been spoken for. (and I still haven't bought soap, laundry detergent, clothing, etc.) So buying another Lord of the Rings LCG core set for $28 to get four more Gandalfs is a whole day and a half's worth of money. If I want to buy a GTX 970 for $340, that's 17 days of money if I'm spending money on literally nothing else besides my baseline expenses listed above during that time period. Puts your income in a better perspective to look at your free cash flow. In the above example, yeah, I earn $55k/year, but I only control ~$7,300 a year. Spending $250 on a Steam sale means I've spent 3% of my annual income. 
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Jul 21, 2015 00:30
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signalnoise posted:The problem is going to come two weeks from now when I stop giving a gently caress. I can build up hype for self improvement but staying on course permanently is gonna be tough. We'll see. There's another way to think about this in that you have a debt emergency. One post from the previous page says you have $12k of credit card debt. That's really bad and the money spent on interest is actually wasted. Perhaps having a focus on eliminating the carried balance on the credit cards and getting to a point where you pay the entire balance each month would keep you focused. Credit cards are also where a number of people have bad spending habits. I'm ignoring the mortgage and student loans as both should be paying down the principal, given that your student loans are on pay as you go. e: when it comes to spending you could be old-fashioned and save the money to buy the things you want (after you've paid off the credit cards). Devian666 fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 00:43
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Devian666 posted:e: when it comes to spending you could be old-fashioned and save the money to buy the things you want (after you've paid off the credit cards). That's what I'm trying to do right now. You have no idea how much I want to buy silicone terrain molds right now. RIGHT. NOW.
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Jul 21, 2015 00:52
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signalnoise posted:It is important for my inlaws that we live close by because they are aging. On second thought, may as well enjoy some money now since it sounds like the plan is to use all of your time and money playing nurse a few years down the road.
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Jul 21, 2015 17:57
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Goddamn if I could get a house for $160k with those features in an area where there were jobs I would buy it in a flash.
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Jul 21, 2015 21:29
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Tamarillo posted:Goddamn if I could get a house for $160k with those features in an area where there were jobs I would buy it in a flash. Come to the fly-over states, the houses are cheap and the jobs are often open because everyone runs for the coasts.
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Jul 21, 2015 21:37
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Tamarillo posted:Goddamn if I could get a house for $160k with those features in an area where there were jobs I would buy it in a flash. 4 bedroom split level with a massive kitchen + closing garage too. Hour commute for me though.
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Jul 21, 2015 21:56
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On the subject of the Steam backlog, I found that my own impulsive Steam purchases ended in a hurry once I started holding myself accountable for all the games I had bought but never played. There was a day when I just went through my entire Steam library and started setting categories on all the games in there. The first category I made was "previously played" for games that I had run through at least once and might want to play again some time. There was another category called "garbage" which was self-explanatory and quickly grew to about a page long, and will probably grow a lot longer once I give my library another pass. Lastly, at the very top of the library list, was formed the "BACKLOG" category -- where games that I thought were genuinely worth playing would be kept close at hand until I was done with them. Every time I get the urge to make an impulse purchase on Steam, I notice that backlog, and notice Far Cry 3, Fallout New Vegas, GTA IV, Skyrim, and Dark Souls squatting in it, amongst other things that I keep meaning to play, sometime. It's surprisingly effective at blunting the urge to plunge for sweet deals and bloat my Steam library ever further.
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Jul 22, 2015 04:15
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Pittsburgh Lambic posted:Every time I get the urge to make an impulse purchase on Steam, I notice that backlog, and notice Far Cry 3, Fallout New Vegas, GTA IV, Skyrim, and Dark Souls squatting in it, amongst other things that I keep meaning to play, sometime. It's surprisingly effective at blunting the urge to plunge for sweet deals and bloat my Steam library ever further. I do the same and I only buy really good deals. Of course most of the games I get are at the two steam sales and a few humble bundles. I spent very little on gaming each year now.
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Jul 22, 2015 04:42
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This is the first time I've bought games on the steam sale and I've only gotten through a couple of them. Most of my game time has been devoted to playing FFV Advance completely free.
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Jul 22, 2015 05:15
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With all the house talk, I am surprised no one has mentioned: You have your house debt listed in the debts sheet, but you do not have your home's estimated value listed in the assets sheet. The same with the paid off cars. I think to get a truly accurate view it's important to look at net worth in the sense of an emergency fire-sale, or at least look at non-liquid assets as assets. I applaud your ability to identify issues and take advice without being defensive. There have been a lot of sarcastic posters so it's refreshing to see someone say "I spend too much on miniatures" in a completely earnest sense. Good luck!
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Jul 23, 2015 03:48
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signalnoise posted:That's what I'm trying to do right now. You have no idea how much I want to buy silicone terrain molds right now. RIGHT. NOW. Dude just paint your miniatures already. Says a goon with a drawer full of unpainted, unassembled miniatures.
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Jul 24, 2015 17:03
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You never stopped buying video games did you  Like you had the information what, a year and a half ago to move forward and be better and instead you remained the same, and hell even when I brought it up you lied to both me and yourself about your spending habits to maintain it. You should probably adopt all the tips and tricks you learn in this thread, but jesus you're going to have to do some inner searching because this has been a sustained problem. You don't even play what you buy, and you feel a need to buy things the moment they come out not when they're extremely devalued and easy to buy. It's more compulsive than learned bad behavior and it should be treated that way. Maybe a budget will help but I'm going to say it's going to take more change from mindset than learning to budget. Hopefully budgeting works. pig slut lisa posted:I'm impressed and happy that you weathered your introduction to BFC in the newbie finance thread and have decided to come back and make your own. Looking forward to seeing you tackle all this. I had no idea if you meant the first time, or the second time. Veskit fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Jul 24, 2015 |
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Jul 24, 2015 23:31
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Veskit posted:Like you had the information what, a year and a half ago to move forward and be better and instead you remained the same, and hell even when I brought it up you lied to both me and yourself about your spending habits to maintain it. You should probably adopt all the tips and tricks you learn in this thread, but jesus you're going to have to do some inner searching because this has been a sustained problem. You don't even play what you buy, and you feel a need to buy things the moment they come out not when they're extremely devalued and easy to buy. It's more compulsive than learned bad behavior and it should be treated that way. Maybe a budget will help but I'm going to say it's going to take more change from mindset than learning to budget. If it helps, I did reduce spending. I just didn't reduce it enough. The first time I came in here I had no spending limit. My spending limit, as it turns out, was too high (after I enacted one). Still is. So I need to cut it in like half and also do other poo poo. signalnoise fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Jul 25, 2015 |
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Jul 25, 2015 01:40
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Veskit posted:Maybe a budget will help but I'm going to say it's going to take more change from mindset than learning to budget. This is a really convenient way to continue to be sensational in every single BFC post, while also diminishing the importance of a budget you yourself never commit to.
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Jul 25, 2015 04:31
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BossRighteous posted:This is a really convenient way to continue to be sensational in every single BFC post, while also diminishing the importance of a budget you yourself never commit to. poo poo you've got me, you're right, I've never committed to a budget before 
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Jul 25, 2015 05:02
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Veskit posted:poo poo you've got me, you're right, I've never committed to a budget before Do you have any advice other than seeing a therapist
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Jul 25, 2015 05:04
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signalnoise posted:Do you have any advice other than seeing a therapist Actually I'd recommend finding better hobbies that take you away from gaming in general and help contribute to a better lifestyle which includes spending way less money. I'd recommend diet and exercise in general on top of seeking out a therapist. I think it'd do more for you than something you've already tried once and didn't seem to get good results from. Either that or a combination of both including budgeting. I don't agree that budgeting is the end all be all of healthy financial growth and these I think are better ways of addressing compulsive behaviors. Also to be a complete dick yes, you should also see a psychiatrist.
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Jul 25, 2015 06:54
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Fortunately I'm already seeing a mind doctor so I'm good there, though it's pretty expensive!  Diet and exercise is definitely something I'm trying to get into, which will actually be a lot easier with the house. I'll be cooking at the very least. I think that as far as compulsive behaviors are concerned, the best thing I can do is cultivate a habit of doing. I tend to be a planner, not a doer, which is a big source of problems. I'll buy game stuff and not use it, I'll buy exercise equipment and not use it, hell I'll buy cooking poo poo and not use it. The best thing for me to do, on that end, is to actually start doing the things I plan. But we'll see how this goes. I am accommodating to a fault, so I'm using this thread as a way to be obliged to something. My therapist likes to give me homework, and I do it because I'd rather do it than be nagged. And on that note, I still haven't done the mint poo poo. So, OK thread, give me a deliverable to do. What exactly do you want out of mint? I also have YNAB already purchased. What do you want me to show you that I've done?
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Jul 25, 2015 07:08
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Veskit posted:poo poo you've got me, you're right, I've never committed to a budget before You tell me? Veskit posted:3) Budget all year (I stopped for 3 months) Veskit posted:3) Still budgeting Veskit posted:3) I reconciled the past 2 weeks so stumbled on this one, but I was financially stable and doing things fine. Veskit posted:3) loving gently caress this one I hate it Veskit posted:3) Pffft no Veskit posted:3) Lol Nope Veskit posted:3) gently caress THAT
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Jul 25, 2015 07:15
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signalnoise posted:Fortunately I'm already seeing a mind doctor so I'm good there, though it's pretty expensive! Last 30 days of spending would be a great start. Categories and numbers.
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Jul 25, 2015 07:19
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Oh, hey, this thread is not about veskit.signalnoise posted:So, OK thread, give me a deliverable to do. What exactly do you want out of mint? I also have YNAB already purchased. What do you want me to show you that I've done?
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Jul 25, 2015 07:20
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Last 30 days is gonna be weird due to house stuff. Here's the 30 days between May 20 and June 21 Master Category Category May '15 Jun '15 TOTAL TOTAL ($2,094.13) $1,025.28 Spending Games $711.87 $653.47 Spending Unknown $39.99 $75.19 Spending Hair $0.00 $105.00 Everyday Expenses Groceries $0.00 $24.88 Everyday Expenses Spending Money $0.00 $119.23 Everyday Expenses Restaurants $103.59 $579.36 Everyday Expenses Medical $237.84 $168.88 Everyday Expenses Household Goods $73.44 $19.58 Note that the Games section for this counts the purchase of a computer in there somewhere (and a bunch of kickstarter poo poo I've since kicked)
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Jul 25, 2015 07:57
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Formatted for better legibilitycode:Also, how do the unknowns get designated that way? Are those cash transactions, or CC transactions with weird names (e.g. sometimes I'll buy something from a national chain but it will ring up under the corporate parent name in a different state, so I can't tell what it actually is), or what's going on? In any event now that you're actively tracking hopefully there will be very little "unknown" in the future. pig slut lisa fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Jul 25, 2015 |
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Jul 25, 2015 08:22
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pig slut lisa posted:Also, how do the unknowns get designated that way? Are those cash transactions, or CC transactions with weird names (e.g. sometimes I'll buy something from a national chain but it will ring up under the corporate parent name in a different state, so I can't tell what it actually is), or what's going on? In any event now that you're actively tracking hopefully there will be very little "unknown" in the future. It's from shopping on Amazon and being too lazy to look up what I bought, and yeah in the future I'll be marking this stuff in YNAB as it happens so no "Unknown" category should be there.
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Jul 25, 2015 13:25
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