The Year 2014 part 2: Geeking on a Budget

A quarterly report this year on this blog was "Can I satisfy my geeky needs on a restricted budget?", and now, we are looking back on this as the year closes, if I managed it, and what the future plan is.

Well, the answer is both yes and no.

YES: because in the end, I did indeed manage to get my geek on by spending only a small and limited portion of my income on my intrests, and this suplemented by exchanging for example cards for minifigures and the likes.

NO: because it all came about in the end alright, but I couldn`t keep the line consistent.  In the first half of the year, I went far over the self-imposed limit, and only by the end of the year has it all fallen together nicely.

So what is the problem then?  Well, if something serious happened halfway (and it did, I needed to replace my PC), the whole balance of things would go haywire and I would need to struggle for a while.

But why was I doing this?  Well, there is that economic rule that you should try and spread your paycheck over a 50/30/20 division, though that is an american study and with the high tax pressure here in Belgium, I`m going to aim in 2015 for a 60/30/10 spread.  It`s a whole lot of economics, but it basically breaks down to living expenses / luxury / life savings dividing.  And see if you can make cuts in certain parts if you can`t manage it by that formula.

One of the things I am doing `correct` the later half of the year, is like trying to get my bits and pieces for my builds seperatly instead of hunting bulk lots of which half goes in the `sometimes something perhaps` box, since I don`t sell off my excesses. 

The same goes with the Magic cards as I continue focussing more and more on the Limited formats, and less on needing to obtain cards for building a deck.  Something I`ll be doing more again once Magic season returns for me in the summer months as evening school and medical issues die down.

But there are a lot more cuts that can be made.  I at least had the sense to cancel subscriptions for MMO`s I ain`t playing at the moment, as I can always resubscribe should the need arise to play the games again, instead of paying, having it run, and play it like once or twice in a month.

The only `excess` I`m going to allow myself though during 2015 is to get the Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit sets all together.  They are slowly dropping out of the stores and retiring, so I better grab them before their prices skyrocket, which i expect to happen once the current line goes out, probably half of the year.

But investing in the effort of getting a more value afterwards?  Not for the coming year, it takes to much effort to compensate and satisfy the numbers and balances.  Unless of course, a big, big, BIG payroll comes my way...

Next time in part 3, I`ll be taking a look back at the goals I`d set for 2014