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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 7649788" data-attributes="member: 99">One hundred and thirty-two pounds.That’s the weight of my unwanted gaming books.  I was just weighing myself (if you’re curious I weigh 187 at present and hope to drop about 10 pounds now that I’m back to running regularly).  I saw those bins sitting there and I wondered how much they weighed.  They were certainly taking up plenty of room in my basement.  I also learned that it is very difficult to look down at a scale when you’re holding a seventy pound bin of books.Nearly all of these books were accumulated during the 3e boom just after the turn of the millennium.  And there is some good stuff in there.  But I’m never going to use it again.  Or perhaps it is more the fact it isn’t worth keeping around on the slim chance I’ll use it again.How did this happen?  Well I used to make more money and I used to be a lot more careless with it.  I made the mistake of thinking $20 here and $30 there was no big deal to spend on a hobby I love so much.  And $20 here and $30 there really isn’t too much to spend if you do so intentionally and rationally.  But I was neither of those things at the time.I’ve sorted through those bins of books and kept a couple decent shelves worth.  Some I simply couldn’t part with for sentimental reasons and some had too much potential to be mined for ideas.  Things are different for me now and have been for the last several years.  When I say “different”, what I really mean is much, much better.If somebody asked me, “What was the smartest thing you have done to improve your marriage?” I’d say, “Gaining an understanding of our respective <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?331401-Laws-Love-and-Languages&p=6043530#post6043530" target="_blank">Love Languages</a> and putting them to good use.”  But if somebody asked me, “What was the second smartest thing you have done to improve your marriage?” I’d say, “Create a written budget and stick to it.”We started doing that a bit over two years ago and have since paid off well over thirty thousand dollars in debt.  We’ve still got a ways to go but there looks to be some light at the end of this tunnel and our cash flow feels a lot better.  If there is one constant refrain about our finances, it’s we wish we had started a lot sooner than we did.  We try to think less about what the delay cost us and more about what delaying even longer would have cost us.Why was it so hard to get started?  Because “budget” is NOT a fun word to say.  I think, deep down, we knew we’d have to make one sooner or later.  But later meant we wouldn’t have to stop spending money on fun stuff like 3e books.  And of course we were very wrong about all of that.Our budget has line items for things like entertainment, eating out at restaurants, and buying clothes in addition to things like the mortgage, utilities, and debt payments.  When we finally understood our budget is simply a plan for how to spend our money rather than a numeric assassin of joy (high five Babylon 5 peeps!), we started to enjoy the peace it brought us.  It is not only a record of the fact we had to replace the tires on my wife’s car but also a reminder to go out and have fun too.  And sometimes that means spending money on gaming books.The big shift in mindset was a few years ago, before we even had a budget in place.  It wasn’t even much of a financial consideration at that point.  I just had too many bookshelves devoted to gaming stuff.  I decided I needed some better criteria on which to base my purchasing decisions.  So I came up with this rule:Unless I know for certain that I will use a gaming product in the next six months, I don’t buy it.It has proved remarkably effective at stopping my impulse purchasing.  More than once I’ve held some book in my hand at the friendly local gaming store and said, “Will I definitely be using this in the next six months?...”  Then I put it back on the shelf and walk away.  The answer is usually “No.”What’s beautiful about it is the answer is sometimes “Yes!”  Then I slap it on the counter with a smile and my debit card and make my purchase absolutely free of guilt.  It’s a very nice feeling to know I’m having fun AND sticking to the budget.I discovered another ancillary benefit of this policy:  Buying more discriminately leaves more money in the budget for the sorts of gaming experiences I truly value.  Notably, I can afford to go to GenCon and other Game Day events and roll dice with people I see too seldom.We just underwent the annual scramble for badges and hotel rooms.  It seems to get crazier and more expensive every year.  Did you plan to be at the Best Four Days In Gaming?  Did you budget for it or spend money you don’t have?  Could you make room in your budget in other ways?Let me know if anybody wants to buy 132 pounds of books.</blockquote>

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