Anyone reading along or even checking over some of the titles of past posts knows my current situation: I’m not in a financial position I’m comfortable with and I’m working to change our habits and establish sustainable values that will make my family and I financially comfortable. The first steps aren’t always that much fun: stopping spending habits, even when you realize that they’re simply habits and not a part of your long-term goals or values, often feels like a sacrifice and a punishment. Particularly when you consider the low-hanging fruit of budget austerity: eating out, buying entertainment, attending events: you know, the things a lot of people associate with living a full life and having a good time.
I was one of the original crop of videogamers: the first Atari 2600, now referred to in collector’s circles as the “Heavy Sixer,” that arrived in our living room the very first Christmas it was available (with the Combat cartridge that came in the book-style box) was actually the fourth videogame we owned. Lost somewhere in the garage sales of time was our Odyssey, the very first cartridge videogame system whose graphics largely consisted of plastic overlays that clung to the tv screen by static alone. Having yet to shake my collector mentality, I still own consoles from Atari, Magnavox, Coleco… and later generations from Nintendo, Sega, and Sony. My “newest” console is a dated and beginning-to-get-cantankerous-about-reading-certain-discs Playstation 2.
I feel like a terrible father, nigh-on abusively forcing my kids to grow up with generation-old videogames.
And for them, that’s something we intend to address. There’s a Wii on our “to get when practical” list… both because they have friends and relatives with Wiis and already have favorite games on the platform (old computer hardware chestnut: buy the machine the runs the software you want), and because of the Wii’s trend toward family-oriented games (reminding me, incidentally, of playing four-paddle Video Olympics on the 2600 with my own sister and parents).
But let’s face it: if I didn’t have kids, I wouldn’t be saving up for the Wii for my personal gaming. In fact, at this point, I’m likely not to to be saving up for a game console for my personal gaming ever again. There’s just too much available for a platform that I already own, Mac OS X, for me to pother with another piece of hardware.
It’s true, there was a day not so long ago that games on the Mac were often late-arriving and more expensive versions of Windows games. Things have changed, enough for me, anyway: between Java games, online games, and indie games, there are more games available to me than I will ever have time to play.
Many of these games are free, at least to try for some time period or some number of levels. There have been virtual festivals for indie programmers where several games are offered for a bargain price. And every once in a while, you find something that you break out the PayPal for.
It’s happened to me: I’m fallen victim to Minecraft. If you haven’t heard of it yet, wait a few days: it’s gaining some of that internet virality that is the YouTwit generation’s gift to marketing. Which is well and good, but it’s not why I sent them $13.77 (the current US equivalent of Minecraft Alpha’s 9.95 euro price).
First off, it’s a clever, addictive game… the kind where you get involved with exploring and the next time you look up it’s 3:37 in the morning. The graphics might be described unflatteringly as cartoonish and blocky by some, but to a gamer my age, they’re retro-pixelated goodness. Playing this game gives me the kind of joy I got playing BoulderDash in the eighties… playing BoulderDash in three dimensions. Where you get to build stuff out of the diamonds you picked up.
I mentioned this was Minecraft Alpha: it’s an unfinished work in progress. The current pricing is half of what the game’s author is going to charge once the game goes Beta, and who knows about general release. If you buy the Alpha, you are promise all future releases at no charge. The author sends out updates with improvements and additional gameplay features on Fridays.
The author has sold over 300,000 copies… to the tune about 4 million US dollars.
The author is named Markus Persson, and is a Swedish game designer who quit his job to work a project that interested him.
This is something I can get behind: doing something you’re passionate about, doing it well, and being rewarded. I was happy to drop my thirteen bucks, my drop-in-the-Atlantic, into his pile, because this is my own dream: figure out what it is that I am “supposed to do” and then do it… and let rewards take care of themselves.
I mean, I don’t even need $4 million bucks… but I’d feel like a better dad if I could get the kids their Wii.
You can find out more about Minecraft, download it, and purchase the Alpha at minecraft.net.
To extend the metaphor, the swamp is pretty much drained, now we just need to sort through all the stuff laying around on the bottom. There’s still a significant portion of a comic collection here, as well as toy and Atari inventories, music and recording equipment, books, CDs, and DVDs… and random assorted bits of who knows what that I couldn’t bear to part with at some point. As we lurch ever nearer the fateful “finally listing some of this stuff on eBay” day, I’ve been thinking NeoFrugally about what to do with stuff.
First, the comics. I learned to read from comics, still enjoy reading for relaxation (although these days it’s graphic novels from the library rather than monthlies from a shop), and have two sons that are already keen on comics. I guess the easiest way to explain my thinking about the process is to go over the categories I’ve come up with.
JRT – Just Recycle These. I actively collected comics for more than twenty-five years, and worked at comic stores for almost ten years. I picked up a lot of comics along the way. After decades of collecting as curating the collection, there’s the back half of that last box… comics that are so bad that they simply don’t go anywhere in a collection. Whether because they’re badly written and drawn, or shoddily produced, or offensively violent or pornographic or political… or whether it’s some copies of Reagan’s Raiders #1-3 that legitimately qualify as “all of the above,” there’s some stuff that the most sensible thing to do is reduce it to its component atoms and start from scratch.
25B – When I was a kid in the seventies and new comics were 25 cents, comic stores always had a “nickle box” to dig through. When I was a teenager in the eighties and new comics were $1, comic stores always had a “quarter box” to dig through. When I was running a comic shop in the nineties and new comics were $2.50, we always had a “dollar box” for people to dig through. I recently went to see my buddy Richard at his shop, and new comics are $4… and he’s got a bunch of “quarter boxes” downstairs to dig through. Not sure what that tells us, other than explain why the box of stuff I don’t care about keeping and don’t think can sell individually for enough to justify the effort the 25-cent Bin.
eBB – eBay Bound. Books are sets of books that I think will definitely sell at ninety-nine cents or higher. Some may go for much more than that, but the point is I want them to sell if I’m going to the trouble of listing them.
SMM – See My Man. These are the nice books whose times have come. I’m going to sell these through Richard for as much as possible, with more patience than the rest.
FTK – For The Kids. Like I say, I learned to read from comics, and Scott appears on the way to following in my footsteps. The fact that the kids like Star Wars and The Simpsons and Spider-man and Batman… basically, everything I liked… means that there’s a good hunk of comics that are still more valuable to us in comic form rather than liquidated.
CDH – These are the books someone is going to have to pry out of my Cold Dead Hands.
The toy inventory has similar categories to the comics: some I’m just keeping, some are reserved for the kids. If we’re getting rid of it, it’ll either be a higher-end thing through Richard or be on eBay. The Atari Computers present an interesting problem: there are several that need to go but that are worth something significant… enough that I’m willing to wait awhile for a decent return on them. But there’s no local Richard dealing in Atari Computers. I’m not certain what my best market for selling the Ataris might be.
Almost every bit of the music and recording equipment is staying here, to be used in my studio, the family entertainment center, or the kids’ set-up. Scott and Ralf have both already show interest and talent in music. Whatever we might be able to get for the old equipment is not worth what we’ll get by putting that stuff to use ourselves.
With CDs and DVDs, there are a few that might be worth something, I’ll be checking with Gene about higher-end individual items… then, again, if I believe they’ll sell at the ninety-nine cent mark, onto eBay they go. Depending on how many are left, I may trade some for an iPod (although I’d kinda like to hear from someone who has completed the process already, before I jump).
So that’s the thinking behind my neofrugal clear-the-house plan. Next comes the actual clearing-of-the-house part…
I wanted to highlight an article I enjoyed by heather at her weblog The Greenest Dollar. I liked it for two reasons.
First, part of what I mean by neofrugal is being more aware of the consequences of spending… making spending choices based on not only price and quality, but also culture, ethics, and morality. The BP debacle prompted heather to rethink her spending and other habits with an eye towards minimizing her oil footprint. The amount of oil burned by Americans is staggering, and our dependence on it puts much of our economy at risk and largely in the hands of increasingly hostile and destructive companies and regimes. The list of action steps heather provides is great start on considering larger concerns when making what might seem like insignificant choices.
The other part I liked was the recognition of the fickle nature of motivation, and a great technique for making the most of it while it’s around. As heather and Steve Pavlina before her recognize, the best way to make a lifestyle change is to change the environment to make the old ways more difficult to fall back and the new ways easier to implement. While she was motivated, she figured out changes to make to her environment now to improve her ability to stick to new choices later. This is the same kind of thing I’ve been trying do at jeffjewell.net with Franklinism: create the structure to enable new habits.
So, anyway, nice article that got my attention for a couple reasons.
To me, one of the biggest pieces of the neofrugal idea is that there are some things that are worth spending significant money on… that getting the most of what you value sometimes means paying more than the minimum possible price: figuring out what is important to you and being unafraid to invest in it.
That’s not where we are, yet.
I’m working for a big company again, with the regular paycheck that entails, but we’ve still got some ground to make up from the past couple of months. Our personal austerity program is still in effect… although I am admittedly eyeing our competing shovel-ready spending programs. It’s time to look at the cutbacks and see what is to be added back in.
We made a lot of choices and changes to make it through, some better than others. I’ve made a few notes on why the methods may or may not be a part of neofrugal.
Home and vehicle maintenance
When it’s not clear whether you can afford gas, you’re probably not going to get the oil changed. It’s never really a conscious decision to put off maintenance, it’s a cumulative effect of looking at the money pile each week and maintenance funds simply not being there. You let things slide, make do, hope it’ll hang together until the pile grows. Obviously this is extreme frugal; frugal taken to a ridiculous conclusion. It was necessary, I’m glad the necessity is passing, and routine maintenance on vehicles, systems, and appliances is clearly a neofrugal value.
Vehicle expense
We were a two-car family, but have been operating with one vehicle for several months. Although we had little choice in the matter (if you neglect your vehicle maintenance long enough, this decision will eventually make itself), there are benefits to acting like a one-car family even if you don’t have to. Having only one car forced us to plan ahead better: instead of being able to run out to the store or a drive-thru if we ran out of something to home, we had lists and minimal regular shopping trips; reducing gas, time, and impulse spending opportunities. We’re definitely going to get a second vehicle running, but we’re keeping the attitude that less driving is best.
Landline phone, cable tv, trash pickup, internet
For a while, we simply cut every service we possibly could. The internet has already made its comeback, landline and cable, not so much. Cutting the landline was completely painless, and the library made cable surprisingly easy to do without, even before the return of the internet brought streaming tv back into our lives. The local waste management center (I guess they’re not “dumps” anymore) is not far away, just off the main loop we already use for grocery, department store, bank runs. We did find that it was a true hardship for us to do without an internet connection at home… even though we both had internet at work and at plenty of local free access points.
Restaurants, brand names, processed foods
Cutting out restaurants and drive-thrus was hard, but made a huge difference in our food budget. We will certainly be adding restaurants back to our routine, Suzy and I are both foodies, but it’s clear there will be some changes in the frequency of particular destinations. I’ve been in it too long to do it anymore: I just can’t bring myself to pay the premium at big chain restaurants. Most of the places we really like to go are the proverbial mom and pop operations.
With very few exceptions, we have found generic and store brand products to be equal quality as name brands. Sometimes a difference is not one of quality, but one of relatively small variations of flavors and textures; we actually prefer the non-name brand product, on occasion.
We’ve also been buying less processed items, more staples. This has made avoiding brand names easier, too, as well as being generally cheaper, healthier, and better.
We didn’t have any choice when we cut these expenses, even though we’d come to think of them as basic parts of our lives. The lean times have helped us look at expenses from the other direction, to examine what we really get from the purchase, and if it’s worth it compared to the other possibilities.
