Total Foil Count: 3,762
I am big into budgeting. I have been keeping a steady budget since 2003. I keep track of everything I spend, all my bills, all my debt, everything financial. There have been adjustments for the last 16 years as I have grown. At first it was a pretty simple budget with my bills, my income, and what very little I saved.
I would say that keeping a budget was the most important step in my financial career.
It gave me the insight of what I was spending my money on, or better put what I was wasting my money on. Have you ever just wondered what you spend our paychecks on? Like, you make so much an hour and pay your bills on time, but for some reason you never really have enough every couple of weeks. Well that is where I was.
Being 27 and not really having much to my name, I just wondered how people were able to save for retirement, or a house, or a new car. Emergency fund?! It just did not make that much sense to me. I was able to do the things I wanted to do, and I was saving my 10% a month for retirement, but I never really thought I was getting ahead in life.
I have been saving since I was a working 17 year old because of what my father told me. When I started working I asked my father if he could go back in time, what would he do differently. His answer was that he would save more at a younger age, and then he showed me a spreadsheet on how compound interest works. Over time the money you saved could grow, and you could basically make money on the money you have saved, and not even need a job. Of course this peeked my interest and I started my financial education.
He had bought me a couple of Motley Fool books, and I took a slight interest in this whole financial independence world but at 17 how much could I really do. I took in what I could, started a simple budget that I never kept up with, and started to save 10% of my gross income. Once I hit 18 I put that money into a RothIRA and let it be. Back then you could only start a RothIRA at age 18, and it did not matter if you had taxable income, while now if you can just prove you made the money through employment you can start depositing money into a RothIRA at any age.
You would think that there was some correlation that the first years I started to try and keep a budget was when I stopped playing Magic the Gathering, but I still blame Everquest for leaving Magic the Gathering. That is another story.
Fast forward 10 years and I was still working and saving, but I was not anywhere close to owning my own home. My father and I purchased a townhome together, but that was mainly for him. I had the credit, and he had the cash, so we decided to just buy something together since the place we were renting kept raising prices.
And yes, I lived with my father until I was 25. And yes, the main reason I moved out was because who wants to bring home a girl when you still live with your parents. I had to grow up at some point.
After a little while I got into corporate America and started to make "the real money", but I still could not make ends meet. I was maintaining a credit card balance throughout the year, and was stuck in the rotating swipe and payoff cycle. I was basically living on the credit card because I was out spending my income. I tricked myself into thinking that I was living a life style that I could actually afford.
So I started the budget in 2003, and it really showed me where my money was going. I had a credit card with a $5000 balance, and I was paying around $200 a month to the bill. Then I saw that I was being charged $103 in interest for that $5000 balance. So that means, the $200 I was sending in for payment, more than half of it was going to pay the credit card company for the pleasure of swiping the card making them fees, and the other less than $100 was going to pay off the $5000 balance.
I literally slapped myself in the face with my own hand.
I was just throwing away money every month, and I figured out why I could not make ends meet. I still remember to this day calling all my credit card companies and asking them to lower my interest rate that I was paying. Most of them did end up lowering the rate, but there were some cards that wouldn't. Those were the ones I transferred my balances out of to the ones that did lower my interest rate, and I ended up cancelling the cards.
I know, you should not cancel the cards, but I was upset so I did something rash. But really the right thing to do in the credit card game is to pay off the card and try and keep them around as long as you can. That will only help your credit history, and maintaining an available credit balance for longer. We will get into that game at some point too.
So yeah, in 2003 was when I started my journey to get debt free. I started that year with $10,389.20 in debt, and I did not become debt free until Sept 2005 just in time to move into my new condo and put on some more debt!
From that point on I was very aware of playing the credit card game. At every point I would attempt to buy everything interest free, and I would only finance something if I could get an interest free credit card or loan. Outside of buying a car or home, my goal was to not pay any interest. I was also very aware of what interest rates were on any type of credit I owned.
Enter my newest purchase.
I have an Amazon credit card and with that comes 12 months of interest free financing if the item is over $499. With having good credit you do get some perks. So if I end up paying off this box of Mercadian Masques in 12 months, I will not have to pay the interest that is being charged during the 12 month period. All interest is deferred. This means I am paying some god awful rate, and every month that interest balance gets higher, and at the 12 month mark if I have not paid off this purchase I will have to pay what ever is left on the balance and the interest gets added onto that balance.
So why did I just go on about my budgeting history and paying off debt?
Well being able to come to this purchase without having any credit card debt, and having the funds to pay off the purchase at any point, I can take advantage of the interest free financing option and get what I want without having to pay more than what the price is. The trick is to not fall into the trap of not paying it off before your interest free period ends.
Not having a cloud of payments that need to be paid every month is where you want to be. You want to make the money you have working for you, and not the other way around. Do not think about it like you can afford the $80 a month payment to avoid paying interest. Try and look at buying things with the aspect of being able to pay for things outright, but choosing not too because that money is sitting in a savings account making you money.
Then find interest free ways of buying things so that you are afforded time to pay off the things you want slowly while gaining interest in the savings accounts, and then paying them off. That way instead of paying $800 for a box of magic cards, you really only end up spending $750 because of the 12 months you made $50 in interest in that saving account.
I know that seems silly, and it is only $50. But if you end up using a cash back credit card, and you make 1.5% cash back from your purchases, that is an additional $12 you will have made, and it will bring your purchase price down to $738.
And if you do all your purchases with this in mind, things start to add up real quick. For instance, I have been able to do this for a while now, and in 2018 I was able to make $1569.52 in cash back rewards and interest on my savings accounts. That is a bit more than $50.
My wife actually got mad at me because I would not let her buy things with cash. She wanted to run the spending budget account with envelops of cash rather than use the cash back credit card. I then showed her that we would be losing around $1000 in cash back rewards, and she changed her mind.
Being able to come at purchases with this in mind frees you up a lot. Now I am not able to just go out and buy everything I want, but I am able to take advantage of purchases when they do come up because of this. I already have the money sitting in a savings account making me money, which is a huge deterrent to spending money in itself, but then having the options to buying things in this manner is also freeing.
Instead of charging $800 to a credit card that charges 24% and paying well over the $800 purchase price in the end, I am able to leverage what I already have built up to get ahead $1 at a time.
It has been a very long road to get here, and I am talking about 16 years. I still have my home debt, and I am trying to save up enough money to buy my next car without getting a loan, but that is all apart of the game. Now I do not live pinching pennies, but saving where I can to make these small increases in personal wealth has afforded me the ability to leverage my past financial history with future purchases, and come out ahead so I can continue this cycle. I am no longer stuck in the cycle of living on a credit card and making the minimum payment.
This is just a small look inside of how I try and deal with buying MTG products. Here are some more updates on things that have come in. And again, I hope to be writing more like this.
This fine trade came in, and the complete sets of Player Rewards Promo cards is getting close to complete. Thank you CardSphere!
I stopped up at a LGS near the house to see if they picked up anything, but this is all I could find. Not sure on the Isolate, but it can never hurt picking up things that cost 1 mana to get rid of things.
Went up to my old stomping grounds Mead Hall Games and I was able to get closer to my UMA set and the Box Topper set. I swear if they come out with another Box Topper type set with Modern Horizons I am going to just quit.
That same day I headed up to my FLGS Lodestone Coffee & Games. I finally finished my Battlebond playset of first prints, and was able to snag some UMA and UMB Box Toppers. I really wanted to see if I could pre-order War of the Spark and Challenger deck, but they pointed me to their website.
And since I was out and about I decided to head up to the Source Comics and Games to see if they had anything, but all I could find were some lovely packs. I KNOW! I could have picked up a box of Nemesis for what I paid for these, but yeah I wanted to impulse buy something.
This was another trade that came in from Canada, and it was also on CardSphere. I think I only need like 6 more and I am done!
So fast forward a week and I just picked up these at the LGS near the house. I did end up trying to buy them at Lodestone, but they do not pre-order these things, and when I went up there they did not even have them in stock! No idea what is going on, but sure wish they would just let me pre-order everything. What a waste of time going up there, or was it?
Since I was already up there looking for Challenger decks, I might as well try and see what they did have in. I recently found out that this card came in 6 different flavor texts. So of course I am trying to get a playset of them all. With these adds, now I think I just need to pick up the rarest of the prints.
And BAM! Picked this up to finish up my playsets of these wonderful dual lands. I did go for 3 playsets of each, and it might end up being too many, but I can really see these going up in price so it was somewhat of an investment.
So there we go, some info on budgeting, saving, credit cards, and the such. I hope you enjoyed it, and like I said I am going to try and write more like this instead of just posting what I picked up.
Thanks for reading!
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