Sometimes when you get into the swing of things, you forget to take a step back and remember that things cost money.  I’m a sucker for shiny things.  “What’s that Fantasy Flight? You have a new expansion to Arkham Horror? Why YES, I do want that!” Or even, “Oh look! New paints for my 40K troops!” I spent over a hundred dollars in the first month I was playing Magic the Gathering and that was just to get started. Thankfully I’m playing with some upstanding individuals who give me their commons/uncommons after our booster drafts, thus increasing my card count and more importantly giving me a chance to make a real deck.

And then there’s Minecraft.  It’s a seemingly innocent game that can be played in an internet browser.  Having a private server costs money though. So who pays? Well, that’s where ingenuity comes in.  Everyone likes “Donation” links (by Paypal), but you have to register for non-profit status and file taxes accordingly.  Now, this isn’t beyond my realm of expertise, I already do this.  But do I want to run more non-profits? Not really, there’s no gain beyond more work.

I didn’t want to play Minecraft, I didn’t think I’d like it, but I also didn’t want to start playing Magic again. Or D&D, or blogging, or learning how to design websites better, but I did and I’m loving every second of each.  Yesterday I said I have trouble following through on things and I’m still looking at that post and thinking how I could become more consistent.

Something that doesn’t cost money and offers great value is Mint.com.  Mint.com is a financial analyzation tool. It’s free to use and it tracks everything you let it.  I have all my student loans and credit cards in there so I can track EXACTLY what I’m spending and make a huge effort to both code every purchase and tag it with why I bought it.  I see where I’m spending money and that’s really, really helping me correct this problem.