Over at Debt Black Hole (where personal finance and geek culture meet- is it any wonder I’m a fan), Dave does a monthly post on his family’s financial nemesis- eating out. Having done our 3^rd quarter budget review last week, I had to wonder, do we have a financial nemesis?

Searching for Clues It used to be eating out. I won’t lie about that. When the MIL lived with us especially, we ate out a lot, but while we are a little over our eating out budget for the year, it’s not by much. That is a monster we have faced and beaten.

The other thing that looks to be way over budget is groceries. Is food in general our financial nemesis? Again, I don’t think so. There are some expenses that I had planned on pulling out of this category that I didn’t, including dog food. And pretty much everything we buy at CostCo ends up in this category, even when it’s new doormats. If you look back at 2011’s budget, I allowed for $450/month on groceries, knowing pet food costs and random CostCo purchases went into that category. I tried to lower it for 2012, claiming I’d be better at separating those things out. Obviously, my nemesis in this case is not financial but organizational.

Finding the Path No, the more I look at the numbers, from both this year and last year, the place where we clearly overspend is in allowance. I will admit, I am much worse about this than C. But the thing is, there isn’t one thing I overspend on. I stopped getting my nails done on a regular basis a couple of years ago. I get my hair cut about every 6 months. I buy clothes and shoes when I need them (and often spend a good amount of money on them when I do), but it’s not a regular thing. I occasionally go to a conference or convention. The things I buy are expensive, but not regular. There isn’t any one thing that could be called our financial nemesis, unless we just say it’s me. (Which wouldn’t be a completely invalid argument.)

C, however, does not spend is allowance like I do. He’s happy as a saver. He hoards cash so that he has it when he needs it- at the few places that don’t take cards, or to buy my gifts, so I don’t have to know exactly what they cost. However, recently, he’s started spending more and more of his allowance- to the point where he’s over for the year, too. And unlike my random spending, his is going to very specific targets- Kickstarter and Steam.

First Glimpse of the Villian Video games in general are our financial nemesis. Remember only a week and a half ago when we bought the newish War in the North game- collectors’ edition for the cloth map of Middle Earth? And how I talked about how we both have started playing World of Warcraft again? Besides the initial cost of the game and the expansions (C purchased Mists of Panderia. I haven’t yet, but I almost certainly will), there are also the monthly subscription costs. For the moment, we each signed up for only one month. We’ve been playing enough- and playing together enough –that I suspect we’ll each re-up after this first month for another three.

Henchmen C has backed a number of Kickstarter projects for games he would buy when they came out anyway, including FTL (which has been released and both C and J are playing). He always gives enough to get the game when it’s finally released. If there’s an option to get a map (especially a cloth map) for a reasonable amount more, he’ll fund enough to get that, too. After all, these are games he will play when they come out. But that also means we’re preloading costs for video games we don’t actually know will ever exist. It may be years before he gets a game for his money, if ever.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is Steam. If you play video games on the computer, you almost certainly know what Steam is. If you don’t, let me explain. It’s an online store for video games where you never buy a physical copy, not even a download. You buy the right to play the game through Steam from anywhere you can log into their site. (There is some downloading of files required, but you aren’t limited to how many computers you can have those downloads on, since you can only play while logged in, and you can only be logged in on one computer at a time.) Buying a game on Steam is pretty much instantaneous. You can pre-order the hottest new games, just like elsewhere, but you don’t have to go to the store to pick it up or wait for Amazon to deliver it to your doorstep. You just log onto Steam and start playing. If you need to download files first, you can generally start that hours before the game is actually available for play, meaning that the second the clock reaches release time, you’re playing. (I know this because last night at midnight eastern, 9pm pacific, XCom Enemy Unknown was released. By 9:01pm, both C and J were playing and yelling across the hallway about what was happening in their individual games.)

The other thing Steam does is have sales- and I mean really amazing sales. Buy a game that was released only a couple of months ago (and retails for $50+) for $5. That’s how both J and C started playing Crusader Kings II this summer. It was something they had heard of, thought they might like, and then Steam offered it for $5 or $10.

Facing the Boss Monster So yeah, video games are definitely our financial nemesis. Now I have to decide how hard I want to fight back against them. I should work on my own impulse control. We have yet to play War in the North- though the map is handing from the mirror directly over our mantle. But unlike a meal out where you eat it and it’s gone, video games, at least good ones, have staying power. We will get our money’s worth out of WoW. The boys certainly played enough Crusader Kings this summer to justify picking that up on sale. And considering that the original XCom was released in 1994(!) and C will still play it today, and that he played the new XCom for almost 9 hours straight after downloading it last night (That’s right, he started playing at 9pm. He came to bed at 5:44am. My alarm goes off at 5:45am.), I can be reasonably confident we will get our money’s worth out of it. Best guess is that in the end, it will cost us less than $0.01/minute.

But whether or not the video games end up being a good value, we do need to cut back on our allowance spending. This year it hasn’t had a major impact because of the extra money that came in from MIL’s estate. But next year? When there’s a kid, so our budget is tighter?

This is the boss monster, our financial nemesis. Anyone have a strategy guide that will help us defeat it?