How do you guys budget for your collecting? I have my own system, but i am interested in hearing how all of you guys do your budgets? Do you keep your personal funds separate from your collecting funds? Do you keep multiple accounts? How do you decide how much a month you are going to spend on collecting?
If you have any good tips or advice on saving/budgeting for your collecting, please share! I look forward to hearing your strategies and maybe we could all learn a few tips from each other? Thanks!
My strategy is very simple: I pay all of my bills/take care of all of my expenses for the month FIRST, and then pull from what ever discretionary income I have available in my checking account and use it for collecting.
I get paid monthly rather than weekly or bi-weekly, so I have to be sure to carefully spread out my spending over the course of 30 days until my next paycheck comes. I also never, ever completely drain my account; I always leave myself some wiggle room in case something comes up.
Another big thing I always do is transfer half of the earnings I make from selling cards on eBay into my savings account and I never touch it. I leave that money for the future so I can buy things like a house, a vehicle, etc. Itās been building up for a while now and itās always very satisfying to see it increase.
Buy-Pick out for personal collection- Optimize Selling off the rest for profit (Decide to hold to grade or sell raw) Rinse & Repeat
A portion of profits go to buying certain investment pieces not for resale similar to your savings account in my eyes.
My 9-5 Job hasnāt had to pay for cards in a few years which is nice.
This is just my system easily explained
You should avoid keeping too much of your money in a savings account. There are much better options that are still low-risk that have a much better expected value in the long-run.
Budgetingā¦ maybe Iāll try working on that in year three. Iāve honestly spent pretty haphazardly since I started collecting. Iāve had to live like a peasant several times because of it haha. Ive never missed a bill yet though! I managed to live of off 220 bucks for 2 weeks one time. Only very recently did I budget for the first time to save for an item I wanted. It sucked.
It just all goes into one account and comes out of the same one. I just try to spend less than I make. The result is I can build my savings and collection at the same time
I have a spreadsheet with 13 tabs. On the primary tab I have an overview of each month and on every other tab itās expenses a month. Every month is limited to ā¬ 100,00 (including shipping fees). If the number hits ā¬ 0,00 Iāve spend my budget for that month and I wonāt buy more. Sometimes I allow myself to take the āleft overā budget to the next month, but rarely do.
One account for the house/cars/dogs etc, I transfer about half my income into the account so we have extra if something should happen
One account for food, here we both transfer the same amount and we dont buy more food then we can afford from this account
I save in index fonds, and something called BSU. BSU is basiclly savings for a new house but with great benifits when it comes to taxes and high interest rent (dunno if other countrys have this or only Norway)
Account nr four: Here I put all the money that is left after these accounts have been filled. From there I decide what I wanna spent on cards. So I never spent from any of the other account. When I get payment it all goes automatic so I dont even look at the money for the 3 other.
This has worked very good for me, and sometimes I dont even buy a card for a month or two cause you do get kinda addicted to see the money grow
I am not an impulse buyer, I pretty much wait for the right deal to show up on an item I want, to do so I need to store as much money as possible, because there is nothing worse than having to pass on a deal because you dont have money.
I mostly try to spend the same amount every month, starting from there, i do have savings that might (or might not) use if some deals show up (i.e cards i need to complete certain sets).
Over the past 3 years i gotta admit that amount per month changed drastically (it went higher) but also my income increased so, we good!
Im new into the game myself so ive had some ups and downs, but im still working on a system which works for me to where I can manage the rest of my daily expenses. Got a little wild and trigger happy when starting, but 3 months later im finding that my best method of how to manage a lot of my collecting is broken into 3 parts: First is money used for bills/day to day/etc with some saved for external desires (the occasional weekend out with the gf or other activity). That gets set aside first after being paid ( I work part time awhile being a part time student as well so funds arent huge atm, but very managable). Then comes what goes into my savings and cards last. Typically ill have a decent amount (for me at least haha, i mean I cant push 1k monthly like I would love too and see many others here exceed which is awesome, but at most 500 is my play money for this) and with it I choose a route to journey on. So for example, Neo was by far my fav generation/sets so ive been hunting for the legendaries/starters 1st edition at psa 9 (not sure if ill ever afford 10s, but to me a 9 is perfect bc personally I have more enjoyment in just owning the card) and I check prices and trends to see what I would be spending into (insert card here). Ideally I go down the route of 1-2 psa cards a month, but if prices are low, ill grab more with the money ive set aside. If high, ill wait and carry the savings over now to have more the following month/month and a half to grab it. I know prices change quite often too (which is hard to gauge which to buy and when due to fluctuations), but with this method ive found a lot of enjoyment and ive already completed my psa 9 set of 1st edition neo legendaries and ive moved to the starters (typhlosion is going to be rough It seems haha, but ill be patient since thats part of my fav pokemon cyndaquils evo line!). Also I should metion I buy singles of modern product to play the card game too, but that typically only runs me 100 a month or less, just because its not super super pricey to play casually. That being said, thats it for me! I hope to someday of course increase my spending, but only once I start making some bigger bucks haha
I sign up for a credit card and put the max limit on it buying Charizards I want, then sign up for a new card and rinse and repeat. My credit score keeps dropping so itās been harder for me to get approval for new credit cards, and I owe a ton in interest Iām ignoring for now, but overall my collection has grown tremendously in the past year using this budget technique.
5% is the norm, but itāll go up to 15% if Iām making buying something I know I can profit from (like buying a bulk lot or sending cards off to be graded). Usually Iāll only go that high if Iāve not made many sales that month.
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