My worst period of comic book spending came just before I started Get Rich Slowly. From October 2005 to March 2006, I spent $3519.34 on comics \u2014 almost $600 a month. (That money would nearly have been enough to fully fund a Roth IRA<\/a>!) During this time, I was spending everything I had freed from paying off debts \u2014 and my Christmas bonus! \u2014 to buy comics.<\/p>\n Times have changed. During the past three months, I’ve spent only $93.33 on comics. Here are some steps I’m taking to limit my spending:<\/p>\n I’m already happier about my collection. I don’t feel guilty about it anymore. It feels fun again. It’s not wrong to indulge in a hobby you enjoy so long as this doesn’t come at the expense of other financial goals<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n When you track every penny you spend<\/a>, it’s easy to explore your personal finances in this kind of detail. It’s one reason I log my spending in Quicken. Wesabe<\/a> and Mint<\/a> (and other online personal finance tools) let you do the same thing. When was the last time you took a look at your past few years of spending?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Comic books have always been one of my money demons. Geeky, but true. I used to buy the actual comic magazines: Superman, Spider-Man, X-Men. As an adult, however, I graduated from spending just a buck or two for a comic to buying hardbound compilations and trade paperbacks costing $20, $50, or more.<\/p>\n No matter how smart my money choices, I’ve made it a priority to keep detailed records of my finances. Tonight I dug through four years of Quicken data to see if my comic book spending habits have changed. (They feel like they have, but I wasn’t sure.) Here’s what I found:<\/p>\n My worst period of comic book spending came just before I started Get Rich Slowly. From October 2005 to March 2006, I spent $3519.34 on comics \u2014 almost $600 a month. (That money would nearly have been enough to fully fund a Roth IRA<\/a>!) During this time, I was spending everything I had freed from paying off debts \u2014 and my Christmas bonus! \u2014 to buy comics.<\/p>\n <\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[475],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/ff106-2-1.jpg\" "\\"You")
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