Gamer on a Budget
Over the last two months I’ve been going through the processes to purchase a house. I’m coming down to the final stretch and between down payments, closing costs, startup costs and Christmas, my wallet is getting pretty thin. What’s a gamer to do with a crappy economy, low paying job, new monthly expenses and an insatiable desire for the latest games and gadgets? Here are a few things that I or others have tried to make ends meet.
Games
Somewhere along the lines, Microsoft and Sony decided that, since the Xbox 360 and PS3 were the next generation consoles, they needed to sell the games at next generation prices. Half a benjamin was reasonable for games, but $60 is sometimes difficult to justify. Best Buy used to have the new releases for $10 off the first week out, but there haven’t been too many deals like that for a long time. What’s a gamer to do?
First thing is to accept that, unless you want to pay a premium – and some games are worth it – you aren’t going to get the new hot right away. You may remember me wishing for Left 4 Dead for Christmas a while back. Well, BB has it for $10 off this week on 360, so I went to the store and picked it up. Not a huge discount, but worth it!
Hardware
For consoleites, hardware is pretty basic. You can get pretty technical if you’re going to start discussing audio equipment and displays, but the basic console itself typically comes in no more than three or four configs.
PC gamers have quite a bit different list. Now, I’ll confess that I haven’t played near as many PC games since buying my 360, and really the only games I do play on the PC I also have for the 360. However, if you grew up with games on the PC and always had to have the latest, chances are that you’re still keeping that machine tweaked. I admit that I haven’t had much room in my budget to continually upgrade my PC. But, that doesn’t mean that I don’t keep my eyes peeled for deals online to supplement my PC gaming experience.
Budget Solutions
Back to the issue of budgeting, you might have to be a bit more aggressive with your budgeting. Maybe you need to cut it back to just one or two new games a month (which made November pretty hard – still haven’t bought Far Cry 2). Also, consider cutting costs. Do you really need to have cable TV? If you have broadband, you can get most shows on hulu.com or other creative means like BitTorrent (I certainly don’t endorse acquiring TV shows that violate copyright, but there are legitimate links out there). Also, if you’re rocking the 360 with the NXE, you get NetFlix as Priestbeast and countless others have pointed out (which rocks, by the way!). Scrap the TV package and save yourself anywhere from $45/month for basic to $150/month with the whole nine yards.
Where do you eat? If you’re like me, you’re a single guy who’s always on the go and doesn’t really have time to cook a meal. If “time” is your issue, I suggest buying a crockpot. They come in a variety of sizes and take only a couple of minutes to get all the ingredients ready. Throw everything in the crock before you go to work and turn it on (they come with recipes and directions) and when you get home, you have a delicious (unless you suck) home cooked meal. Another idea is to cook up a week’s worth of meals and freeze it; chicken and rice works well for this. When you reheat it, you can add different spices. Pasta is also simple; buy a Fasta Pasta and you won’t even have to worry about it. If you typically eat out three nights a week, you’ll be saving anywhere from $10 – $30 depending on how spendy you are.
Other things that you can probably cut out or back are any magazine or newspaper subscriptions (check online), going out/booze (booze is a lot cheaper at the grocery store than at the bar), utilities (you still have to pay them, but you can probably save some $$ if you manage consumption better, i.e. programmable thermostat), and negotiating other bills (high credit card rates, cell phone plan change). There are a lot of ways to budget your life to allow for feeding your love of video games.
Where to buy
Once you’ve cut out a few holes in your budget to buy some games, there are some places to shop and places not to shop. I mentioned Best Buy for once having pretty decent deals on new releases, but that’s gone the way of the buffalo. Wal-Mart is usually $.16 (yea, 16 cents) cheaper than the other brick ‘n mortars, which doesn’t do us too much good.
Here are a couple sites that I visit a couple times each day looking for good deals:
slickdeals.net – They have all kinds of different products that get listed on there, but the information is great when trying to track down a good deal. Also, the forums are very lively and a simple search will often times reveal some good deals or coupon codes that you can take advantage of.
bargainist.com – This site is pretty similar to SD in function, although the layout is a bit different. Bargainist generally has more items for the regular consumer, but every once in a while you’ll see a good offer from a pretty mainstream site like Amazon.
dealhack.com – Dealhack is kind of in between SD and Bargainist. The items that typically find their way to DH are a decent balance of tech-related products and other things like clothing, accessories, etc.
redtag.com – Typically larger tech equipment (TVs, receivers), but they have good prices on the items they offer!
woot.com – If you don’t know what Woot! is yet, you should be ashamed of yourself! Woot offers one tech/hobbyist item each day with the exception of Woot offs which are used to basically sell off all the random stuff that didn’t sell out when it was first listed (or that’s the way it seems to me).
sellout.woot.com – This is an extension to woot that also carries tech type stuff
goozex.com – I’ve not personally used it, but Grundy uses the Goozex service and swears up and down by it.
gamefly.com – I used it for a while back in college and it was pretty handy, but I’m not terribly big on renting indefinitely.
deepdiscount.com – I’ve never ordered from them, but they generally have new releases for $1 less, no tax (for Michigan, anyway) and free shipping. That’s roughly $6.50 when you take in to account the drive to the store.
newegg.com – Where I check for great product reviews and even better prices.
tigerdirect.com – Another good place for PC hardware or TV/sound equipment for decent prices.
So, that’s my list of ideas. Does anyone else have anything to contribute? Any other place that I should look for great deals on games?
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