Your LEGO budget

[eilonwy77]

Hi. I have lots of topics that keep floating around in my head that I want to talk about, so I hope you don't mind that I post them here.

This one is about LEGO budgets. (This came up some in the two significant others threads, and I did a forum search and found a few references here and there, but not one dedicated discussion thread about the topic of budgets. Hopefully I didn't miss it... the search function here is difficult for me, because if I click on any one of the supplied responses, but then want to back up to my search results, the search results have all disappeared and I have to start over from scratch.)

So here are some questions: Do you have a LEGO budget? How do you decide how much it is? Do you stick to it? How do you determine what to spend it on? Do you try to creatively earn money in order to spend it on LEGO? Do you ever get on bricklink and fill up your shopping cart with all sorts of bricks and then get frustrated because you're not really sure that those are the ones you need the most and end up dumping the whole order and not getting anything at all? And then instead going to a store and blowing the budget on a LEGO set that you see that looks cool, but doesn't really have those dark green slopes and black 1x1 tiles that you really thought you had wanted??

Just wondering!

[eilonwy77]

I first developed the need for a budget when I was buying DUPLO for my kids. Duplos were about the only toy my kids had that didn't drive me crazy to play with, and I really wanted to have enough of them so that I could make something cool. That's when we developed "entertainment budgets" for both my husband and myself, to spend on whatever we wanted. But.... it pretty much just became a LEGO budget, and we went back to not really having a budget for other things, because those things were never really a problem. It did feel strange that I was spending "my" budget on increasing our stock of a toy primarily for our children. (I kept wondering where my parenting stay-at-home mom budget was.... teachers get budgets to supply their classroom.... where was mine? But of course, in reality, we had enough duplo to make our kids happy... I was the only one who wanted more, to make ME happy.)

Last fall I started transitioning my spending from DUPLO to LEGO, buying some sets and some bricklink orders. I ask for spending money for all the holidays now... birthdays, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day... and then something nice happened. I'd spent a ton of time giving away stuff to charity, and I'd kept records and we wrote it off on our taxes. My husband let me spend that money on LEGO, and it was enough to get the Taj Mahal set, which I really loved (as a parts pack.... who knew how important all those tiles were for pattern making!)

My biggest problem is just knowing what to get. I have certain kinds of bricks that I want more of.... I really like tiles, slopes, headlight bricks, 1x1 plates, and some other things like that which I've found very useful in pattern explorations. But do I stock up on the colors I have, so that I can make something bigger in the same color scheme? Or do I try to get some slopes and headlight bricks in a variety of colors? It's so hard to make up my mind!

And yes, I've spent more than my budget said I could on a few occasions, but not too much. Usually I'm pretty good about it.

[JoshWedin]

Once again, Katie, good practical topic. You can quit asking if its okay.

I don't have a Lego budget, per se. I've reached the place where I'm fairly content with my collection. When something new comes along, my wife and I talk about it and work it out. I usually get Lego for christmas, b-days, and Father's Day. I also put aside money for Cons, since I usually find deals I can't pass up.

Back when I didn't have as good of a job and my collection was small, I bought large lots on Ebay, as I could afford it. I would rebuild the sets and sell them, keeping the extra brick and making a small profit. I built up my collection very fast this way and never needed an official budget. Whatever was in the paypal account was my Lego money.

Josh

[OverLoad]

Currently, I don't have a LEGO budget. Once I get a job though, that will all be subject to change. By that point, half of what I make in a week will be for LEGO, the other half will go straight to my bank account, to prepare me for the future.

Hopefully the half that I do make is just enough foe me to get a few PaB cups and a couple sets, we'll see.

[eilonwy77]

Ha ha, thanks Josh. Next time I'll (try to) just ask the question without all the prefacing... I just run towards the shy side and don't want to step on anyone's toes, as I don't know what's been discussed where before, and sometimes people get testy about it. Someone over at a flickr discussion group really stung me once with their response to my comments, so now I'm a bit more hesitant. (I'm over-sensitive, it's true.) But that's part of what makes Classic-Castle so great: everyone is so polite and friendly!

Thanks for your responses.

Regarding buying and selling bricks... I have kind of shied away from that sort of thing, because it seems to me like my free time is so precious (with running around after the ragamuffins all the time) that I wouldn't want to spend it dealing with the whole business side of buying and selling. I could see doing that more back when I had more free time.

[JoshWedin]

Regarding buying and selling bricks... I have kind of shied away from that sort of thing, because it seems to me like my free time is so precious (with running around after the ragamuffins all the time) that I wouldn't want to spend it dealing with the whole business side of buying and selling. I could see doing that more back when I had more free time.

That may change when your kids get older. My girls (ten and fourteen) love to sort. My boys (seven and four) loved having all the different sets in the house all the time. Of course, they weren't to happy when I mailed them to the buyers.

Josh

[Jacob C.]

I would say my Lego budget is around $500 a year, though I'll probably only spend maybe $300 this year...oh wait, nevermind. I almost forgot the Tower Bridge set is about to come out, so yep, it will be right around $500, lol.
I only imagine it will get worse for our budgets in the future as Lego releases more sets aimed at AFOL's.

[porschecm2]

I also don't have a budget, per se. I am a buyer of opportunity, though. When I see a good Lego deal, I nab it. I rarely pay full price for a set. Of course, I am extremely non-picky about what sets I buy. Because I build in many themes, I'll find a use for just about any set. I usually try to not buy more than 1 set from each line at MSRP, and that's usually the $10 set. The rest of the line I get on sales or clearance over the next few years. I almost never buy off Bricklink, because that's a Pandora's box I'm not yet ready to open. I also always keep an eye out for used deals.

As for your search issue, Katie, have you tried tabbed browsing? If you open into a new tab each search result you wish to view, you can simply close the tab when you're done viewing it, instead of hitting the "back" button, and you'll still have the original search results page opened. I think all the current generation browsers support this; I know Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari do.

Cm2

[elondisc]

my lego budget = not enough

[siabur]

I spend between $100-$200 a month on LEGO. It's my entertainment. Since I, don't drink, don't smoke, am currently single, no kids, have no bills really, I have the extra cash. I've spent more this year than in the past and most of it has been either on sale or gift cards. I don't buy off of bricklink much any more, the prices have gotten ridiculous. I've also become really good at stuffing the PAB cups at the LEGO store. LEGO is my drug of choice and I do have to feed the addiction once and a while.

[troll]

Do you ever get on bricklink and fill up your shopping cart with all sorts of bricks and then get frustrated because you're not really sure that those are the ones you need the most and end up dumping the whole order and not getting anything at all?

hehe.. yes.

[plums_deify]

My budget's pretty simple: once bills are paid, food purchased, tank filled, any leftover is mine to do with what I will.

Problem is there's usually nothing left over....fortunately for me, BrickCon comes on a 3-paycheck month.

[JCool]

Do you ever get on bricklink and fill up your shopping cart with all sorts of bricks and then get frustrated because you're not really sure that those are the ones you need the most and end up dumping the whole order and not getting anything at all?

hehe.. yes.

All... the... time!

Lately I've been holding back on Lego purchases, trying to trim down my collection to what I really use instead of hoarding everything I see. I've been able to make some spare change by doing that, getting some of the value from the bricks, and will likely turn that into getting more in the coming months to support new MOCs. My budget for a given year though exceeds $1000. Thanks now to a Lego store in my town (Raleigh), it's much harder to say no. Even just visiting the store I find I'll at least need a few baseplates! But I'll echo what others have said since it's true for me as well, bills and actual expenses come first... then Lego

[Frank_Lloyd_Knight]

I don't really have a budget, but I do tend to make lots of lists and prioritize items I'd like to have. I also try limiting myself to only one large item for myself each year. I'm more likely to splurge, though, when it comes to getting gifts for others.

[Elbadar]

Sadly being a TFOL my lego budget is rather small and sporadic . Most of my money comes from doing my families yard work but thats only about $50 a month. As a dependant my main source of lego is birthdays and christmas. I try to help my parents buy the stuff and get cards with money in them from the rest of my family. I actually prefer S@H and PAB to bricklink and ebay, but only when S@H has a free shipping. Being that many bricklink users live overseas (from my perspective) shipping can be quite a bit. But about twice a year S@H lets you have free shipping if you spend $100. I do ebay for figs when I want older ones but only buy it nows, auctions always look good at first but you get so wrapped up in buying 10 rare figs for $50 that you forget theres a buy it now for one three dollar fig with 10 available. So basically I stretch my budget and don't bid.