Forum - View topicYour Monthly/Yearly Expenses
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Mylene
 Posts: 2792 Location: Indiana |
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I once had that same idea. Now I'm drowning in a backlog of manga that somehow I manage to buy faster than I can read. It multiplies at a much faster rate than anime, at least for me. So while I'm pretty backlogged on anime, I have space for everything. With the manga... I'm resorting to double-deep loading into my "to be read" shelves, and will need to invest in a new shelf for the "read" stuff soon. |
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Pantha
Posts: 169 |
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I don’t have a budget; my strategy is simply to buy whatever I please when I please. I’m able to do this because I have few financial obligations. And a good job, too. That helps. Although I have two credit cards, I rarely use them. Their combined balances don’t even amount to $500. (All my anime is bought with cash). I basically have only my education loan (Originally $8000. It’s $1200 now and will be paid off in February), my car note ($170 a month), my phone bill and internet/cable bill. So, I’m basically paying, what…. $350 monthly on ordinary living expenses. Wait. I have another bill that I refer to as “My Brother.” I almost forgot that I need to help pay his mortgage for his condo. I’m paying half for three months, meaning I’m paying $450 until March. Spoiled rotten, he is.
Anyways, I just calculated my end-of-year anime costs. I use Microsoft Excel to keep track of how much I spend and I do it by year. I have one big spreadsheet which I can see how much I spent since I started collecting in late 2003 ($17,410.39) and I keep other spreadsheets to see how much I spent in a year, starting from 2006.* I have the spreadsheet set up so I can see how much I spent on an individual series and how much I spent in comparison to MSRP. I spent $3,637.84 this year. I was slightly surprised by this because, well, I swear that I didn’t buy much this year. There simply wasn’t much that I wanted to buy that I didn’t already own. But then I remembered this one week when I bought Sailor Moon. Grand total for those four box sets was $872.39. And a great deal of that actually went to Sailor S (third season). Most expensive anime I’ve bought, I think. Because of my out-of-print hunting, 2010 ended up being my second most expensive year for anime.** *I didn’t start seriously collecting until 2006, which is why I didn’t keep track of year-end costs until then. My total costs from 2006 until now added up to a little over $15,000. This means I spent only about $2,000 from 2003 until 2005. About $700 a year. **In case anyone was interested, 2008 was my most expensive year. The funny thing is, most of the anime I bought was less than $30. But I bought a lot. This year, my spreadsheet goes down to row 112, starting from row 3. In 2008, it went down to 231. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24122 |
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Just checked my credit card account on line and my first anime related charge for 2011 has shown up. The individual particulars are:
Craft Label Rem statue - Cost: ($58.03 U.S.) Shipping: ($9.99 U.S.) Retailer: ANIMEiacs Inc (through Amazon.com) Cdn. Total: $69.67 [Currency diff: +$1.65] Any amount I put in round brackets means that is the U.S. price. The bolded Canadian total is what appears on my credit card since, obviously, there are currency fluctuations. Just for poops & larfs, I'm going to keep track of how much extra I pay out due to currency differences. If the loonie ever stays above the U.S. dollar for an appreciable length of time, I'll actually start SAVING money - fancy that! This is the overall picture so far for 2011: Budget: $1,000.00 Gift Money: $500.00 Value of Items Sold: $0.00 TOTAL 2011 BUDGET: $1,500.00 Anime PTD: $0.00 Manga PTD: $0.00 Merchandise PTD: $69.67 Other PTD: $0.00 TOTAL PTD: $69.67 Budget Remaining: $1,430.33 Shipping & handling: ($9.99 U.S.) HST: $0.00 Import Tax: $0.00 Total Currency Diff: +$1.65 PTD stands for Puchases To Date As you can see, I'm keeping separate track of my s&h costs, how much Harmonized Sales Tax and Import Tax I'll pay and, as I mentioned above, how much extra (or less) I'm paying out due to currency fluctuation. Normally, import tax would not be a factor for me, but I have ordered stuff from Japan and I don't know if they will be subject to some sort of import tax or not, yet. |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 10000 Location: Virginia |
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@Blood-
What is the "Harmonized" Sales Tax? That is not a word I would normally associate with taxes. Government speak?? |
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jmfsilenthill
 Posts: 1863 Location: Chinese cartoons are srs biz |
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It's a Canadian thing  . I'm pretty sure it's just our Provincial sales tax (Pst) and our General Sales Tax (Gst) lumped together or "harmonized" into one tax. Not every province has this I believe.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24122 |
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jmsilenthill speaks the troof. Ontario recently "harmonized" its 8 per cent sales tax with the federal government's 5 per cent sales tax into one big 13 per cent tax.
... Hey, living in a socialist paradise doesn't come free! 
It has just dawned on me that it is going to be difficult to figure out accurate "to the cent" totals the way I have broken them out above because I buy virtually all my stuff from either the U.S. (and recently, Japan) and normally a single order is made up of multiple items. So, while an invoice will break down the individual items in U.S. dollars, the total I actually pay only shows up as one lump sum on my credit card and in Candian funds. So let's say I order $150 U.S. worth of stuff from TRSI that includes 2 anime titles and 3 manga volumes. On my credit card, depending what the exchange rate is, the amount might show up as $153. 50 Cdn, let's say. But there is no way for me to accurately calculate to the cent what the individual items in that order cost me in Cdn. funds. I can, of course, use a site like Universal Currency Converter to plug in the individual U.S. prices and get the Canadian equivalent, but the "unofficial" individual results that the UCC will give me, added up, will probably not match to the cent the "official" amount that appears on my credit card. Argggh, pain in the ass. Why don't you Amerkians just adopt the loonie as your currency??? |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 10000 Location: Virginia |
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@Blood-
Actually if we were going to change, I would go for using the Yen. Then we wouldn't have to sweat the exchange rate. My wife buys dolls from a couple of Canadian stores, but they handle the exchange. My credit card tacks on a 1% fee for handling. What is fun is when she buys from Japanese stores. Trying to figure out the exchange rate is hard and getting worse. Oh well. This accounting isn't going to be precise for a lot of reasons. I some times by manhwa at the same time as manga and anime. I don't think it is possible to be precise on the shipping charges. Often it is a flat rate regardless of the additional items. RACS provides some discounts on the whole order which will also make accounting hard. On minor stuff like that I intend to use SWAGs. (Scientific Wild Ass Guess) Currently we don't have any national sales tax. Most states do have sales tax at different rates. However, an online store is not required to collect sales tax for any shipment to a state where it does not have a physical location. Technically, at least here in Virginia, you are still required to pay the tax, but it is self reported (on the yearly state income tax form) and you know how that goes. Most of the state governments are trying to change this but so far so good. |
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ninjapet
 Posts: 1517 |
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I spent about $500- $600 last year.
Keep in mind I'm in school just got my first job and all that. The year before was about the same. I try and keep it under $600 which is a hard thing to do. So It's more about waiting for a cheaper re-release for me. Waiting for sales and not buying every series I enjoyed, only the ones I know I will rewatch or enjoy in the future. Then again I spend most of my money on figures. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24122 |
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Not a bad rule to follow regardless of your budget. As I've said before, if I was starting out with what I know now, I would have purchased very differently. |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 10000 Location: Virginia |
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Totals for the week (or the year to date):
Manga: $47.64 Anime: $68.94 Figures: $134.94 Tax: $12.58 S&H: $25.90 Total $290.00 |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24122 |
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Okay, so the TRSI order that includes my prized Cecily towel has shown up on my credit card. Here are the individual pahtikulars:
Tokimeki Check-in! CDRom Game (Windows) $9.99 Shigurui: Death Frenzy Blu-ray Complete 15.99 Sacred Blacksmith DVD Complete Series 43.86 Rumbling Hearts DVD Box Set (Hyb) - Viri 9.99 Rosario+Vampire Season II Graphic Novel 6.74 Persona -Trinity Soul- DVD Box Set 2 (S) 38.99 Persona -Trinity Soul- DVD Box Set 1 (S) 34.99 Legend of Crystania DVD Complete Collect 14.99 I'm Gonna Nurse You 2: Is the Sorority H 9.99 Genshiken 2 DVD+Tshirt Bargain Bundle (H 23.99 Dance in the Vampire Bund Graphic Novel 7.42 Claymore Graphic Novel 17 (200 pgs) 6.74 That comes to a total of $223.68 U.S. On my credit card statement the amount is $228.88 Cdn, meaning I "lost" $5.20 Cdn on the currency exchange. And I'm not done paying for the order. Assuming my postal outlet doesn't screw up, I'll have to pay $7 C.O.D as well as the 13% HST (roughly $30). However, once in a blue moon, I get lucky and Canada Post forgets to collect that, heh-heh-heh. We'll see. So for now this is what the overall picture looks like: Budget: $1,000.00 Gift Money: $500.00 Value of Items Sold: $0.00 TOTAL 2011 BUDGET: $1,500.00 Budget carried forward: $1,430.33 Order #2 - $228.88 (+ 23.43 HST & + $5.00 handling fee) Budget Remaining: $$1,201.45 Anime PTD: ($182.80 US) Manga PTD: ($20.90 US) Figures PTD: ($58.03 US) Games PTD: ($19.98 US) Wall Scrolls PTD: $0.00 T-shirts PTD: $0.00 Movie Tickets PTD: $0.00 Subscriptions PTD: $0.00 Con admissions PTD: $0.00 Misc. Merchandise PTD: $0.00 Shipping: ($9.99 U.S.) C.O.D: $0.00 HST: $0.00 Import Tax: $0.00 Total Currency Diff: +$6.85 Last edited by Blood- on Sat Jan 22, 2011 5:15 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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The Naked Beast
 Posts: 1028 Location: A Blue Planet |
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I placed my first anime order of 2011 on today of all days. I mean, look at the date, January 11, 2011 (1-11-11).
Let the number crunching begin. Amazon 1 order 2 DVD 1 Blu-ray Birdy the Mighty: Decode, Part 1, DVD, $25.99 Birdy the Mighty: Decode, Part 2, DVD, $25.99 Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, Blu-ray, $23.99 Total to date: $75.97 |
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HyugaHinata
 Posts: 3505 |
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My 2010 total's probably around $120,000, hehehe.
Don't have the details on hand, but you know where to look.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24122 |
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Well, HyugaHinata, this year I'm only about $119, 700 behind that total...
...and catching up fast! 
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Sanosuke_Inara
 Posts: 1662 |
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This is a cool topic. It'll be great to post in it once I get a damn job and actually have a good+steady amount of $ to spend.
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