State of collecting address

Today, I didn't set up any figures, but I did do something that's much more painstaking. I caught up my excel spreadsheets that I use to track all the money I spend on these things.

I've figured out a few things in the last 24 hours:

1. I spend way too much money on Toys.
2. I don't neccessarily LIKE tracking the amounts that I spend, because when I see it all tallied up, it's always more than I imagine and it makes me think about quitting.
3. When I'm not actively tracking, I will spend a lot more than when I'm not. Now that I'm all caught up and actively tracking again, I'll probably slow down a bit. For awhile.
4. I buy so much stuff that I had a hard time remembering what some purchases were. For example, I had a few purchases (under 50 bucks) in January from Sideshow that I could not figure out today. I finally narrowed it down using my order sheet there and my credit card statements and it was some accessories for the Darth Maul and Jabba figures I ordered. Still, it's scary that I couldn't figure it out for awhile.

I needed my paypal, bank and store receipts, along with order pages from Starwarsshop and Sideshow to sort out all the amounts. It took about an hour or two to catch up the records of everything I bought there. After that, I used Rebelscum's PM system (I save my transaction history there) plus my checkbook register to figure out all the purchases that weren't made with credit cards or paypal. I'm sure I still missed some (because once in a blue moon I actually pay cash for something).

I'm now caught up to current day, and one positive thing is my spending history has stayed pretty steady since 2004. Last year I spent the most of any year I've been collecting, but that's only because I also counted the costs of building the Star Wars room last year. Those shelves weren't cheap. When I factor those out, it was actually less than the year before, which is good.

So what's next?

I'm not sure. Maybe I'll slow down a bit. Maybe I'll change the focus a little (I've already stopped buying Unleashed and Vehicles from Hasbro, but maybe I can cut down further). I'm also going to try and set the rest of the stuff up, which is my constant goal. My biggest gripe about my collection is it's not currently all on display. I've got plenty of great stuff that just needs to be opened and put on shelves.

I am also a little upset that I don't have good pictures yet, so yesterday I bought something to help me remedy that:



All the pictures I take of my shelves turn out a little dark....so when I take photos of the whole room very soon, I'm doing it with some good lighting.