The year of living prudently…

 

When Labour came to power in the late 90s, it was not (as some suspected) a socialist spend fest of epic debt building madness.  Far from it.  In fact, Chancellor Gordon Brown’s buzzword for the first couple of budgets was something much less exciting – prudence.

No, not the name of his mother, pet cat or favourite car.  He meant prudent spending – not spending more than you earn, and in fact spending significantly less so as to try and get the whole economic ship back into shape.  So, ignoring the fact that labour soon tired of this approach and went into full on ‘spend mode’, I have decided to try and live the coming hobby season as prudently as possible.  Here endeth the historically inaccurate and grossly over simplified political commentary for this post.

Despite my best efforts in the post Great Inventory period, I still have a mountain of unpainted and unbuilt miniatures (from more than one game system) burning a shameful hole in my ever ill begotten pride.  So, in addition to the 2018-19 Hobby Season goals I will be trying to go a whole hobby season without buying a single miniature.

There are of course some caveats to this, so as to not make it completely insane.  The first being that if I do manage to exhaust my supplies of unbuilt and unpainted minis then I may resume spending (within my means) forthwith.  This is extremely unlikely however, and so should not be an issue.

The second is the issue of birthdays and Christmas.  My Lord and Ruler  Guiding Light Leader with an Iron Fist wife and family have come to rely on the ease of knowing what to buy me for these two singular occasions, and so I will make a twice yearly exception to the no spending rule on account of not wanting to cause them pain and anguish beyond the normal level of living with me.

Oh the horror…

Dealing with the backlog will be a three-fold approach.  Firstly, I will try to stay on track with the Hobby Season goals.  Secondly, I will try to get involved in as many modeling challenges as I can (such as the ongoing Vale of Legions painting pledges) as long as they compliment my goals.  Thirdly, I will be forced to liquidate yet more stock that I have been hanging onto.

So, wish me luck – if I make it to Christmas without buying any plastic crack I will be very surprised, but I’m hoping my flimsy resolve will at least get me to the end of the month and we will proceed from there.

One day at a time.