Impulse buying......how can I stop doing this LOL

yea i did it with LAIR, Yuck, your not alone amigo

LMAO count me in!!! LOL i ended up with Orange Box, AC, F1, UT, and few others like that Only to find out a few weeks later they all dropped below real price. Well UT did not....

Don't worry about it. As long as there is still money left over for the important stuff like beer, it will all work out in the end.

My only advice is to buy all the games you want, so many that you can't keep up, just don't open them right away. You will eventually sober up or read a bad review and return some of them for a full refund. This approach works very well for me on the Blu-Ray front but I still MUST have all top-tier games for all three systems on release day, no exceptions.

Limit your available storage. If you know you have to get rid of a disc when you get home if you show up with a new one, it will force you to know what game or movie you will be willing to sacrifice to aquire this new one. Am I willing to get rid of Metroid Prime 2 in order to bring home Kane And Lynch? No? Then I must not want Kane And Lynch too bad, huh?

Do all of your shopping online. It's a lot easier to resist when you're not holding it in your hot, little hands.

It's helped me a lot.

It happens to me sometimes as well. I went in to best buy friday to only buy an extra ps3 controller, and walked out with battlestar galactica season 3 as well. I need to go back there and get ut3 .

I have the same problem. I've just recently decided to purge my gaming collection of the games I don't play. I took a huge loss (gamestop! lazy way out) and I have vowed to not have to feel this stupid again. Time will tell.

I don't have to be in store or have the item in hand to "suffer" from it. Once I get an idea in my head it is over. Marketing of products is powerful. I have been looking more into the PSP since the updates for the PS3 and how they can work together. A year ago or even a month ago I wouldn't have wanted or given the PSP a second thought. Now they keep adding on more and more what it can do with the PS3 and it sounds awesome and hard to resist.

Yep. I just got a PSP myself. I never really thought about getting a hand-held and then "talked" myself into it. I actually have no regrets about the PSP though, it's pretty impressive. Probably just added to your problem didn't I?

Well ill talk you out of the psp. After 2 weeks of struggling to get remote play to work outside of my home network (this involved messing with my router, Roaming around town for 2 weeks trying to get a free wireless signal to test the remote play on, then coming back home because it didn't work, then id check more solutions which never worked, so rinse wash repeat for 2 weeks and seeing no solution to your problem is rough, especially if your tech savoy , then you take it personal), i sold it, and took about a 150$ loss (games and everything, that was my own fault, Impulsive i know). Even in my house, the responsiveness was laggy, and made ps1 games unplayable. Sure theres some good psp games like GOW, and FF7CC, but if you don't travel, its hard to make time for it, because you know you have a ps3 sitting in your house you'd rather be playing. but this is my opinion and based off my own experiences, stay away from the psp if Sharing your media server or playing ps1 games via remote play until they work the bugs out. Trust me, i am not the only 1 with the issues.

As for fixing impulsive buys, Read reviews good and bad. and don't forget to listen to the bad reviews. Poor lair buy... Poor psp buy.. gosh i lost some good money on that, Not fun in college, i should have prioritized. No one forced me to buy any of that stuff lol.

Yeah thanks you J**k A**!

add this to the discussion and it makes the PSP harder to resist:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1011140

LOL I have a friend of mine thats like this, he just cant resist buying new games, weather he wants them or not. I'm just the opposite, its gotta be one helluva game to shell out $60

Easy...subscribe to a game rental service. Such as Gamefly. I play all the games..but only buy the ones I deem worth the $$. Pretty Simple IMHO

The more expensive something is, the longer you should think about buying it, a game:2 days, a new TV:2 weeks (probably cheaper after 2 weeks though so you could get a new game too)

I'm guessing that your still a fairly young buck (early to mid 20's or so), no?

I did the exact same thing in my younger days - once the bills we're paid I'd blow the rest on music, movies, games, concerts....and of course booze and women Once I got married; and definitely after the kids started arriving well like most my extra time and more importantly my extra funds we're becoming less and less, that more than anything curbed my impulse buying.

Nowadays I'm a little more selective when it comes to my video games purchases, I tend to research more and buy less, but '08 is going to be an expensive year for gaming.

So far it's only been assasains creed on the PS3 it looked like a good game and was on sale for $39.99 at BBY. But I've put 4 hours in and the game became very repeitive. So I haven't touched the game in a few weeks now.

I used to to this a lot on Xbox/ps2 but I've learned to save my money more. Plus I have more bills

Self Control?

When you find a game you like, go home and read the reviews before you buy it. Look at the negative stuff too - they can be more telling (when properly written) than positive reviews. I'd been drooling over a Wii since Christmas, even had one in my hands a few times, but held back. Now I don't even want one. One thing that helps me is to think if I'm going to be using this in 2 months or it's just something to satisfy my tech-boner right now.

I'm 22 right now, fresh out of college, just adjusting to this whole idea of income. Now I've got a new car, student loans, and rent payments. Even after the bills are paid, there's plenty of money to go around. It helps that my wife vetoes a good number of my ideas, but I've gotten much better at holding money for other things. The main advice I can give is don't do things without thinking - stop for a few minutes and think about what you're doing.

My method exactly.

Gamefly has (mostly) curbed my impulse buying. The only remaining impulse buys are now PSN, XBLA, VC games, and used PS2, Xbox 1, and Gamecube games (which are all under $15). But at least it's helped with the really painful impulse buys in the $50-60 range.

It also helps a lot to have dedicated funds for gaming/tech related purchases. I keep a pretty regimented monthly budget of what I can reasonably spend on gaming and tech stuff. If I've got anything left over from the prior month, I add it to the next month's gaming/tech allowance. Helps to keep the spending at a manageable level. Mine is currently at about $100/month, but I'm a starving grad student, so YMMV.

The key to avoiding impulse buying is to pay with cash. Credit cards make it easy to forget how much you're spending. I think another good way to avoid impulse buying is to rent games first. It's a little expensive (I think Blockbuster is $7 for 5 days) but it's worth it in the long run. I've rented probably 4 games for my PS3/X360 I had wanted to buy and realized they weren't for me (the games are still selling at $60, so I would have spent $240 but instead spent $28.). I've also been thinking about subscribing to GameFly.

So, my advice is to pay with cash and rent first.

Renting from Blockbuster is a ripoff compared to Gamefly. For the price of renting two games (or one game twice) from Blockbuster, you can get a one-game/month plan from Gamefly. I can usually get 3-4 games per month (or hold onto a longer game for the better part of a month).

Much more worth it and their "keep it" prices are cheaper than Gamestop's used games. *And* you start earning discounts and $5 off coupons very quickly.

Turnaround times can be frustratingly slow sometimes, and you often have to wait a while to get your first choices, but otherwise I've been very happy with their service (have had it for the past year and a half).

Heres some advice:


"Buy a bullet, and RENT a gun"

guess what movie?