I don't think they're that bad. Their designs are fun and they come with usable parts.

Well, maybe they're not THAT BAD but they arent good either IMHO - they contain relatively few pieces for the asking price if you ask me. BTW which parts are you referring to (always eager to learn :) )?

BTW the other code thread has somehow inspired me as invested 'lots of money' lately into lego. So I set up some rules to me, currently I was supposed to make one last pick-a-brick order (for about 60EUR) and have some time off. In regard to the pirates sets I even wanted to wait for a sale or something or maybe even completely abandon the idea.

Funny thing (also a little bit frightening) is, I went to our local carrefour today and just wanted to check the legos they had (they have this 5 Eur sale for small starwars sets). So I went there and checked those star wars sets again - then I remembered my new 'code' (still in the making) and decided not to buy any sets that don't really fit the general theme, no sets for parts only (thats a good rule actually!). So I was about to leave the lego department when a young lady approached me, she was clothed in some duplo dress and told me that they had a sale on duplos, buy one and get 30% off the cheaper second one. I told her, I am just interested in lego (didnt tell her it was for me, though). Then she said I can buy lego as well and get the 30% off - oh no...!!! So I asked her what if both items cost the same (I was already thinking about the outpost and the treasure island), she consulted her colleague and said its OK! - I was shopping with my mother, though and decided to check back with them later this afternoon (dont want my mother to see me investing too much into lego! :) ) well, so much for the code - of course I was planning to get those sets anyway sooner or later so this deal might not be so bad after all...

Still tell me about the interesting parts - I am always eager to learn new ways of applying parts!!!

Edited April 24, 20159 yr by Endriu

I just stick to a few main themes-City/Creator & Superheroes- with SH being my main concern, as I focus more on buildings for City. Then with SW I focus more on sets with clones, I'd like to get more of the theme for sure, but the funds...stupid, stupid funds.

It's easier to control spending when your broke all the time and trying to get out of debt on the Dave Ramsey plan.

I've been back into Lego for about a year. On the rare chance I do buy something for my PC I usually get Star Wars or Technic. I'm also very slowly Bricklinking a couple sets from my childhood, and some retired sets(technic, monster fighters and the modular series).

I came back to Lego through Bricklink with the goal of trying to make some extra money, now I find myself wanting to collect more than I sell. So I buy all the deals I can find, pull the pieces from those sets that are on my Bricklink wanted list, and sell the rest. I also only use funds from sales or overtime at work.

Maybe not the best method to build my collection but it's building slowly. Also once I complete baby step 2, then I'll be allocating a certain about of income towards my collection.

You'd probably be upset then, tuskel, if you knew what I picked up about 6 months ago on Craigslist:

4841: Hogwarts Express

4840: The Burrow

4842: Hogwarts Castle

10217: Diagon Alley

4867: Hogwarts

4866: The Knight Bus

4865: The Forbidden Forest

4738: Hagrid's Hut

plus these as well:

4195: Queen Anne's Revenge

4184: The Black Pearl

4183: The Mill

4182: The Cannibal Escape

3833: Krusty Krab Adventures

6862: Superman Vs Power Armor Lex

I paid 300 USD. And I'm embarrassed to say that I've done nothing with them, other than tally up what I have. Supposedly there was all Jack's Cabin in there as well (which I was going to keep for the globe and such, until I bought the Sea Cow). There also might be more of the smaller Harry Potter sets in there, but like I said, I haven't gone through it all. I only went off what instruction booklets I had in the tubs. I need to assemble them all to make sure they are complete, as I was told they all were. Then I have to decide whether to part them out or sell them as complete sets (likely the latter).

I also have about 60 sets picked up on clearance to part out, mainly TMNT and Creator sets, plus around 10 Melting Rooms we had on clearance at work, that I got for around 7 bucks each. Alas, I just don't have the time or the room to hammer through it all, but I should make both and get it done.

Edited April 26, 20159 yr by ElCrab

I used to have a lot of trouble with hobbies and entertainment, running out of money towards pay day and just scraping through. So, one of the app types I was keen to try when I got my first iPhone in 2008 was budgeting apps. Unfortunately I found that most of them are next to useless. They were often about looking at what you had spent money on, essentially backward looking, while having little in the way of helping you actually PLAN your forward spending or visualising where your cash flow will be. They were too inflexible too. You could set fixed amounts or percentages of total income to assign to certain categories for the future but they usually focused on fixed periods, like a month and there could be times in the middle of a month when money needs to go out but money hasn't come in. They also usually used a few basic categories with not much flexibility for fine detail. But the main problem was not knowing when each expense was and the affect on cash flow.

My solution was to create a spread sheet ( I used Google sheets but Excel, Numbers or others would be fine obviously) which is really long horizontally with a column for every day. On each day the top row shows how much money I had left over from the previous day (the first/current day is zero). It then lists, going down the column, my current bank balances and cash on hand (on the current day only), any income that I expect to receive that day and anything that will go out. At the bottom is the end of day total that will carry over to the top of the next day's column. I literally have like 300 days mapped out (I think Google still don't allow 365 columns in a Sheets file).

Finally, below this is a bar graph that visually shows how much money is left at the end of each day. I stretch the graph out and place it so that each column in the graph is directly below the corresponding numbers.

The beauty of this is that I can put in everything I know about, including how much I expect to pay for food and transport each day, my estimates of utility bills, car maintenance, fuel, insurance, etc., my haircut every 4 weeks, EVERYTHING, and it will show me at a glance in the graph the ebb and flow of how much I have left over. Not only can I tell how much money I have to spend at the end of the month, I can tell for every single day exactly how much I could spend that day without going negative before the next pay day - or after. You see cash flow is not just about the current pay period. If you have a huge car expense coming up in two months it's not good enough to just get to the end of the current pay period and be above zero if you needed to be well above zero to not be in trouble two months later. I can scan up to about 10 months ahead in seconds to see any upcoming issues.

And of course, I try keep a certain buffer amount so I don't see how much I can spend before I hit zero, I see how much I can spend without dipping below the buffer amount, just in case of emergencies.

The key to using this system is to load up the file each day or two, set expenses that have been paid to zero, set income that has been received as zero and update your bank balances and cash on hand to reflect the fact that those incomes and expenses have already come in and gone out. About once a month I spend half an hour adding on another month at the far end, adding in all the default income and expenses. Apart from that it can literally take 2 minutes a day after initial setup to update the latest stuff and see where you are heading.

Since I created this system 3 years ago I've found I have MUCH less stress leading up to pay day. I'm much less likely to run out of money and if I do spend too much on LEGO or other fun stuff it's easier to recognise the problem and cut back on things to keep the whole in check.

Edited April 30, 20159 yr by Naijel