Budgetting For a Game Career
Being a production intern, it occurs to me that I make less money than I used to. ;) Starting a new career involves making some sacrifices and in my case I knew to expect some belt tightening. Planning for this has been key–at least for myself, I find that I dont need much money to live on comfortably as long as I pay attention to what I’m spending money on.
The long-term plan is to learn everything I can and build the value of the contribution I can make to EA. Every day I’m learning a ton and everything I learn makes me more effective in my role. I love what I’m doing and the people I work with are great–with a boss like Hunter and the uber-experienced and helpful team I’ve lucked out to have, I see it as a matter of time before I learn enough to take things up to the next level of ass-kicking goodness…which is pretty fun to work towards.
New Habits
But in the short-term I’ve found some really interesting things by thoroughly reviewing my budget. I hadnt thought much about just how much I was spending on my car or what eating out everyday has been costing me. Both were less of a big deal on a bigger salary but now they are taking up a noticeable chunk of the budget pie. Then there are my communication bills: land line, cell phone, DSL, and hosting for my various websites. The smaller budget has forced me to do a spring cleaning of my finances and I couldnt be happier about it–as I work my way up in salary over time I will get to keep the habits I’ve formed that are saving me money right now. I’ll have more money to put towards savings towards a future house and other things that I would much rather have than extraneous internet accounts and eating out 2 meals a day. Heck…I enjoy cooking, I just never had as strong an incentive to build it into my routine!
Moral Of the Story
Budgets are good (and MS Money or Quicken help). Its a great feeling to be in control of my finances and to understand how I can be more lean and mean. Yall gotta try it.