It’s the beginning of the year once again, which means that it’s time for me to do my annual ritual of tweaking my budget strategy in the eternal search for the perfect solution.
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Category Archives: Finance
Figure Financials: 2011 Year-End Report
With the 2011 calendar year coming to a close, it’s time to look back over the transactions for the year and see how the budgetary plans I made at the beginning of the year panned out.
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Figure Financials: 2011 Budget
Sorry for the delay!
Well, I’ve just been a lazy bum of late when it comes to this blog. No posts in the past five months and only a handful much beyond that. There’s no excuse for it, really. It’s not like I’ve been stuck in the Andes or anything. Anyhow, I figured I’d pick up where I left off in December and detail the changes to this year’s budget in response to observations from the past year.
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Figure Financials: 2010 Year-End Report
Another year has come to a close and this is when I like to look back at my budget for the year, see whether or not I stuck to it, and assess the consequences there-of.
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Figure Financials: 2010 Budget
It’s 2010 now, which means it’s time to revise the budget I laid out last year. Last year, I used 99.2% of my budget and acquired nine figures. I also, however, sold four figures from my collection to offset some of those purchases, which brings my net gain for the year to only five figures. Overall, I felt very constrained by last year’s budget and I feel like I probably underestimated both my personal spending behavior and the actual costs of a typical figure, which have increased dramatically in the past couple years.
As a result, I’ve decided to increase the 2010 budget by $500 to a total of $1,500, plus the rollover from last year’s budget ($8.26). Taking last year’s average figure cost (~$128) into account, I would estimate that I should be able to acquire 11-12 new figures under the 2010 budget. All the other rules from last year will remain the same.
Figure Financials: 2009 Year-End Report
Here’s the first part of the promised annual financial report. In a previous post, I laid out the budget I had set for my 2009 figure purchases. Now, I will look at my spending behavior in detail and analyze the effects of working within a budget.
As you can see, I managed to stay under budget. (Yay!)
You’ll notice that I burned through my allotted funds rather quickly, making the vast majority of my purchases within the first four months of the year. To be fair, I didn’t actually commit myself to a budget until a month or two into the year, so my first three or four purchases of the year were made without regard to any particular financial plan. Even so, I had thought my initial budget rather generous and I was disappointed to see how quickly those funds disappeared. I had to curb my figure spending drastically in the latter half of the year to ensure that I stayed within my budget. As a result, I missed out on several figures I probably would have otherwise jumped on.
You may also notice that my two costliest transactions were both through Tokyo Hunter. I think this is, in large part, due to the fact that both of these figures were Japanese-exclusive releases. In addition, the Miku figure was purchased well after the period of general availability, so market supply and demand forces were well in effect. I do think Joseph’s proxy fees run a tad higher than others I’ve dealt with, but he also offers the most personalized service I’ve seen.
Now, for some statistics:
- Number of figures purchased: 9
- Number of figures sold: 4
- Average cost of figures purchased: $128.74
- Average net gain from figures sold: $41.73
- Most expensive purchase: $259.10 (Voks – 1/6 Hatsune Miku)
- Least expensive purchase: $75.00 (Max Factory – 1/6 Kokonoe Rin)
My net gain from selling a figure from my collection was only about 1/3 of the cost of a new figure. While this number can vary quite a bit depending on what you’re selling, it does give you an idea that it’s not unreasonable to expect to have to sell several quality figures to finance the purchase of just one new figure.
That’s it for my annual financial report. I plan to follow up with my personal best and worst of 2009 and highlight some of the key figures that I missed out on this year.
Figure Financials: Introducing the 2009 Budget
It’s kind of late in the year to be doing this, but one of the key topics I wanted to discuss when I started this blog was the financial side of figure collecting. I hope to eventually share tips on how and where to save money on figures and provide examples of the real-world costs of figure collecting.
Along those lines, I established a budget for myself to cover all figure purchases for the 2009 calendar year. I plan to share the results of that budget at the end of the year and take a look at whether or not I was able to stick to my budget, what figures I was able to get, and what I wasn’t able to get due to budget contraints.
Without further ado, here are the rules:
- $1,000 USD of initial funding shall be credited to the budget balance on January 1st, 2009.
- The total cost (including base price, tax, shipping, deputy fees, etc.) of any figure purchase in the 2009 calendar year shall be debited from the balance.
- The net gain (selling price less fess) from the sale of any existing figure in the collection shall be credited to the balance.
- Preorders placed in 2009 that will not arrive until 2010 shall count toward the 2010 budget rather than the 2009 budget.
- Any remaining balance at the end of 2009 shall be rolled over into the 2010 budget.
Basically, I gave myself $1,000 to spend on figures for this year. If I feel like I need more than that, I can sell something from my collection to give myself more funds. At the end of 2009, I’ll look at my spending patterns for the year and make adjustments to the 2010 budget.
Figyura (フィギュラ) 