It's Time to Go on a Book-Buying Budget. *GASP*

Alright, guys. This is a post I’ve been both anticipating writing and completely dreading to write. Why? Because I’m super excited about the idea of it, but I’m super weary about the execution and reason for it.

Basically, this post is all about my book-buying addiction, and how it needs to slow down. Not stop, just slow down. A lot. Therefore, this entire post is about my plans to go on a book-buying budget. Sounds super fun, right?

Now that I have my own full-time job, with my own full-time paycheck, I can buy whatever I want—as long as my bank account can afford whatever it is. And yes, my bank account can afford to buy books, but I just don’t need all of the books at one time. To recap for you, I’ve bought 21 books in less than two months. That’s insane. I can’t read that many books in four months, let alone at the rate I’m buying them. You can see some of the books I’ve bought (plus some that were gifts/review copies) in the photos throughout this post. As you'll see, it’s time for a change.

I’ve been on book-buying bans before. I just didn’t buy a whole heck of a lot of books last year. That was mostly because I was saving up to move to NYC. Now that I’m at NYC, I don’t have to worry as much about saving up. (Although, if I move back to Missouri, I need to worry about saving money for the trip back.) Then, though, I had a real goal in mind. I couldn’t buy books because otherwise, I couldn’t afford NYC.

I’ve never been on a budget before though. At least, not when it comes to books. I came up with this budget plan last month, and I promptly failed at it in January; however, I think January was just a crazy special case. There were a bunch of author events happening in January, plus, I’d just decided to do the book budget in the middle of January. So half the month had already gone by by the time I made the decision to budget. To fix this, I decided not to start my budgeting until February, and so far, it’s still intact.

My book budgets is this: I can buy as many books as I want as long as I don’t spend more than $75/month on books. The only thing this won’t include is June’s BookCon, which I’m hoping to go to this year. 

The reason I chose $75 as my limit is because a year of $75 purchases will lead to under roughly one total paycheck (after taxes). This means I’ve only lost two weeks of my life at work towards buying books, some of which I haven’t even read yet.

For February, I’m doing pretty well. I’ve spent $53-ish on books, so I have $22 left. I actually don’t plan on spending that $22. Now, I’m not letting my leftover money rollover to the next month. If I don’t buy a book in March for example, that $75 doesn’t contribute towards April’s budget for a total of $150. However, if I go over budget in March, then the amount I’m over will detract from April’s budget. Make sense?

I’m really hoping this plan works out. It’s not that I don’t want a bunch of books. My dream in life is to own a house somewhere with a giant library of books. I just can’t afford to keep spending money on them, especially if I move out of NYC next year.

I’m crossing my fingers that this goes smoothly.

Do you have a book-buying budget? If not, how do you keep from buying all the books? Let me know in the comments.