Console Talk

Favourite Awful Game I really found this one difficult, and had to look through quite a lot to find something I thought was a good fit, eventually I found it: Sonic R on the SEGA Saturn At the time this was meant to be SEGA’s answer to Mario Kart, but my god they messed it up. Hardly any tracks, gameplay was horrendous, and it was so ambitious the Saturn could barely render the track before you’d run over it. It was bad. HOWEVER! The music was out of this world, fully produced tracks with real singing and a great beat. It’s worth suffering the game just to listen to the tracks. I think some of them have even been re-used now - well worth trying to get hold of them and have a listen.

Seems like the word is spreading! Nice to see you all - stick around for a while with us!

I remember considering switching to this when it launched. It’s a great tool. Others that I like are: You Need A Budget Every Dollar You Need A Budget seems to be the most popular, but is a paid service. Personally I used Every Dollar until I started to want to customize things and realized I could make something better for myself so I now do it all in Google Sheets. Good call, as long as you have the 0% deal running you should pay off as little as possible. For investments I’d say the most important thing is do your research on what you’re investing in, and don’t get caught up in any get rich quick looking deals. Either decide on what type of companies you want to invest in and set a plan around that, or research funds and simply put everything into one or two of them. With budgeting this is (roughly) how my monthly budget sits: Housing (35%)
This includes rent and everything we MUST pay each month like electric, internet, water, phones etc. The MUST part is a little subjective, but I consider things in here to be essential. Joint Expenses (15%)
This is our monthly variable expenses, food, dining out, trains, taxi etc. We will always need to spend money on them but can drastically reduce them if needed. When I wasn’t working this was about 6% and we still had some room to drop if needed. Spending Money (10%)
This is free money to spend on whatever we want, 5% for me 5% for my wife. I usually spend 3/4 of mine and my wife about half, leftovers we account for and save for individual big purchases. Savings (40%)
We allocate these differently dependent on current situation. At the moment it’s as follows: Emergency fund 20% Child fund 5% Personal funds 5% Christmas 10% Of that I’ll hold a certain amount in cash and the rest gets invested. The cash is available anytime we need it for emergencies, buying personal big items etc. and the investments are long term savings we don’t touch. I manage our monthly spending, saving funds, and cash flow via one combined sheet in google docs so that I know where we hold everything and what the money has been allocated to.

I still haven’t watched these despite them being on my to-watch list ever since they were released. On the plus side I’m still spoiler free so maybe now is the time.

Favourite Town/Village Crescent Isle: Skies of Arcadia It starts off as an desert island that you get stranded in and you return later in the game to build it into your home, complete with customisation options based on the regions you've visited.