I am, despite what you might hear from my wife, an acquisitive person. As you might know or have guessed the area where I allow the most free rein to this vice is in the acquisition of books. I've been relatively disciplined about this over the last year or so. I've tried to work out a plan where I'm pretty much just buying books from my amazon wishlist, thus cutting down on impulse buys. I allow myself to add freely to that list, but I restrict my purchasing. What I have been doing is allowing myself one used book purchase off the list each month. I also get occasional gift certificates (from my amazon visa card and actual gifts sometimes) which I'll use to purchase new books.

I've been keeping more or less to this plan. I'll make exceptions for odd things like library sales, or books I can use for my profession. I just get frustrated a bit looking over my wishlist and thinking how long it will take me to get to some of these books. OTOH, I've got maybe 70-80 books in hand that I haven't yet read, so it's not like I'm running short of material. Still, I wonder if I could allow myself a small raise in the old book budget. Maybe every other month buy $25+ to get the free shipping or something.

Anyone else fret over their book budget? Anyone else HAVE a book budget?