Friday Fun: Rewarding Myself


Before we begin the second installment of “Friday Fun”, I have two kind of housekeeping notes to make.  One, I think I will not necessarily do this series every week after all, because I suspect I’ll run out of things to talk about and it’ll end up flooding the site a little too much when I’m not as actively posting techie stuff.  Two, I have updated the share links that appear at the bottom of each post when you’re looking at a standalone post.  The previous links had gotten outdated as it was an old plug-in for Mango blog so I just replaced it altogether.

I actually found myself struggling to decide what to talk about for this post.  I mean there’s a lot of “fun” things I can talk about in my life I just can’t seem to get myself to narrow down to one today.  I finally settled on talking a little bit about the something that happened this month that made me pretty happy.  Namely I became completely credit card debt free!

I’m a goal setter.  I set quite a few goals the beginning of every year and I’ll update my progress on those throughout the year every month.  If you are ever curious I post that on my personal blog Eclectic Thoughts.  Anyway, being credit card debt free is a goal I’ve been working on for the last 3-4 years.  I’m not rich by any stretch of the imagination, I didn’t hit the lottery I don’t play, nothing like that.  Basically, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired, came up with a plan, and implemented it.

That plan is based on the seven My Total Money Makeover steps from Dave Ramsey as well as the advice of Suze Orman and Gail Vaz-Oxlade.  I jokingly refer to the three as my financial advisors.  Dave and Gail both advocate living completely debt-free lives, while Suze allows for a little bit more flexibility but she also wishes for paying off all debt, building an emergency fund, etc.

Now not everybody is going to agree with any of those ideas, and that’s fine. All of that is context for the fun part of today’s “fun” post.  For some of my larger life goals, I set up a series of rewards that I would “earn” when I accomplished milestones. 

Being credit card debt free is one of those milestones so I get a reward: a Playstation 3!  And before anyone comments and says it, yes I know the PlayStation 3 will be out later this year.  But it’s not backwards compatible and I have a lot of PS3 games to play, plus the PS3’s price should come down as they get closer to the PS4 release date.  I don’t care about it not being the latest, considering I am still buying and playing games on my PS One and PS2 as well as my Wii. LOL

So for the actual system, I’m probably going to get one of the 500 GB models, since they are only $30 more than the 250 GB ones.  I did decide I am going to “splurge” and allow myself to buy a new one versus a used one.  Of course, they don’t longer just sell the system only bundles.  The other bundles available now, I suspect I’ll get the God of War Ascension Legacy bundle primarily because it comes with the red system which looks really cool.

So with all that introduction aside, I thought I would share with you a couple of the games I’m looking forward to acquiring first.


  • Final Fantasy XIII – what can I say, I love Final Fantasy.  I don’t think I’ve missed a game since VI or VII. I have heard some complaints about the game from some of the more diehard Final Fantasy fans but I’ve got a plan for myself to see.  Nice bonus, because of its age, it is now under $15!  Score!
  • Tomb Raider – I love the series, and all of the videos interviews I’ve seen have me really excited about this reboot of the Lara Croft series. 
  • Dead to Rights: Retribution, Max Payne 3, & Genji: Days of the Blade – all three of these are games in series that I really enjoyed on the PlayStation 2 so I’m looking forward to playing the next chapters of the story.  All of them seem to have pretty good reviews as well.
  • Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch – it is animated by studio Ghibli!  I was already sold on that alone, but I was happy to see the reviews consistently praised the story and gameplay as well.
  • The Last of Us – if you’re into video games at all you’ve probably heard of it and seen the trailers and yeah, I have to play it.  It is unfortunately one of the few games on my list that is still pretty much at full price, so I may force myself to wait for the price to come down before I get it.  Or bug people to send it to me for Christmas!
  • Final Fantasy X|X-2 HD Remaster & Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix – I’m not normally a double dipper when it comes to games.  I don’t buy a game on multiple platforms or by again just because they got a release.  However for these two games I am making an exception!  Both will be the international versions of the games meaning more gameplay, more story, and, in the case of Kingdom Hearts, finally getting to see the story that happened in 358/2 Days which was only released on the Nintendo DS so it isn’t one I’d ever get to play.
  • Tales of Symphonia Chronicles – thus far the only Tales game I’ve gotten to play is Tales of the Abyss.  However I have been interested in playing more games from the series and Symphonia seems to be considered one of the top games from the series.  Plus this release includes the original game and its sequel.

I’m looking forward to many years of fun with my new system when I buy it.  I imagine there are many more games for it I might be interested in, so if you do have a PS3 and you have some favorite games that you think I might like to look at, leave a comment!  In case you couldn’t tell from my list above, I primarily play RPGs (except for strategy RPGs), some survival horror as long as it’s not too terrifying, and action-adventure games that have a good story element.  I’m not generally into first-person shooters unless it’s got an amazing story and I don’t really do sports much at all.

And with that, I hope you all have a great weekend!