So far in 2010, I’ve averaged over $52 a month – at this rate, I’m on pace to top $625 in iTunes spending this year and THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN!

To be fair, spending $625 in iTunes in 2010 totally didn’t happen .. but only because I actually spent $836.77.

Here is some frantic justification:

• Some of those were gifts to people! I gave away apps for Appmas!
• People gave me gift cards sometimes!
• Only $605.39 of that is for apps; the rest is for music!
• My grand plan was to get accredited as an iTunes affiliate to help pay for my app purchases, but that didn’t happen through no fault of my own!

No matter how I spin this, it looks bad. It wasn’t intentional; it was just a really good year on the App Store – there were a lot of fantastic games and utilities released, and I have enjoyed almost all of them. Still, I can’t go on like this. Back in July I was horrified at my then-current rate of $52 a month – right now, I’m a hair short of $70 spent on iTunes per month in 2010 and that is kind of terrible (albeit a lot of fun).

So, what’s my game plan? For starters, it’s time to cut back. Yes, I was given the gift of 13GB free on my iPhone for Christmas (I got an iPod Nano to hold all my music, giving me more room for apps on my phone) .. but that doesn’t mean I have to buy new apps to fill the space. There are plenty of games I barely scratched the surface of before moving onto the Next Big Thing – I will start by reinstalling some of those, and be more stringent about what I buy. I’ve had fun running the App Blog, so that will keep going but I’ll try to focus more on free or sale items instead of leaping on every new thing that launches. Unfortunately, that’s easy to say right now – the App Store is on hiatus until the new year, which is why there have been no updates or new titles released for the past week plus. There’ll be a trickle of updates once the hold is lifted, but most major developers got their titles and changes out before the the clamp came down .. but we’ll see how solid my resolve is once things start up again.

Finally, I’m going put myself on a strict App Diet. This means removing the stored credit card information on my iTunes account, and limiting myself to gift cards paid for with cash. There are several places in town you can buy discounted iTunes cards (7-Eleven sells them for 10% off; Costco sells “family bundles” and London Drugs occasionally has sales on cards), so I’ll hit them up when I’m running low. I’m planning to give myself a budget of $50 a month – it seemed absurdly high when I decided on the amount, but clearly I’ve done more damage than that without blinking an eye so it’s a definite step back.

Having the internet as my witness did me absolutely no good in July, but I trust y’all – and I don’t want to have to make another post like this in six months, saying OOPS LOL GUESS WHAT because that sucks and then Ed will give me the stink eye for weeks and no one wants that.

It’s been a lot of fun though, hasn’t it? And I have no plans to stop entirely .. just to be a little smarter about it all. I can do that much, right?

this is pork pie pod. look how cute!