Student Loans and Retro Gaming for the Original Xbox (Part 2)
Growing up in a single-parent household below the poverty line, I was raised with an unhealthy outlook on saving and spending money. Just a few years ago, my idea of living frugally was eating nothing but Ball Park Cheese Franks, drinking off-brand Dr. Pepper, and watching my roommate’s copy of The Big Bang Theory Season 1 on DVD. When I imagined repaying student loans, I assumed I would return to that lifestyle again, except this time with up to ten seasons of The Big Bang Theory to download or bum off a roommate.
But as I talked about last month, repaying student loans became an opportunity for me to reshape my relationship with spending, saving, and entertainment. I started retro gaming for the original Xbox, Microsoft’s first attempt at a video game console, shortly before my loan repayment plan kicked in. On a weekly basis, I pick up games online, in pawnshops, and at Goodwill for ten cents to six dollars a piece. Even if the vast majority of my time and resources over the next year and a half go towards repaying student debt, at the end of that process I plan to have something else to show for my time: an obscene amount of old video games.
The price of each game means I can take a risk on titles I would be hesitant or unable to buy at full price. A platformer about a voodoo doll who stabs himself in various alleyways of New Orleans’s French Quarter? Of course I picked that up. A fighting game called Def Jam Fight for NY where you throw Danny Trejo in front of a moving subway? I absolutely bought that.
Best Pickup This Month: Def Jam Fight for NY ($2, CeX)
Def Jam Fight for NY is a fighting game with the voices and likenesses of Snoop Dogg, Flava Flav, Danny Trejo, Sean Paul, and other celebrities of various levels of relevance in the early 2000s. If these guys cared how their likenesses were used, that certainly did not come across in the game. Within the first hour of gameplay, I was hurling Sean Paul’s head through a jukebox at The Babylon night club. Snoop Dogg pushed me out the window of a burning building, not because he was trying to save my life, but because he thought the impact would kill me quicker.
The game not only lets me play dirty, it forces me to play dirty. Either I break a beer bottle over Flavor Flav’s head while he bleeds out on the hood of a Hummer, or he’ll do the same to me. I find myself playing the game for short but satisfying sessions (usually 15–20 minutes) every few days, just enough time for me to break a beer bottle over Sean Paul’s head at a strip club and have him return the favor.
It’s a surprisingly healthy relationship. When I’m at work earning money I know will just go to student loan payments, it is good to know that something different and disruptive is around the corner, like having Danny Trejo throw my face into a barbed wire fence at Club Murder.
Student Loan Payments This Month:
To kick off February, I paid off another high-interest Stafford loan for $1,900. The money came out of the savings I built up as an overnight security guard in 2012–2014.
When my paycheck cleared at the end of February, I went ahead and sent another $500 towards loan repayment, so this month’s total comes to $2,400.
I decided to consolidate my three remaining loans into one big loan which will make managing payments easier and it also lowered my total interest rate by .3%. A couple weeks later, I signed up for automatic monthly payments, for which I was rewarded with an interest rate reduction of .25%.
Even though my interest rate only dropped by .55% in February, I felt like I cobbled together a personal victory. I felt thrifty and attentive. It wasn’t a “I just bought Def Jam: Fight for NY for $2” level adrenaline rush, but it was certainly close.
Other Game Pickups this Month:
Advent Rising $0.10
Crimson Skies $0.10
Chronicles of Riddick $0.25
Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire $0.50
Shrek 2 $0.50
Halo $2
Halo 2 $2
Dragon Ball Z Sagas $2.50
Voodoo Vince $4
