I‘m pretty intentional about wich games I buy full price around release, wich games I buy on sale only and wich games I buy used.
There‘s no good reason to buy Pokemon games new on release for example. Just wait a few months and get them used for half price.
Smaller indie games, or more niche titles that wont have huge production runs are more of a day 1 or full price proposition for me, certain first party games that aren’t part of the 10million+ seller club also fall into that category. Everything that sells well anyways, I might as well pick up later, on sale.

Game Pass handles the majority of my gaming needs. I buy games I truly want and know I'm going to complete. If I'm on the fence, I wait for a sale. So no, I don't struggle financial with gaming because I'm intentional, and generally not an impulsive buyer.

Able to buy anything, whenever I want.

But due to the several thousand games and liking money in my bank account... I always wait for a sale.
It's called being smart and thrifty.

I don't suffer from the FOMO or "Fear of Missing Out" bug that many others do.

if it’s a good game, and i believe I have time to play it, then i’ll buy it. Otherwise, I do not buy the game. Very simple.

Exactly. Thread is about whether you need to be thrifty or not though. The cost of living must have had or is about to have some effect on peoples buying habits. 

Oh your lucky, I'd love to be able to fully get rud of the impulse buy mentality and I do for some, skipped MH Wilds even though I was salivating and many other games but then you get that super craving like with Khazan for a souls likes sekiro experience and impulse buying it becomes so difficult to avoid doing. 

I'm buying less atm. For the moment and this can change anytime due to how shit the US is right now but for the moment I budget a month ahead for 1-2 games I want. I have to skip on some and hope I can down the road when on sale.

When it comes to video games, no.

When it comes to board game, then somewhat - they went up in pricing quite a bit since COVID, and FOMO is a real thing there - there is only limited amount of copies printed, and depending on success of the game, that might be it for quite some time, so it has become sort of a balancing act what to buy and what to skip (and amount of games being released each year is not helping at all).

I don't need to be thrifty at all. Time is the only issue. If I needed to be thrifty, I can easily play existing games or Free to Play games.

Jesus yeah, you're right. If things get so bad that food and bills double in price take all the money and no saving is possible in a worst case scenario then I have I have about 100 fairly positive reviewed games that are sitting on my account, maybe a 100 more that could be decent on PSN extra and NSO and there's the games I never tire of playing which could swallow a thousand hours easily. While it lasts (ginger crossed it will) I'm damn lucky to be able to buy games. The free to play games numbers are ever increasing so there must be people out there who are hurting so badly they can't afford games at all.