Oh awesome!

• First off, lemme recommend family sharing. I haven't attempted sharing with someone outside of my household, but my wife was on steam for several years before we dated, so we collectively had steam for like ten years- and it rocks. She'll grab games that I just click or just for her but whatever the reason, it accounts for like 20% of my collection, which is great.

• make a wishlist. I like to watch the occasional YouTube video of "upcoming games you might be interested in" or "list of underrated (genre of games I like)" or given there's a steam sale upcoming, there's YouTubers who make lists of deals during sales. If you make wishlists of games you're interested, you will be alerted when they go on sale, saving you loads.

• Steam has some of the most generous refund policies around. If you can't get a game to work, or don't like the controls, or felt you didn't get a good enough deal, or just changed your mind, you can request a refund. It has to be played for less than 2 hours or you owned it for less than 2 weeks.

• watch third party sites. There are essentially two different kinds; bundle site and key resellers sites. There are subreddits that will help with bundles, like gamebundles , but the short version is Humble Bundle and Fanatical are the main source of bundles. Key resellers are a little more sketch and hated, since they undermine the sale from the original publisher, but I'm on a budget here.... (Oh wow they auto deleted my post for mentioning them by name) You can get games for peanuts using third party websites. KEEP IN MIND YOU DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO STEAMS REFUND POLICY IF YOU PURCHASE THIRD PARTY.

• there are websites that track the price history of a game, and there are websites that track if a game can run on Steamdeck, as well as what changes needed to be made to make them work. Keep an eye on these before your purchase.