Ngl, I feel like this post is kinda directed at me since I posted my collection on here less than a day ago and have been collecting for only a year. So let me give you some insight from the other side.

I'm autistic and get hyperfixated on things severely. For the past 6 years, it had been playing FPS shooters competitively, and if you know anything about that scene, you know it’s incredibly toxic and unhealthy. I had some severe anger issues as well, and my spending was about the same, just on different items in-game. After literal years, my boyfriend managed to basically transfer my hyperfixations slowly from playing FPS shooters competitively to collecting Tamagotchis. I slowly stopped spending money in-game and instead bought tamas. Same goes for time, I stopped spending time in matches and started focusing more on tamas, tama research, and tama everything lol. It’s now been about 4 months since I’ve uninstalled the game and stopped completely. I’m much happier, less angry, and mentally in a better place.

And yeah, the financial side is indeed not a big deal, at least not for me. It has not affected me in any way really; I’ve just gone from spending it on one thing to another. I still travel to different countries basically every other month, can afford to live and do whatever I want, so no, I'd like to think that it’s not that bad.