I have a good amount of trade credit at both GS and GC (no GR in my area, and the FYE here is tiny, out of the way, and doesn't sell games). For me to buy a game anywhere else, it has to be significantly discounted (such as the TRU B2G1, in which I bought 3 DS games, and the TRU SMG deal). Even when I buy things from GS and GC, I pretty much need to be getting a deal (I recently got GC to PM TRU's $45 price for a new GH2 360 bundle, for example, and I got both AC and ME used using GCs buy any controller, get any game 1/2 off, using $2 and $3 controllers). The few games that I've bought new at launch from GS (Bioshock LE, Zack & Wiki), I've been lucky enough that the purchases coincided with their 10% off anything coupons.
The only thing I've paid full price for in recent memory is the Wii Zapper ($20 at GC, cheaper than if I had used a 10% off coupon at GS).
I can't afford to spend $60 on games on a regular basis. As it is, I spend more than I should, but at least I get a lot for my money/trade credit, largely thanks to the deals I find on CAG.
RB bundle, AC, ME, and GHII bundle are my most recent purchases. If I had bought them all for full retail, I'd be out $380, possibly plus tax. $380 is more than I can afford to spend on games in such a short period of time. Even if I used only trade credit, I'd run out of that trade credit in a matter of months. By waiting for deals (and getting extremely lucky with RB), they cost me about $160, out of which about $100 was trade credit. If you take RB out of the equation (because it wasn't a deal available to a lot of people), it comes to $100 trade credit spent vs. MRSP $210 (although there have been plenty of deals for AC, making it next to impossible to pay full MSRP for it, even if one wanted to).
