Below is a guest post from Marissa over at Thirty Six Months, where she blogs about paying off debt fast, curbing her impulse shopping and all the other things one has to do become financially independent. You can see my post, The fastest route is rarely the most direct one, on Marissa’s blog Thirty Six Months.
What gives me the most value? Well, I could say my education since that left me with debt, but because of it I am able to do something that I love, or I could say my car, although it was an impulse purchase and I could have done better researching it. I own a lot of things. I used to be described as materialistic, but these days I making a conscious to spend on quality over quantity and on products that fill a need for me.
I have many vices, most of them are tech toys. I love gadgets of all sorts, they make my life easier. I am the girl who spent $600 to $800 on cell phones just so I can have them before anyone else, or has bought and sold multiple tablets just so she can try them first. When I was young and foolish and money was not an issue I spent my income on a variety of frivolous things, but now that I pay close attention to my finances and am in paying off debt mode, I have become very cautious of my spending habits and inspect every large purchase closely. Thus my impulse shopping has reduced. There are two things that I would have a hard time functioning without. First is my Blackberry. Yes, my cellphone which I spend about $100 a month on. It keeps me sane on the most ridiculous days, the other is my laptop, without which I would not be able to blog far away from home.
My Macbook Air is the thing that I have recently spent money on. I love it. After being a PC user for so many years, I even can’t begin to describe how amazing and intuitive it is. I have used it in university before and I am fairly comfortable with its features but I couldn’t justify spending almost $1600 on a laptop. Turns out I did and I am so pleased with that I am looking at buying an IPAD to go with it. Although I am having an issue deciding between an Ipad 2 vs a Samsung Galaxy Tab.
What I use my MacBook for:
- Banking
- Webdesign
- Blogging
- Media center for when I am travelling
- Photo and Video editing
- FaceTime with my team – better option than Skype.
Yes, I know it costs 3X as much as a PC laptop would have, but I would have had to repair it that many times as well. I spend about 6 hours daily on various projects outside of work. I know even my brand new PC was not able to handle that type of work load. It is designed with the user in mind so when I am doing design works or just typing 17 page sales reports, it stays alive. The only issue that I had with it was that there are multiple programs that are Windows only, this is easily fixed by using a program that also allows Windows to be run on my MacBook.
This laptop brings me peace of mind and that to me is worth anything.How many other laptops can say that?
I personally love my iphone. I use it for so many things. It is like an all in one device. I use it for directions, music, learning, working out, and shopping. It so handy.
@Miss T: Me too; it seems my iphone is becoming my second best friend. I have to get out more, it seems. Ha, ha.
When we travel, we only go business or first class on airplanes. Before you think I spend money wastefully, I use frequent flier miles and just takes longer to accumulate them. It is the only way to fly and we get a lot of value from it.
@Krantcents: I would never think that someone who is spending money (or airmiles) on flying in comfort is wasting it. And you are right – this can contribute loads of value though it depends on the distance. Flying from Europe to the US economy is a killer.
I am just the opposite and wait to buy technology until almost everyone has it. Still, I understand about your Air Book. It is important to have a good tool for your work.
Can you specify what model of Mac do you have? Air? How much inch?
@Alexander: This is a guest post by Marissa over at Thirty Six Months. You can visit with her and ask her – I am a Dell girl myself.