Look at the pretty I have bought this festive season!
It does mean that I'm living on toast for the next couple of months and may have to start walkiing to work (yes, I know it's 14 miles away), but soooo worth it!
Now I can chat on skype, or do some Facebook stalking, or even blog while still in bed, or in the living room, or most dramatically, ON THE BUS!!!! Well, okay, it has only worked on the bus once so far due to it being Stagecoach (i.e. mostly rubbish) and there rarely being enough seats for everyone let alone working wi-fi. But in theory I can have the internet on the bus on my tiny little 'puter!
Apart from the brilliance of iPlayer on the move, the most remarkable thing about my new toy is that it is probably the first time ever that I have actually saved dilligently and paid for a high ticket item with money that exists now and is all mine. Which is pretty shameful considering I'm entering my 35th year, but one of the positives of "credit crunch" times. Part of the joy of this purchase has been the months looking at different options on the internet and stroking things in Currys and PC World. In the old carefree days of buy now, pay at some point in the future when I get a fabulous high paying job and my life finally gets on track, I would have just gone..." i want that one"...and bought it. Now that the reality of a career in retail has finally sunk in (after 8 years it's probably not a temporary stop gap anymore) I am actually budgetting and making sensible decisions about what is realistically within my grasp.
Well, I say that...but if i was really sensible i would have waited another couple of months in order to save myself from the "£2 a day" torture of the next few weeks...but baby steps...
The weird thing about all the Credit Crunch chat of recent times is that I had naturally decided to reign myself in before the media frenzy telling me that I had to. Economics are very far from being my strong point so I have to admit that I have just been believing what the BBC tells me without question and panicking accordingly. I was sooo relieved when just before christmas a friend who has been out of the country for a while asked out loud the question that has been blinking in the back of my head for a while. "Why do people suddenly have no money, when the amount they are earning hasn't changed?" It's a good question. I have no money because I always have no money. I have the potential of credit, but am choosing not to exploit it. Most of my friends have more sensible jobs and have always had a healthy disposable income...can that have changed so dramatically just because bread is a few pence more expensive?
The money people have to spend on unecessary (but life enhancing) crap is definitley going further. Thanks largely to that bald headed, shouty daytime telly bloke the average customer now sees shopping as more of a challenge than a pastime. The run up to Christmas was a battle of the wills between retail and customer.December looked as though it was going to be a disaster as the usual present buying frenzy held off and held off until Christmas week itself. People seemed to think that if they just waited another day they'd get the bargain of the century. I can't tell you how many times people asked me the price of guitars and looked incredulous when I quoted the price that was written clearly on the instrument. "But if I buy this, what will you give me?" Well...a guitar?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the barter system went out when we swapped potatoes for a more metallic type of coinage!
Ach, I can't really complain as I did exactly the same when I bought my netbook. A flutter of the eyelids, the threat of just ordering from Amazon and the man in PC World gave me a 10% discount. Okay, it was the display model, but it did have the added bonus of including comedy pictures that random shoppers had taken of themselves. I think they were supposed to wipe them before they gave it to me.
Curses! I deleted them. I should have kept them, posted them here and then alerted the News of the World to the terribly careless way personal details were handled by a respected retailer. That would have saved me from a month of toast for tea!
I must admit that I'm the teensiest bit jealous of your new laptop; I've got one, but it's for work purposes and I'd really like to get one just for mucking about on the Internets while I'm relaxing in the living room or in a coffee shop (never in bed; I don't think I'm an in-bed computator).
Like you, we didn't magically run out of money when everyone decided that the economy had fallen face-first into the mud (which then turned out to be quicksand); we just never had any money to begin with. Our approach to losing as little as possible in the markets is to have as little as possible in the markets. It's working like a charm so far.
It's good to see you blogging again. We wants more.