As some people know, I’m notorious for the amount of money that I come up with and spend. It sometimes seems limitless, at least to me for the past 3-4 years.
I basically just want to share a bit of the calculations that I performed a couple days ago. These calculations don’t include anything that is not computer related, as I used the order history on my favorite computer parts website, but I think it’s still a great example of the money I’ve wasted over the past few years.
2005: $74.99
2006: $708.95
2007: $5867.28
2008: $3460.69
2009: $64.59
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Total: $10,176.50
It should be noted that I peaked in 2007 because I was buying a bunch of stuff such as the 2 computers I built that year(both really good). In 2008, I realized that I was spending too much, and I stopped in May/June, with only repairs from then on(amounting to maybe $300).
The truly sad thing is that I not only spent all of my money from my internship in the summer of 2007, I also have spent a great deal of my grandmother’s savings. The problem was that whenever I would see her, she would give me $500 or possibly more to help out with my college expenses(food, books, etc). I saw her a lot. Also, she would drop a grand in my checking account whenever she felt the need. I truly appreciate her generosity, but it has made me live in the spending lifestyle for the past few years. I cant do it anymore. With my car, my student loans, as well as future living expenses, I cant afford to have this habit of dropping all my money on a marginally faster computer part. I had rarely asked for money from her, but somehow she decided that I would use it better than her, so she kept giving. I have since asked her to kindly stop unless I ask for it because of the problem with spending that I’ve developed, and I’m happy to say that with the exception of money from my parents to help pay for grad school stuff, I’ve remained independent from my family’s funds.
I’ve developed a reasonable budget and plan to continue thinking before I make big purchases. I haven’t bought anything expensive unless I’ve legitimately needed it for the past 8 or so months, so I’m headed in the right direction I think. I have only one more planned large expense for the next few years, which is a laptop for graduate school, but I plan on raising funds by selling some of my existing computers on eBay and to friends. (Let me know if you want to know what I’ve got)
Anyways, I know this probably isn’t put together very well and is probably nonsensical at best, but it’s always better to get stuff written down. Thanks for reading.