A few months ago, I traveled to France and considered buying a new laptop. My trusty Asus Eeepc was already three years old and had survived a lot—60,000 miles of motorcycle panniers, vibrations, heat, cold, rain, and more. It had been a good little soldier, and I couldn’t find a replacement that truly convinced me, so I held on to it a bit longer. However, after my last trip to Europe, it started making more noise, and I feared it might suddenly die. So, as soon as we returned to Guatemala, I went shopping for a new laptop.
Guatemala City has some decent shops, but it’s way behind when it comes to online shopping. I couldn’t check store inventories or prices online, let alone order a laptop that way. BF took me to Office Depot, where I found an Acer computer that wasn’t too big—being small was my main requirement—and it looked alright. Just alright, not great. I liked a slim Samsung model with a solid-state drive, but at $1,500, it seemed too expensive. The Acer, on the other hand, was under $400, which was a significant difference.
As usual, BF called me cheap, but my main point was that my old laptop had cost around $450 and lasted four years. Even though I could afford a $1,500 laptop, I wasn’t convinced it would last 12 years, given how quickly technology evolves these days. Twelve years is an eternity in laptop years; even my mom didn’t keep her Macbook that long. My new laptop would face the same rigorous use as the old one—travel, accidental drops, unreliable Guatemalan sockets—so I doubted it would make it to the 12-year mark.
We visited three more stores amid the pre-Christmas shopping frenzy, and I couldn’t take it anymore. The crowds, the loud Christmas music in early November, and the staff’s lack of knowledge about computers were all getting on my nerves. I was frustrated that we were wasting a perfectly good day shopping, knowing that I could have ordered a laptop online elsewhere in the world and simply waited for it to be delivered by UPS. I was also annoyed at wasting BF’s day, as he was driving me around, and I’m too independent to ask for such favors. So, after three stores, we went back to Office Depot and bought the $400 laptop.
I was so unimpressed with my purchase that I didn’t open the new laptop when we got home and continued using my old one for over a week. I was baffled by Windows 8 and concerned about the cloud storing my personal information and pictures. Despite knowing that most new laptops would come with Windows 8, it just wasn’t my thing.
A month later, I sold my old laptop to the maid for $200, meaning the upgrade only cost me $200. I was then forced to fully switch to the new laptop. But all I could think about was my upcoming trip to the US, where I planned to buy a smaller, faster, nicer laptop.
Long story short, we wasted time, I wasted money, and I spent energy migrating to a new laptop that didn’t really convince me. How many times have you done that? Needed a new shirt, grabbed the first one you saw at the store, and then never wore it? It would have been more productive to just burn the money.
Or when you bought a cheap kitchen knife that didn’t cut properly after a week, so you never used it again? Or picked up an item on sale just because it was 75% off, even though it wasn’t your size or something you’d usually buy? I’ve bought clothes one size smaller, hoping to fit into them eventually, but guess what? It didn’t happen, and I looked stuffed when I tried to wear them.
There’s this concept called cost per use, which is much more important than the immediate cost of an item. If you buy a $10 item and use it once, that one use cost you $10. But if you buy a $100 item and use it 1,000 times, it only costs $0.10 per use. I might be able to sell my current laptop in the village once I return from the US with a new one, so it’s not entirely wasted money. If I let the buyer pay in small monthly installments, I might get back the purchase price. But that’s not the point. I bought something that didn’t make me happy; I should have stayed home and had a beer instead.
Next time you go shopping, think about it. Ask yourself how often you’ll use the thing you just put in your cart, and put it back if you’re not completely convinced.
WHAT WAS YOUR LAST “MEH” PURCHASE?