Just got lectured today by Mom about spending money- she says that when I want to buy something, I don't think about the financial consequences of my purchases, I just buy it. For the first time in my life I didn't feel immediately exasperated and a little angry. I think she's right, to a degree. When I've decided I want something, I work, save money, and then I spend it on the item I want.
It's not that I'm bad at economizing- I guess in some people's eyes I do spend rather irresponsibly, but to me that's just understanding the fact that I don't have any bills to pay atm. I'm accumulating a lot fo debt, for sure, but that debt isn't going to be paid off by me working my Christmas casual job. What my casual job pays is the random shit I like indulging in, such as food, drink, electronics and books. Oh, and really expensive concert tickets. Trust me, I DO understand the idea of opportunity cost- I just don't agree with what other people think is ideal spending. My Mom always insists that I save my money so that I can go travel- and I do plan on travelling, just not any time soon. I don't think travelling is more important to me than having a new laptop. This laptop will last at least 1 year, but it's not like I can travel for an entire year with 1.5 grand. Or maybe I could if I suffered impoverished conditions- but yeah what I'm saying is I don't want to go on a one week holiday when I can buy a laptop I can use for a year.
My propensity to save is very, very low, I know. That's mostly because at the moment, I don't believe I'm saving substantial money. I make like... less than 20 bucks an hour? It's a pretty shit pay rate if you wanna save for anything other than the stuff I buy. Over like, 2 years of working I've only managed to save 3k. I know that if I spent none of it, I'd have closer to 6 or 7k- look, that sounds nice, but without that money I would've missed out on a lot of time with my friends, a lot of books and definitely a lot of games. Those are all things I don't regret. I also went to that Jay Chou concert, and I don't think I'll get another chance to go again.
I think if there's ever a time to spend irresponsibly in my life, now is probably the time. I feel a little bad about spending but not that bad because ultimately I'm using my own money so it's fine. I guess you could say I'm making bad financial decisions, but in my mind the money I have now is too little to have any impact in the grand scheme of things. I mean when I graduate and start working I'm hoping to make at least double (per hour) what I make now- maybe THEN we'll talk about saving for a small apartment, a car and that kind of thing. Right now I'm pretty happy to just pay $70 for a shirt I like.
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Onto something else entirely- my friend came over one night and helped me set up my laptop- he also took some files off me. Then he went home and apparently his internet is disconnecting intermittently and he thinks he got a virus or something from my files. I feel kind of bad and kind of responsible and if his laptop needs repair I'll probably pay his repair fees. It's just that at the same time I don't feel like he ACTUALLY got a virus from me- like, I'm bad at IT and I don't actually know anything about anything but that's basically how I feel? It's probs because both my old and new laptops are fine and they've both loaded the same files. Yeah yeah I know that's not how viruses work and maybe my laptops just didn't get infected for some reason but his did, but still.
Good thing I'm working, eh? At least I have the money to cover should anything bad occur. When I went back to work everything felt pretty much the same. Deja vu all over the place, like I'd never even left. I guess that's the good thing about working the same Christmas job in same place year after year. People come, people go but everything's still the same. I believe at this point I'm actually close to being the most senior member of the store- and it feels bad because there is still so much I can't do because I'm away at school for most of the year.
Crazy as it sounds, I almost felt bored playing games the other day and felt inspired to study. It feels wrong NOT to be studying or reading up some article trying to catch up with the latest news.
Well, that's it for today- it's a fairly long post but I think I covered most of what's happening in my life atm. Bye bye.
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