Buying stuff is hard....

I hate buying...well, I hate buying pretty much anything, if it comes down to it, but I especially hate buying big ticket items. The unknown potential consequences of the decision coupled with the known expenditure are a bit too much for the tight-fisted control freak in me.

I want to buy a new computer. My current model is about four years old, which sounds young to me because I had my previous computer for almost ten years. Of course, I was mostly using that for writing papers in college. The digital revolution passed my current desktop's 40 GB hard drive and 256 MB of RAM a while back. Also, my monitor is even older than four years and has begun flickering in the lower left corner. Also, I've been getting the Blue Screens of Death that I was ignoring all too often on my old computer, right up until it melted down and forgot where to look for its hard drive. So as far as new computers go, maybe it's about time.

I was pretty much sold on a Mac, thanks to both of my major computer geek friends being hardcore Mac devotees, and then today I talked to some friends who were bringing up objections that had been lurking in the back of my mind, too. Things like price, and compatibility, and familiarity, and ease of use due to said compatibility and familiarity. So now I'm all thrown off again. Maybe I could win a computer somehow. That would solve my dilemma. I wonder if somebody would give me a Mac in exchange for writing fanfiction...that's how I got my iPod....

Anyway, as I was saying, I have difficulty with making luxury purchases. The perfect example of how ingrained this is dates back to when I was around 8 years old, and was ogling dollhouses everywhere. I loved the little furniture and other miniatures involved in dollhouse decorating, and I wanted to try my hand at it. My dad made a deal with me. If I would save a certain amount of money, he would match it, and then we could go buy that dollhouse.

At the time, I was pulling in a small allowance from my parents. This, plus birthday and Christmas money, was the total of my income. But I squirreled that money away diligently and made it up to the established savings mark.

We went to The Doll Hospital & Toy Soldier Shop, an excellent toy store on the east side of the state. With my money figuratively grasped in my hot little hands and probably literally in my dad's pocket, I began hunting for the perfect dollhouse.

There were a lot of dollhouses.

A lot.

And the more I looked at them, the more I realized that even if I could come to a decision, I would still have to make similar decisions later, and spend even more money, because the dollhouse would need to be furnished.

I left with double the savings I had when my dad first made the deal with me.

(A few years later, my poor mom would stand in an aisle at Toys 'R Us for approximately an hour while I vacillated amongst three different Barbie dolls that each had a distinctly different hair and swimsuit color.)