k.unwrapped

I have been completely on my own for almost a year now. When I was in college I always worked and supported myself, however, I always knew that if things got REALLY bad, I could call my stepdad and he’d help me out. Now that he and my mother are officially separated, and he now has his own apartment & extra bills, that’s not an option. Back in school my expenses were extremely low so getting an extra $100 from my stepdad was like a million bucks lol. My expenses now include rent, car note, insurance, etc, so that just wouldn’t work for me now. Not to mention that I’m grown! Over the past year, my attitude towards money has changed drastically. I was never a spendthrift; however, I now truly know the difference between needs and wants.

Needs = things for survival, followed by things for comfort

Wants = things that I don’t even think about until I see an ad for them 

On a message board that I frequent, there’s a debate going on about the Play station 3 (retail $500). As I watched the news last week, I was amazed by the people caught on camera falling all over each other to get into the store to drop $500 on the game system. You would have thought they were lined up to get some free shit, not to PAY somebody 500 bucks. If you go to Ebay.com, you’ll find PLENTY of PS3’s going for $1000+. If it’s true that 70% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, and that the average family carries $8k in credit card debt, doesn’t it follow that MANY of these people can’t afford the PS3? My beef is about more than just a $500 game system that’ll be obsolete in a year or two; it’s about how easily we are brainwashed into believing that overpriced shit is "worth it." It’s relatively easy to convince people that they "need" things that they wouldn’t have even THOUGHT about if they hadn’t seen an ad for it. People SWEAR that they can "afford" $2k designer bags, $500 games, and $30k cars on $40k salaries and it’s sad. These are the same people crying "broke" and whining that they "don’t make enough money."

So, on the message board there were people saying that the game is worth the price because it has some new DVD technology. This means that we have yet another home movie format coming out. So, we have to buy the new high-tech DVD player…then we have to buy the new formatted DVDs so that we can actually use the player which = more money spent just to watch movies! My old DVD player works just fine and I will not replace it until they stop making regular DVDs (notice how VCR tapes are nowhere to be found!).

It seems that many people generally don’t have a REAL grasp on affordability. I caught a little bit of that Vh1 show, “the Fabulous Life of the Rich and Famous” and the focus was on celebrity dream homes. They profiled these houses with the price, and then they broke it down by monthly mortgage. Mortgage! Why in the world would someone raking in 20+ million per year have a mortgage? Perhaps they are buying houses that they can’t afford? Maybe they’re using the mortgage to keep a high credit score? When I read that Whitney Houston was in danger of losing her home, and that she was millions behind on the mortgage I nearly choked. She was raking in some serious millions not too long ago…why isn’t her house paid off?

I went to Walgreen’s yesterday to get some razors. They had the fancy pink ones for $12.99 (only 3 in the pack smh) and the Walgreen’s brand for $1.99 (10 in pack). Do the cutesy ones actually provide a better shave? All I want is hair-free armpits and the Walgreen’s brand never lets me down. Are the pretty colors & shapes of the razors used to lure us into buying something more expensive that essentially performs the same function? Anyone who uses the fancy ones let me know!

I’ve made up my mind that I’m going to accumulate REAL wealth in this life; however, that will never happen if I:

- convince myself that I "need" a new car every 3-5 years
- spend excess money on trends
- charge more than I can afford to pay off in 30 days on my credit cards
- put off saving for retirement, emergencies, and home ownership, etc.