I just spent about $500 on a new phone. I’m kind of excited for it, but I also kind of want to throw up.
My first smart phone was around $330. It overheated a few times while hiking, and started acting up. Known motherboard issue. My second smart phone was also around $330. It worked with the sim card for the first phone. I didn’t want to spend $600 on the newest model at that time, and I got lucky and found it as new old stock. And I’ve been using this phone for 3-4 years. However, the battery has started to drain pretty fast. I otherwise don’t dislike really anything about this phone.
But with all the travel I plan to do this year, I realized that having a battery that only last half a day is not good. You could buy a really nice battery bank for $100, but you’re better off simply not needing to keep your phone on life support all day. And newer phones typically have better cameras, too, which is a nice perk.
I just…I thought I would keep buying cheaper phones. You can get perfectly good phones for $100-200, too, but I exhausted my energy for research. The $500 one is roughly one generation old, and I would have bought a phone 2 or 3 generations old, but the one that was 3 generations old was really hard to find online through a reputable reseller, and the one that was 2 generations old took out some very basic features that I refused to go without (which were added back in subsequent generations). I found this one, and everything resonated. It was supposed to be cheaper, but the special deal was only for new customers. I pulled the plug anyway.
I’d be the first to tell you that I’m not the most frugal person in the world, but sometimes I still feel bad when I go out and…buy whatever I want, basically. I guess I still have those old prejudices from high school and college where I kind of felt those people were jerks and I never wanted to be like that. But that wasn’t fair then, and it isn’t fair now.
I try to tell myself, “Yeah, but I still didn’t buy the latest and greatest, and I definitely didn’t buy some full-spec $1,600 iPhone!!!” which, sure, is true, but that misses the point. The point is, it’s just different when you have the money. And that still makes me feel strange. And I still don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about that.
I did my research. The older, cheaper options were actually bad options. The best option was a little expensive. I could have done more research, but I was tired, there’s too much to check, and this line of phone is already familiar to me. In some ways, this might have been the smartest choice, given the circumstances.
And of course, I will always acknowledge that going too far with this can be a huge detriment. A lot of people buy new phones all the time, new cars all the time, new everything all the time, then wonder why they’re broke. But who am I trying to compare myself to? What am I even judging myself by?
I’d suspect that attitudes toward money tend to stick very strongly in people’s minds; consequently, I would also suspect I’m far more biased than I want to believe.
But I did find a really sweet case for the new phone. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited for that.