While pricing another hard drive array at NewEgg, I got to wondering how much I’ve spent there on personal computing “needs.” I was hoping NewEgg would have some built-in LTV (life time value) function on its order history page, but I had to settle for copying each page of my history to a text file, cleaning it up a bit, then importing it to Excel.
Well, I was amazed. Since September of 2001, I’ve spent $11,256.34 on personal computing items. That’s not including equipment purchased under another account for business equipment.
The most I ever spent at once was $686.20. I used to do a fair amount of distributed computing. I think that and gaming made up most of my historical purchases. Now I’m racking up storage requirements, and will probably drop another $600 or so before the end of the summer on disk space.
I wish I knew more about Excel so I could make fancypants pie charts and shit for you. I’d also like to know what year cost me the most money, etc. I also wonder how many “projects,” like my cheapie-WoW-boxes-turned-expensive started off low and wound up costing me a lot more than I bargained for. I think I wound up spending a fair penny on my dual AMD Socket A processor machine Janus until he bit the dust not too long ago.
This reminds me of the bumper sticker I see from time to time: “I spent some of my money on booze, motorcycles and women. The rest I wasted.”
Send me the spread sheet, I will make it fancy!
It sounds like a lot, but it breaks down to about $2K a year. If you’re buying the components just to have a less expensive system, then yah it’s probably a lot. But you seem to enjoy building and playing with personal computing stuff. It’s kinad like a hobby of yours. In a way it’s a creative outlet that challenges your mind and your dexterity. :-) In which case $2K a year (when you have it) isn’t such a bad investment.
Do I sound like I’m justifying for you? No not really. Those of us who live in in crystal and glass houses don’t dare throw stones. I know I’ve been at least as bad with my jewelry making supplies (glass beads, swarovski crystals, hand made one-of-a-kind beads, semi-precious stones…). And I’ve compensated some of the spending by teaching classes in the past. And yes I’ve made great gifts for friends and family at a fraction of the cost it would take to buy them. If I was doing to just save money I should go to Claire’s or Tuesday Morning to buy gifts (won’t be as nice or unique). But the real plus to it is that it’s a creative outlet that’s visually and tactilely stimulating. Yah, not throwing stones.