Have you ever wondered why it seems like everything is so expensive? Every few days a new phone is hitting the market or a new laptop or ipad, but the worst part is the big media companies do such a good job convincing us we need their toys. Then every other day we feel like we need to buy the latest and greatest stuff in order to keep up with technology, but that’s just not true.
I’ve been keeping up with technology now for nearly 10 years and have seen it grow substancially these past 3 or 4 years but other than a few minor hardware changes, the basic technology has remained pretty much the same. All the phones have had really fast internet, gps, and app markets for 3 years now but somehow the big phone companies are making millions on new phone sales.
It doesn’t stop with phones, but laptops, desktops, tablets, and even the hardware inside these devices is still pretty much the same as it has been for years. Ok, I’ll admit they are getting a little faster, but I can stand my 3 year old custom built pc up to just about anything out there on the market today and blow it out the water. How can I do this you ask? The answer is SIMPLE. There are a few major hardware manufacturers who produce the majority of the products available on the market today and each one of the big players have high end stuff and low end stuff. Their high end stuff pretty much stays the same, but the low end stuff is made in such small quantity that it quickly sells out in the retial stores and they change the name of the products, do a little marketing and put the same thing back out with a different upc code.
The trick to saving money is to buy the good stuff in the beginning and let it work for you for the next 5-7 years. This way you spend a little more up front, but save in the long term because you’re not spending the big bucks getting the low end stuff repaired or replaced with more low end stuff. Remember if you have a good product you don’t need the newest product because yours is probably already as good or sometimes even better than the new stuff on the market and you don’t have to worry about learning some new program or dealing with the bugs associated with the new device.
Another trick to saving money is to turn your computers off at night. If your family was anything like mine then you remember being told as a kid to “turn off those lights” or “quit wasting electricity”. Well the same things still applies today. Turning off all those gadgets at night can save an average of $200-300 / year on your electric bill. I know that doesn’t seem like much but it can be a car payment or christmas money for your kids.
Now that you’re all worked up about saving money you might want to think about downsizing. Some of us were in awe by all the individual products out over the past few years that did one or two things around the house but now we’ve found our homes full of clutter with electronic devices that we just don’t need anymore because we have a new device that does it all. Rather than having a separate scanner, printer, fax and copier we can sell them and use the All In One Laser Printer. We can put that old GPS system on ebay and get a cell phone holder for our car and just use the phones gps while we’re driving. Chunk that old mp3 player or ipod and use your phones bluetooth to connect to the cars speakers and listen to your music that way. I could go on and on but I have to go get some work done today! I hope this has helped someone out there.