It's very confusing. I want to have all the toys. I want the latest gadgets. The home automation. The blinky boo things in the car. The super camera. The thing is I don't want to pay for it all.
Today we moved my brother-in-law and his girl friend into their new house. It's a new house that's got fiber into the house, each room having at least one "network" wall plate with cable and I think at least 4 lan drops. Awesome. And that's not even talking about the wireless or VoIP systems. I would love to have that. It's just not worth it to me to retrofit our 50+ year old house to do that. It wouldn't even be too bad to run CAT5 (or cat6? Whatever the kids are using these days...) around the house since wireless works "well enough".
So being cheap, or frugal, or smart, or dumb, I buy something that's "good enough" all the time. I'm typing away on my 5+ year old low end macbook. Do I want a new shinny laptop? Of course. But this one is working well enough for what I use it for. Do I want to replace our entry level DSLR with something like a D600? Sure. Do I want to drop the 3k for a new body and full frame lenses? Not right now. Maybe some day. Maybe never. The longer I can hold out buying a tech toy, the more bang for my buck I can get.
Even then I think about what I need. It's not really much when you think about it. I need food. Shelter. To be healthy and have the ones I love be healthy. I need time to spend with those loved ones. When you reduce things to that level it helps clarify what exactly those other things can be. A distraction.
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