Why do I keep spending??

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You should see my collection of Cross, Montblanc, and other pens. :rolleyes: I won't even go into laptops, tablets, TVs, and other portable electronics. :p

The only thing worse than my dyslexia is my paranoia that all my toys will stop working all at once. :D:shy:
 
Casey....I used to have a collection of old pens that would have blown you away. One was a beautifully tooled 18K gold Montblanc set with 3 diamonds. Research showed it to have been made in about 1910. Found that one in a storage unit I bought in Oregon.

Mike...You crack me up, buddy :D


Hey Casey....Got a videocam laying around you're not using??? I'm looking for a generous donor :)


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I blame my dad when I was a kid. Dad considered himself a collector. He constantly went to garage sales to buy what he considered antique watches, China plates and cups, etc. I consider most of his "collectibles" to be junk. It really drove my mom nuts too with all his collectible stuff. Dad once gave me a Longines watch, and that probably got me started on my own collecting habit. My dad was not into gadgets or electronics though. He pretty much only shopped at garage sales and flea markets. I go to Best Buy and Frys Electronics. I don't know which is worse.
 
I tried to keep up with this thread, but face it, you are bragging about how much money you have to waste. There are folks here that live comfortable enough, but most are struggling to get by. What i have to say to you would be deleted by mods. My recommendation is to save some of what you waste so others don't have to care for you when you are old.
 
Zil said:
I tried to keep up with this thread, but face it, you are bragging about how much money you have to waste. There are folks here that live comfortable enough, but most are struggling to get by.

I'm with ya Zil.

however...this is Caseyc's thread, and he can basically post whatever he wants to on it.

Now, were he posting about his frivolous spending habits on someone else's thread, we'd (the MOD SQUAD) would be alot more likely to come down on him.


and Caseyc...now that I understand your living conditions, I don't feel as worried about you as I was becoming.

You ain't got a family you're holding back, nor do you have any 'real' debt.


Me??...I'd be saving up a wad to do a big international trip every year. South East Asia, the Orient, Austrailia...or even a really great long road trip covering all of North America! From the very top, and all the way to the bottom...and carpeting the middle while I was at it. Probably take acouple years to get through it too! That's what I'd do in your shoes!

So, you buy alotta watches. Whatever...It's your bread man! Enjoy!! :p
 
Zil, maybe it would have been better had I titled the thread "Casey's frivolous spending habits, see silly examples of bragging excess enclosed" ?? :D I don't know how or why, but I get the feeling you're a barrel of laughs for company. :cool: In any case, I enjoy your feedback and interest. It's all good. I'm secretly hoping that one day in the not so distant future that I can report back that I've improved my ways. Most peeps in my current and past circles enjoy a certain amount of bragging rights in our frivolous quest for maintaining our gadget consumption. It's a guy thing. Most women don't understand it, but a lot of guys do. It's just the way I am. I'm simply being myself. Anyway, I will be doubling my effort to curb my spending and saving money that would have gone to the landlord in the past. :)


Patrick, yeah I agree with you. I really should be travelling a lot more. That's actually one of my goals on my bucket list. I sometimes entertain my mind with the thought of just up and leaving everything and going somewhere new just to be on my own and experience life in a new light. Alas, I'm not prepared to do that at this time, but it's certainly a pleasant thought! :)

I don't worry about my life. Since I only have to take care of myself, I'm certain i will always find a way. Heck, I don't even have a pet for a dependent. Only thing I have that depends on me is one single plant in my van. That plant only requires watering once a week, fortunately! :)
 
PPPppppsssssssssttt!!!!........

You Wanna buy a Watch Buddy !!!!!
 
How many of you remember the poster of "the guy with the most toys wins" This guy standing in front of a RR with some paid for hotties and a bunch of junk, he missed the point.


Because you can, thats the American way.
 
Some how this left me thinking of a small town character from my early days. "Babe" would show up on a Monday afternoon, roll up his sleeve, showing five or six watches against his cutey doll tattoos, " Do ya want-a buy a watch?"

I hope I didn't offend any one. Sometimes I don't think. I consider all friends on this forum and friends can be :)
 
Do not change a thing, keep doing what ever you can afford to do, you have earned it. If you go or anyone else goes into debt, dont default and dump it on the rest of us. I'm not saying anyone here is jealous or envious but one of mankind's major flaws is jealousy. Its a form of sickness of the mind that must be controlled with rational thought. I often hear people make comments about what others have. Comments about people with expensive motor homes or homes in nice neighborhoods. The only thing people should be saying about others is HOW DID YOU DO THAT??????????
Some of what people accomplish is not all that hard to do or all that brilliant or not even lucky, its sometimes what they DONT do. Maybe they dont smoke, break laws or make poor spur of the moment decisions.
This is not to harp on anyone so sorry if your toes become sore. Take smoking for example and lets look at some MATH to show how a poor decision can hurt your finances.
If you start smoking at 16 yr old and do it for 50 years we will assume a price of $5.00 a day.
$5.00 per day for 50 years is $90,000
$90,000 is an ok amount of money to have in a secondary account but nothing to retire on so lets go to the next more realistic step.
If you look at historical market returns you will get different opinions but lets just say you could get 4 percent.
$150.00 a month for 50 years at 4 percent is now $285,000. Not bad. Now start pulling $10,000 a year off that when you turn 62 or 65, tax it at 20% and you net about $8,000 a year or just under $700 an month.

Now lets say you educate yourself at investing and you could get 7 % a year..............Yep it jumps up to $805,000
So thats just by NOT smoking. Lets say you saved a $150.00 a month during that time, obviously you would have $1,610,000 Now go to mycalculators.com and look at the amortization schedule and do some projections of disbursing it over various time frames.
So....Casey.........there is nothing wrong with what you are doing, you have no hang ups, you have no void, you can buy all the watches or trinkets you want, you have earned them. Enjoy.

OH wait there is one more thing that people have a real problem with and that is the fact that we are not all born equal in intelligence. I dont say it bragging as I laugh at myself often and consider myself not too smart at times. I say it because people just cant grasp that we are all different and yes, many react with..............jealousy.
Suck it up skippy, its just the way it is.
If my spelling or word use sucks dont bother pointing it out, we have been there before. Lol
 
WOW....we've got some pretty smart cookies on here!!

Well done!!


as a small business owner, it'd probably be pretty beneficial for me to learn to invest my money better...but I know what skills I have, and which one's I DON'T!!
 
I do not believe in revolving credit, when Ebay disallowed people to pay any other way than PayPal etc. I had a serious drop in listings. let the lemmings battle. There is nothing you need enough to pay with a plastic card.
 
Back in the day, I was a contractor. My suppliers carried the credit on the material orders. Paying in full each month would net a 5-10% discount, which was a great advantage that I made full use of.
I've never had a credit card.

There's times these days when I think of the possible value of a card. One that could buy an engine or tranny or tires, but then I'd be shucking out a substantial amount of interest over the months of payments. I'll find other ways to bail myself out, rather than support the plasticloan sharks.
 
Thanks, bud, and well said! :) For most of my life, I've always been happy to see my friends and family do well. We all work hard, and we pay for stuff with our sweat and labor. It makes me happy to see them happy with whatever new stuff they may have recently acquired. That might be a new car, new furniture, new smartphone, computer, whatever. I always cheer them on. Conversely, they are always happy with whatever I may have recently acquired as well. Fortunately, jealousy is not something I need to deal with within my circle of friends and family. We're just all one happy family. Every so often in the past, I've encountered jealousy among peeps I knew, and if that persisted for too long, I pretty much would dis-associate myself with such peeps. By the way, if you think smoking cigarettes are bad, drinking alcohol and especially splurging on happy hour every weekend gets way out of control. I know people who spend hundreds simply on cocktails with friends on Friday and Saturday evenings at local hip bars. That to me is a pure waste. A night of heavy drinking, and what do you have to show for it? Nothing but a hangover the next morning, and a huge bill to regret. The cost can easily come out to many thousands per year, simply on cocktails. At least with a watch purchase, I can use that watch for the next 15 or 20 years. If you amortize the cost of say an $800 watch over 20 years, that comes out to a measly $40 per year. Heck, I spend at least $100 at the gas pump to fill up my van every week.


Donedirtcheap said:
Do not change a thing, keep doing what ever you can afford to do, you have earned it.
 
To me, it comes down to how much enjoyment or use will I get out of that spending. If the answer is not much then I pass. Nowadays I'd rather buy good memories than tangible things, seeing that anything I buy must fit in my van. So I'd rather pay for a dinner with a friend or go to a beautiful botanical garden than purchase an item. Everything you buy has a hidden cost too; you have to store it, maintain it, dust it, whatever else. My motto is simplify, simplify, simplify. But I'm glad that not everyone is the same as me, it would be a boring world. Plus I like getting a great deal on something at a thrift store because someone bought impulsively and then donated it. :)
 
I was a marketing and management business major in college. In Marketing 101 class, we learned the demographic spending habits of consumers based on age category. People who are younger, say in their 20s or 30s tend to spend on tangible items because they are in accumulation mode. People who are older, say in their 50s, do the opposite, and prefer to buy the intangible things in life, such as a cruise trip vacation. As for me, I should be spending more on intangibles at this point in my life, but I suffer from the Peter Pan syndrome, and I will always be a Toys-R-Us kid at heart. :p By the way, you might have bought various things I've donated to GoodWill, as I've donated a lot of stuff there over the years...and yes, a lot of it was bought on impulse! :D


Iggy said:
To me, it comes down to how much enjoyment or use will I get out of that spending. If the answer is not much then I pass. Nowadays I'd rather buy good memories than tangible things, seeing that anything I buy must fit in my van. So I'd rather pay for a dinner with a friend or go to a beautiful botanical garden than purchase an item. Everything you buy has a hidden cost too; you have to store it, maintain it, dust it, whatever else. My motto is simplify, simplify, simplify. But I'm glad that not everyone is the same as me, it would be a boring world. Plus I like getting a great deal on something at a thrift store because someone bought impulsively and then donated it. :)
 
I agree with you Iggy - good memories last a long time but the enjoyment that a new toy brings is often short. Years ago my sister-in -law asked me how we managed to go to so many cool places on vacation because she knew that we weren't making a lot of money but it was pretty simple - in our daily lives we weren't buying stuff that we didn't need and when we went on vacation we camped out and cooked our own food rather than staying in hotels and eating out. Living simply is very rewarding if you can do it. :)
 
Edit: By the way, I'm HIGHLY jealous of anyone with a brand new 2014 Roadtrek Class B RV, especially the Sprinter model with the Mercedes engine. If you own such a model, I hate you and curse the day you were born. :D:p:rolleyes: Haha. Joking of course!!
 
Having spent a lot of time with people with various addictions, this one seems to be following a totally classic pattern. At first the addiction is fun and exciting and makes your life better. The addict says, "I can stop anytime i want, I just don't want to." Then it gets worse and he starts to need to stop but can't. "Oh well, if I really wanted to stop I would!"

It looks to me like that is just about here you are, right on the edge of the big slide into heartbreak and devastation.

Of course I could be TOTALLY wrong. There is a very fine line between "heavy user" and "addict" and only time will tell which you really are.

By your own admission you want to stop and can't, and your life would be better if you did. Those are not good signs.
Bob
 
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