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This post will divulge all the personal and embarrassing financial information about me I never wanted to make public. hah, yeah right.
Actually this blog will focus more on aspects to consider when making a big purchase. Most of us who grew up with starcraft are transitioning into young-adulthood and likely getting out of college so I think this topic would make a great fit and sounding board.
Before even saying what I'm musing over, I think that its actually kind of important to think about the generic bigger picture situation first, and here's why: what wins games is the underlying soundness of strategy and execution and I don't think its too far a stretch to say that this applies to money, too. but if you don't care, skip down past the line break (foreshadowing: it involves computers)
Large is relative to your timeline. when $2000 showed up in my checking account at the start of college, I freaked out. In HS, $100 was the most I'd ever spent at one time. It was a lot of money to me. My sophomore year I decided I really wanted a TV so, throwing all caution to the wind, I dropped around $400 at wal-mart for a 37'' & hdmi cable (yeah i know about the hdmi cables i wanted it right then shut up). I practically hid the TV from my parents for a year until they came up for a surprise visit and were like "oh...you got a big tv..."
Well its the TV I'm typing on today, the fact that I don't mind moving it around for different uses (say...to help give a demo of the latest game at a meeting or for a big movie event) has brought me into a bunch of awesome situations I never foresaw. The TV became a big focal point at the house I lived which made sure all the awesome things that happened that year were right there in my room, and well I could go on but there are tons of intangible benefits I never predicted.
oh, and my parents didn't say shit! I don't mean this in an adversarial way, I just mean that I hadn't realized they didn't care what I did with my money as much as I thought. And when I mention relative to timeline
"This could be chump-change..." The point where I threw caution to the wind was because one of my friends who has a habit of saying really profound things and not realizing it told me, "Yeah, it's $400 now, but when you graduate college you'll be making what...$50,000 a year? Don't worry about it, man." Except I'm 9 months after graduating and nowhere near that haha.
But his point was clear: money is there to help you get the experiences you want out of life. Here I was worrying about money for money's sake and fretting over what truly wasn't a big worry. Although you need a minimum amount, and money does dictate some limits to what you can do, thinking about money as just one of many forms of value was the first major realization I had. of course, I fucked up pretty big on something else
Deciding yes or no -> timing. If I had decided yes or no a couple months earlier or later, I could've bought the TV for substantially cheaper than I had. Day-to-day living has lots of little purchases which add up over time, true, but really regulating those requires a lot of willpower for a smaller result - oh I saved $10 this week by not getting a $5 sandwich twice.
I was worrying about all this crap when if I'd put even a modicum of effort into searching for, pricing and timing TV's I would've saved more than the combined sum of my day-to-day struggle. So the point here is, focus on your large purchases whatever period of your life you're in, and don't sweat the small stuff.
then there's always total cost of ownership!
What I want to get, and why
I want to get a Macbook Pro. I've never been an Apple guy before (in fact...the opposite) but some circumstances have led me to this point.
Since graduating with what amounts to ad/news/pr training, I decided to become a software engineer. Since then I've spent a lot of time at usergroups, trying to get stuff to work, and generally interacting with the smartest and best minds I can get access to.
My dad lent me a laptop to use, but soon he'll have to take it back to work. A laptop is extremely useful for meetups, coding at other people's houses, being able to stay awake and focused by moving locations, etc etc - a laptop is a must for me because of the massive productivity and learning increase that happened when I started using it instead of just my desktop.
every single one, bar none, be it presentations at user groups or hacking out projects with accomplished friends, uses apple computers - specifically mostly macbook pros. After having a lot of personal usage of friends and such, it's SO much easier to use from a developer standpoint.
On top of this, the area I'm seeking jobs in truly lacks iOS developers, and with my current computer I can't learn to develop in that environment (lord knows I've tried). Every business is going to have to go mobile eventually, and right now the area is saturated with experienced Java guys...so learning iOS/objective-c would get me in early and make me amazingly marketable.
Thing is, I'm betting this purchase would be ~$1200. That's basically month of paychecks + a little. I've got quite a bit of money banked up...
So the issue for me now becomes timing. I hear they're releasing a new macbook sometime in october, so I could grab the last gen at a price drop. I'll elaborate more on this entire situation later but I gotta go!
 
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Thinking about throwing ~900$ on an experimental development kit for beta testing an embedded operating system I want to use in a side project. Probably wont think too much longer on it now that I've read your post. 900$ is just way too little when it comes to actual development costs of time and energy that it could save me. Besides, it'll be chump change sooner rather than later.
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Imagine if the two of you were considering buying something purely for entertainment  .
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You should try making an excel file where you keep all your expenses so you can see what is costing you so much and if you're meeting a budget. It might help ease your mind about bigger purchases!
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Hong Kong9154 Posts
macs are tremendously overpriced if you are going to be buying retail and not on fire sale
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Definitely wait until the next Apple announcement (probably new iPad+mac update) and pick up a refurb one on sale for a few hundred less.
The last "sale" I see for Macbook Pros was during the back to school sale at best buy:
13" MacBook Pro i5 / 4GB / 500GB $899.99 ($300 Off Instantly)
13" MacBook Pro i7 / 8GB / 750GB $1199.99 ($300 Off Instantly)
15" MacBook Pro i7Q / 4GB / 500GB $1599.99 ($200 Off Instantly)
13" MacBook Pro Retina i5 / 8GB / 128GB $1299.99 ($200 Off Instantly)
13" MacBook Pro Retina i5 / 8GB / 256GB $1499.99 ($200 Off Instantly)
15" MacBook Pro Retina i7Q / 8GB / 256GB $1944.99 ($255 Off Instantly)
15" MacBook Pro Retina i7Q / 16GB / 512GB $2499.99 ($300 Off Instantly)
So good luck!
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My impression was that the Air was more popular than the pro among developers, but perhaps I was mistaken.
I have an aging (2008) imac and a samsung series 3 chromebook. Wish I could afford an apple laptop since I'm trying to create an app and it would be really nice to be able to take it to meetups and the like, but I just can't afford it right now.
if it weren't for trying to build that app though, I could do everything I wanted on the chromebook, it just wouldn't be as pleasant. That thing made me realize just how much of a luxury apple products are.
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The markup on Apple products is so ridiculous. I mean they milk their loyal customers every couple years with the new iPhone. Small improvements to keep the price around $500. Just look at the difference between the Dell XPS 10 32GB - $399 - a vastly superior product to the Apple iPad 2 32 GB - $599. You spend $200 more on an inferior product for the OS and the logo. When you think about it, it's like buying a box of cereal at the store for $200 more than the one next to it just because "this one has the tiger from the Frosted Flakes commercials on it."
To buy a MacBook Pro at this point would be a bad purchase decision. You said it yourself....
I was worrying about all this crap when if I'd put even a modicum of effort into searching for, pricing and timing TV's I would've saved more than the combined sum of my day-to-day struggle. So the point here is, focus on your large purchases whatever period of your life you're in, and don't sweat the small stuff.
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1. yes, a laptop is important
2. at this point, I really don't think ios is expanding any more, android mobile application might just make you more marketable in the future.
3. you should look into buying used macs if you are set on doing ios dev
It's good that you've identified a way to make yourself more employable though, good luck!
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On September 13 2013 08:00 RoyGBiv_13 wrote:
Thinking about throwing ~900$ on an experimental development kit for beta testing an embedded operating system I want to use in a side project. Probably wont think too much longer on it now that I've read your post. 900$ is just way too little when it comes to actual development costs of time and energy that it could save me. Besides, it'll be chump change sooner rather than later.
what
wait, i get what you're saying now. Yeah definitely go for it if that's where you wanna go. I'm kind of curious what exactly you're talking about, so let me know how it works out!
On September 13 2013 09:51 itsjustatank wrote:
macs are tremendously overpriced if you are going to be buying retail and not on fire sale
I didn't know what fire sales were but I'll definitely be waiting for one.
On September 13 2013 12:07 Cambium wrote:
1. yes, a laptop is important
2. at this point, I really don't think ios is expanding any more, android mobile application might just make you more marketable in the future.
3. you should look into buying used macs if you are set on doing ios dev
All good points, and I agree with you about Android. Thing is, right now I can already develop on android (I've actually got a one-screen app in the works and so far its working on my nexus 7), and will be able to specs-wise for a while. I've got android in my back pocket. What I'm worried about is getting relevant experience somewhere for the next year or two.
And the used mac idea, I like where your head's at. I was thinking about finding one, adding some RAM and throwing in a new SSD. The reason I'm hesitant is that I'm unclear one important thing: doesn't apple require you to be able to run the latest version of software in order to develop for iOS? Sort of like forcing hardware upgrades by removing software support for older computers? Then the whole used macbook approach would only be good for a year or two (or until the hardware is fast enough that older macbooks can't compensate) and at that point it would likely be more cost-efficient to just get a new one.
But if I could get 2, maybe 3 years out of one for 600 all parts included? Totally worth it
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On September 13 2013 08:59 Roe wrote:
You should try making an excel file where you keep all your expenses so you can see what is costing you so much and if you're meeting a budget. It might help ease your mind about bigger purchases!
I actually take a %-based approach, every paycheck:
20% spending money,
20% personal development account (like for buying books and stuff that makes me better, or saving up for a reward if I do something every day for 3 weeks etc),
60% savings.
every time I get a paycheck I sit down, plug in my excel sheet and manually divy it up throughout my accounts. I plan on writing a program to do this for me eventually.
except now that student loans have kicked in and I'm either working or coding all the time, the times I do spend money are way worth it because they're few and far between (and not that much either). the other reason is that I'm paying double the monthly rate on my loans, and I'll probably wipe them first chance. so I've stopped tracking my finances since I'm basically just dumping money into paying back my loans.
the other thing I'm gonna do, and I'll acknowledge this is potentially really stupid, is take a small portion of my total worth and invest it into something that I think will have growth in one year beyond the interest rate of my loans. There's a lot of really cool stuff happening if you look at the world right now and I've wanted to invest for so long but haven't had the money before
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On September 13 2013 11:11 HCastorp wrote:if it weren't for trying to build that app though, I could do everything I wanted on the chromebook, it just wouldn't be as pleasant. That thing made me realize just how much of a luxury apple products are.
yeah, I've been into gaming pretty much until now so windows was the way to go. But I keep running into situations like what you're talking about with the chromebook, so I'm finally seeing the value apple is providing
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On September 13 2013 09:51 itsjustatank wrote:
macs are tremendously overpriced if you are going to be buying retail and not on fire sale
You realize Macbook Pros are professional notebooks and they're priced as such?
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On September 13 2013 15:30 skyR wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2013 09:51 itsjustatank wrote:
macs are tremendously overpriced if you are going to be buying retail and not on fire sale You realize Macbook Pros are professional notebooks and they're priced as such?
Yeah and this guy has a good reason to get one. But still, you gotta love poor people who get a Macbook Pro for no real reason. I know a few and they always complain about money..
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Get the new macbook when it comes out. The price drop isn't worth the fact that you basically lost a production cycle on apple equipment, which can be a big deal with their laptops (especially compared to their phones or ipods/ipads) get a 13in macbook pro. I have one, they're great. People hate on apple for good reasons, but there are pros to apple. If you want a macbook, get a 13in macbook pro.
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Everyone's needs and considerations are different but I use an excel sheet in combination with mint.com to track finances. My large purchase spending is basically a matter of how much money I have available after 1) establishing an emergency cash fund, to include allowances for expected medical bills etc, 2) putting a substantial percentage towards long-term investments including my 401k, and 3) allowing enough for monthly budgeting to live how I want to live. Now, I'm in the fortunate position of having no debt of any kind, so my considerations are very different from OP's. but I can say that if I had debt, my large purchases would probably be rare. Something like laptop used for learning a trade, as OP is considering, would be an exception but yeah.
Mint.com is very useful for categorizing your monthly spending and seeing where your money is going. I then transfer mint's monthly totals to my excel sheet to see trends over time.
I would encourage OP to just pay off debt.
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On September 14 2013 03:16 Doodsmack wrote:I would encourage OP to just pay off debt.
That is my absolute #1 priority. Here's the decision in a nutshell
Don't put out for new laptop. Stagnate in my progress and take some crappy entry level job somewhere for 30k 3 months later.
Put out 1200 for a new laptop, get job for 55k 3 months later at an awesome place I'm excited to go work at
The issue isn't work ethic or capability, it's time. I just don't have enough time in a day, and depending on what I'm doing, maintaining focus is often far more important
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EPT
