fiscal (ir)responsibility

[mellowtigger]

Semi-unrelated news: I noticed a few weeks ago that the pay-by-thumbprint device at the local Cub Foods (local chain of stores for cheap groceries) is gone. I asked, and they said the company went bankrupt. *sigh* Luckily, I had cash in my wallet at the time.

I'm still $3k in debt on my credit card from living on credit while I was unemployed. It'll be a long time (more than a year) before I can pay all that off. The money from my tax refund is still in my checking account, and I'm looking forward to an $800 save-the-economy-now tax rebate coming soon. What I should do is dump it all into my debt.

I even have plans this weekend to visit thrift stores to check out what eyeglass frames they have. I figure if I can find something wearable that way, I can save money when I go to the optometrist for new prescription and lenses. My current eyeglass frames have been busted for a few years now. I took them to 6 or 7 different offices to get them repaired and all of them told me that they couldn't be fixed. So I need new frames.

So I'm trying to be responsible in my spending, really.

And yet just this morning while searching for motherboards with DDR2 memory (which has significantly lower power requirements than DDR3 with nearly the same performance, and much cheaper)... I found this motherboard and am now sorely tempted to charge it to my credit card. Argh!

ASUS Rampage Formula motherboard (NewEgg price: $289, Anandtech review, product info)
Intel Core2 Quad cpu (NewEgg price: $275, product info)
G.Skill 4GB memory (NewEgg price: $150)
Then for video do I want a $300 9800 GTX or a $205 8800 GTS?

Altogether about $1000 for a new system, plus some odds and ends.  At this point, I'm having to consciously resist the urge to pull out my Visa card and charge it.

Comments

[nudewoody.livejournal.com]

Have you considered the concept that credit card debt is just one more tool for wealth to move from the bottom strata to the top, further increasing wealth inequality? If you look at it this way it might make you more resistant to using your card.

[mellowtigger]

Absolutely. I already see it much like that. I figure that my "debt interest" helps pay somebody else's "savings interest" that they collect for no reason whatsoever but somehow they deserve it anyway. (Golly, how opinionated!)

I'm nearly at the point, though, where I want to actively bring about the collapse. Financial. (ramp up that debt!) Ecological. (burn that gasoline!) Modern life is so screwy that I don't see an easy path for getting from the proverbial here to there. Which means catastrophe is the obvious solution for returning to some kind of equilibrium. The sooner, the better.

I am, also, far too amused at the prospect of taking my save-the-American-economy money from Bush and just forwarding it to Asia for my technological parts. How daft is that? Yay, me. :) Give me another sabot, please, I seem to have already thrown my shoes away.