$$: Boosting the Economy

Well, I did my part to help the econ­omy today 

Kroger — $141.86
I went shop­ping with the kids today so the shop­ping bill was higher than nor­mal 

• nacho Dori­tos — $2.98 (saved $0.32)
• Oberto jerkey — $5.49 (saved $0.50)
• 2.10# organic Grannie Smith apples — $5.23
• 2.08# Navel oranges — $4.14
• 1.91# bananas — $1.28
• 2.66# but­ter­nut squash — $2.63
• Rudi’s Multi­grain Oat bread — $4.39
• Rudi’s 100% Whole Grain bread — $4.39
• Kee­bler choco­late chip cook­ies — $3.89
• box of 15 Bal­ance pro­tein bars — $15.00
• Lindt choco­late Santa — $3.79
• 5 cans of Bum­ble Bee gourmet Salmon — $3.19/ea. (saved $0.20/ea.)
• 2 car­tons of Hori­zon choco­late milk — $3.69
• Hormel slicked turkey — $3.49 (saved $0.50)
• Land O’ Frost sliced ham — $3.00 (saved $0.49)
• Kroger Colby Jack cheese — $3.99 (saved $1.00)
• Kroger medium Ched­dar cheese — $3.99 (saved $1.00)
• box of 6 Gen­eral Mills gra­nola bars — $2.50 (saved $1.39)
• 2 boxes of Amy’s cheese & bean snacks — $2.99/ea. (saved $0.70)
• 6 boxes of Amy’s cheese pizza snacks — $2.99/ea. (saved $0.70)
• Breyer’s choco­late ice cream — $4.99 (saved $0.70)
• Cover Girl mas­cara — $5.99
• Secret antiper­spi­rant — $4.49
• L’Oreal glit­ter lotion — $4.74*

*The Daugh­ter pays for her own cos­met­ics.  We pay for nor­mal toi­letries.  The Daugh­ter and I had an inter­est­ing debate tonight as to whether the lotion qual­i­fied as a toi­letry or a cos­metic prod­uct.  Of course, I won     Since it’s a glit­ter lotion, The Daughter’s the only one who can use it so it qual­i­fies as a cos­met­ics.  Nat­u­rally, the mas­cara also gets charged against her allowance and the antiper­spi­rant is paid for by us.

The Son — $125.00
We bought four Barnes & Noble gift cards from The Son.  One gift card will go to The Nephew #2 as a birth­day gift ($25); one will be given to The Grand­daugh­ter #1 as a Christ­mas gift ($25) [see Santa’s Gift List]; one will be used as the Grand Prize in our fam­ily Christ­mas party unwrap­ping game ($25); and one card will go into The Husband’s wal­let to be used when­ever he goes shop­ping at B&N.  The Son will deposit the check in his sav­ings account tomorrow.

Apple Store — $1,653.31
Of course there’s a story behind this pur­chase.  You can’t spend that kind of money with­out there being a back story, right?

For my birth­day this sum­mer, The Hus­band bought me a brand new 24″ iMac com­puter with wire­less mouse and key­board.  A few weeks later, we bought The Son an edu­ca­tional copy of Pho­to­shop CS3 for The Son for his birth­day.  We bought the Mac ver­sion and installed it on the new iMac.

Since then, I’ve hardly got­ten more than 5 min­utes at a time on my own, brand new iMac.  The Son is hav­ing a great time teach­ing him­self to use Pho­to­shop and it’s hard for me to com­plain about it since I’ve done so much to encour­age his inter­ests in draw­ing and art.

But that’s not rea­son enough to buy another com­puter — no, I could offer any num­ber of addi­tional jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for spend­ing a wad of cash on a new Mac­Book Pro.

There’s more to the story.  A cou­ple of weeks ago, The Hus­band and I dis­cussed my plan to down­size Christ­mas this year.  I declared my wish to not receive a gift this Christ­mas.  For one thing, I’d got­ten the iMac for my birth­day.  Then too, The Hus­band received a big, expen­sive Christ­mas gift — an elec­tric scooter — one that I’ve been enjoy­ing myself so much that it seems rea­son­able to con­sider it for both of us.  The Hus­band was all for spend­ing less this year but didn’t think it nec­es­sary for me to go with­out a gift.

We knew we wanted an Apple lap­top and The Hus­band encour­aged me to go ahead and get one for Christ­mas.  I argued that we should wait until this Spring when we’d again be qual­i­fied for a $100 educator’s dis­count (home­school dis­count).  I sim­ply couldn’t jus­tify the expense of the com­puter I wanted (I don’t need the biggest and the bestest but I don’t believe in buy­ing the bottom-of-the-line either — I’ve tried that before and I always end up grow­ing out of the com­puter and it’s capa­bil­i­ties too quickly).

Then, last week dur­ing my One-to-One ses­sion at the Apple Store, we were laugh­ing about The Son’s tak­ing over my com­puter and I men­tioned my plan to hold off on a new lap­top until the spring.  My teacher, the same guy The Son and I almost always work with, rec­om­mended con­sid­er­ing a refur­bished computer.

Yeah, I’ve pur­chased a refurb com­puter before.  An HP lap­top.  It didn’t work out all that ter­rif­i­cally well.  It wasn’t a dis­as­ter but there were enough dis­ad­van­tages that it’s not some­thing I’d do again.  But then I’ve sworn off HP and Win­dows altogether.

The Hus­band wasn’t thrilled with the idea of a refur­bished machine either.  He felt more burned by the refurb HP than I did.  But I pointed out that refur­bished Apple com­put­ers come with the very same war­ranty that new com­put­ers do.  Plus, and this is huge, unlike HP which doesn’t offer any sup­port at all (have you ever tried to get them on the phone?  I have.  What a joke), with an Apple com­puter we’d have access to local sup­port and phone sup­port.  My past expe­ri­ences with Apple’s Genius Bar have been stel­lar.  Same with Apple’s phone support.

So tonight we went online and looked in the Apple store and com­pared the refur­bished machines to the new ones.  We ended up buy­ing a 15.4″ Mac­Book Pro 2GB RAM 200GB lap­top ($1,349).  We also pur­chased an Apple Care pack­age ($249) that will extend the war­ranty cov­er­age from 1 year to 3 and the phone sup­port from 90 days to 3 years.  Boy, I sure hope we didn’t make a mistake.

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