Gadget Lust

I freely admit that I am a gadget geek. I am lost without my iPod, and I’m literally lost without my GPS (I have the world’s worst sense of direction). I have gadgets that I wear when I run and gadgets that I use when I cook. The minute my computer starts to flicker, I start pricing out new computers. Do I need any of these things? No. Do I enjoy them? Yes. Of course, many of these things have been received as gifts, or purchased after much planning and saving. This means that I end up creating a fairly extensive gadget wishlist.

I recently had the opportunity to play with an Amazon Kindle, and I think I’m in love. Why? It’s a gadget. It is for reading books (another thing that I love). It is small and compact and lets you carry lots of books around very easily. The screen truly is as easy to read as they say.

Electronic books in Kindle form are significantly cheaper than their paper counterparts. Additionally, I do like reading classics online through Project Gutenberg, but get tired of reading the books on my computer (and don’t want to waste the paper to print them). I would be able to convert these books and read them on a Kindle (still for free), which is definitely a plus for the Kindle.

The downsides? Well, price, for one. Plus any books you buy are electronic. I am working on decluttering my home and weeding out my book collection mainly due to the sheer amount of space that all of these books take up. So the idea of electronic books does appeal on one hand. On the other hand, I get rid of my books by either selling them online or swapping them on Bookmooch or PaperBackSwap. By swapping the books, I get credits to request books from other members. In fact, I get most of my books this way – it’s rare that I buy a book new anymore.

So the end result of my Kindle lust? Well, as I said, I’m a gadget geek, so of course I want one. But right now, it’s on my “I would buy this if I had a million dollars to spend,” but not on my “Save money to buy this!” list. If I traveled a lot for work or spent more time on the metro commuting every day, then it might be more worthwhile, but for now, it would just be a fun toy to have.

Of course, if anyone wants to buy me a Kindle, I’m not going to turn them down!

What sorts of gadgets do you find yourself lusting after?

Abundant Life Spending Spree Day 4 - $200 (sadly, not enough for a Kindle)
With $200 to toss around today, I would buy the X-Files Complete Series dvd set. It’s a show I loved while it aired, and I’m intrigued by the movie coming out this summer. It might be fun to go back and watch the whole series (except maybe not the last season...).

Emotions and Money

Thanks to Oprah, I've been reading Suze Orman's "Women and Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny." I'm a huge fan of Suze's show, and I continually recommend "The Money Book For the Young, Fabulous, and Broke" to all my friends. I've had "Women and Money" on my wishlist for some time now, but have been trying to control my spending, so I decided to wait on this book. Good thing too, since Oprah offered it for free download yesterday. Thank you, Oprah! Maybe I shouldn't complain so much about your show.

I'm only a few chapters in, but I'm quickly realizing just how much this book applies to me. While I feel that I am responsible with my money, I shy away from taking the initiative to actually better my financial situation in many instances.

For example, one of the things Suze mentioned is that many women won't push their bosses for a raise. Even if they find out that they are paid less money than some of their counterparts, they won't fight for what they deserve. Sure, some of us will go to our supervisor and ask, but when the supervisor says "Well, we just can't afford that right now," or "We'll talk about it at your review," we just take that answer at face value and don't do any thing else about it. I do the same thing. When I was hired at my current job, I was promised a specific raise after I've been here a year. There were five of us hired with the same deal. Now, we're hearing that may not be the case. It frustrates me, but at the same time, what am I doing about it? Not a whole lot. I also discovered that I am one of the lowest paid members of my team. I'm also one of the newest, so that's not entirely unexpected, but in terms of education and skills, I do stand out a bit. This should be something else to include in my argument for the promised raise. But again, I just don't bring it up. I've mentioned it once, and then sort of let it get swept under the rug.

Therefore, a goal for the coming weeks is to talk with my supervisor about this situation and find out exactly what is going on and what I can do to prove that I deserve this raise.

I also realize that I am entirely too generous with my money, even when I don't want to be. Right now, I have a friend (who is really more of an acquaintance) staying with me while she job hunts. She doesn't have a timeline for how long she will be staying with me, but I think it could be up to a month (or even more). I don't mind that she's staying in my home. I have an extra bedroom and I am happy to share my space. I don't expect her to pay rent at all.

It is starting to bother me, however, that she isn't really pitching in for groceries. Admittedly, this may be bothering me because this month, I decided to really tighten my budget now that I'm using the YNAB system, and because I do have some larger expenses coming up that I am saving for. After she had been here a few days and hadn't purchased any groceries (and even went with me to the store, watched me buy the groceries to make dinner, and didn't pitch in), I casually asked her how she wanted to deal with groceries, and she said she was going to pick up some things. That's all fine and good, except that she still expects me to provide her dinner, which for me, tends to be the most expensive meal of the day. And even though it grates on me that she expects me to provide for her, I still don't say anything.

Not only is this not great for my financial health, it also isn't good for our relationship. Because of this, I am letting her other habits grate on me as well. Maybe I would be more willing to put up with the fact that she doesn't do dishes or use coasters and gets food on the floor if she were paying her own way.

Or maybe she's just a bad houseguest. Either way, I should say something about the fact that right now, my budget doesn't allow for me to be feeding two people instead of just one. I shouldn't let my emotions play into it. I owe it to myself to be honest about my finances. I think I feel some sort of responsibility to take care of her, as she is a guest in my house, which is something women are all too quick to do, and then we just get taken advantage of. I need to learn to stand up for myself and for my bank account

What to do with old textbooks

Over on College of Cash, there was an article about whether or not to sell your college textbooks back to the school bookstore. The article was linked to from the most recent Carnival of Personal Finance (which I highly recommend), so I’m sure it’s getting a number of hits.

I agree with some of the advice and disagree with some of the advice. In general, I do recommend selling any books that you don’t think you will ever use again, unless it was a book you truly enjoyed. I sold almost all of my law school textbooks. I didn’t sell all of my undergraduate books, but I have an English degree, so many of the books were short novels that I enjoyed and wanted to read again. Besides, I had made so many notes in them that the most I could get for any of them was around a quarter. Not really worth it in my mind.

Where the author and I disagree is on how to sell the books. The author mentions getting books for cheap on Amazon, and I am guessing that this means the books were bought used through Amazon’s resale service. Then, the author suggests selling the books back to the school’s bookstore. Why not resell the books on Amazon or on half.com?

One quick answer to this would be that if you sell the books to the bookstore, it is instant cash. At both my undergrad and my law school, you could take the books to the bookstore, they would look up how much they could give you, and then you were handed a stack of cash. That was a very satisfying feeling.

But I quickly discovered that I could make significantly more money by selling the books online. My tactic was always to look at what the books were selling for and try to list mine at the lowest price. If I thought the lowest price listed was completely unreasonable, I would bump my price up, but for the most part, I was quite content to list my book for 50 cents below the lowest listed price.

And inevitably, the books were snapped up. Yes, I had to take them to the post office for mailing. And that is a hassle for a lot of people.

I prefer to sell on half.com. Why? Their fees are lower, meaning that at the end of the day, I take home a bigger percentage of the sell price. Both sites do provide you with shipping costs and from my experience, the money given for shipping costs has always been slightly more than the actual cost to mail the books. That can account for packaging costs, but most times, a book can either be wrapped in an old paper bag or placed in a manila envelope. I don’t think I have ever purchased any special materials to ship a book.

I think it all depends on what is important to you. And how much money the bookstore is willing to offer – it never hurts to go in and ask them what they will give you for your books. Sometimes the price is right, but you don’t have to say yes if the price they quote you is too low.

My advice, however, is to check out online sales. I even managed to unload a few old college texts this past summer. I listed them for very cheap, and even though they were old versions, people were willing to buy to save money. The money doesn’t roll in quite as quickly, but usually within three months, your books will have sold and you will have made more money back from the books than you would have by selling to the bookstore.

Personal Library

In recent months, I have been doing my best to declutter my home. I've tried to get rid of things that I don't really want or need, or things that I just have too many of. Since I just moved in September, I did a pretty good job of cleaning things out before the move, but in a few areas, I'm still realizing I just have too much stuff. One area is, of course, clothing, and I do my best to cull through my closet every so often and bag up stuff for charity. The other area is books.

I love books. I have always loved books. Bookstores are one of my favorite places to visit, and also a very dangerous place for my wallet. I find it very hard to walk into a Borders or a Barnes and Noble and come out with nothing. But I've been doing my best, especially since I have a giant pile of unread books at home.

One way that I discovered to get rid of books (and also get new books to read for next to nothing) is book swapping sites. There are a number of them out there, but I use both PaperBackSwap and BookMooch. The basic premise of these sites is that you post a list of books you want to swap. People request the books and you mail them (via media mail). You then get a point for sending the book, and you can use that point to request a book from someone else. Simple!

The process isn't quite free, obviously. You do pay to ship the books, but you don't pay when you receive, so it all sort of evens out. Either way, it's much cheaper than buying a book new.

Wouldn't a library be cheaper? Well, yes, clearly. But I often like to keep books that I really enjoyed, or I like to pass them on to friends or family. This gives me that option. Or if I choose, I can take the book I received and post it back into the system and end up passing it on.

One of my favorite features on these sites is the Wishlist feature. The two sites work the feature a bit differently, but if there is a book that is not posted or not yet released, you can wishlist it. With PBS, you are on a waiting list, and the books are offered to requesters in order. With BookMooch, everyone on the waiting list gets an e-mail when a book is posted and you have to go to the site to request it. Each of these methods has its plusses and minuses - if you are on your computer a lot during the day, BookMooch might give you the better chance to get the book. If you don't mind waiting your turn and you would rather not have to rush to the site all the time, then PBS is more your speed. Personally, I use both, and frequently have the same book wishlisted on both sites.

Ultimately, this has led to me saving money, because when I go into the bookstore and see a book I really want to buy, I wait, and I come home and check the book swap sites for the book. Sometimes I can get it for nothing!