To Buy or Not to Buy

I’m sitting on the ncix.com site with my “cart” full of computer goodies, balance at $1600, credit card in hand, and “confirm purchase” button in view. My mouse pointer is sitting over the button, and a single click will result in a much faster computer, and a much lighter wallet.

I’ve been looking at this parts list for days, and everything is flawlessly hand-picked, chosen by process of elimination by reading tons of reviews each arguing perfectly valid, divergent points. Each item in my basket is exactly what I wanted, no more, no less. Thoughts of multitasking on the huge 22″ monitor, playing Bio Shock at high resolutions, and doing video encodes in a matter of minutes flash through my mind.

I get a giddy feeling running up my spine. I’m back to being a kid standing in a toy shop ready to spend my month’s worth of hard earned allowance on the new Star Wars Lego set.

But suddenly, something stops me. This seems familiar. I’ve been through this before. As a kid, was it really what I wanted to spend my money on? Would the Star Wars figures, in all their painted plastic brilliance, bring me the hours of fun and adventure and pure excitement going through my head? No, not likely. I wasn’t looking for Lego at all, actually. I was looking for a way to get the money out of my pockets. At the time, this was called Lego, and came at $20-$60 a package on average.

Now, it has much more complicated names like XFX GeForce 8800 GTS XXX, and Asus P5K-E/WiFi-Solo, and costs about 50 times more, but in truth, I’m still getting the same thing. Something to rid myself of my money. People like me must be a marketing strategist’s wet dream.

Impulse buys are a funny thing. Almost by definition, the buyer doesn’t realize that they don’t need what they’re buying, or what they’re buying doesn’t suit their needs, or that they are about to make the dumbest decision yet in a history of dumb decisions.

But is it our fault? Our minds have become very good at tricking us into thinking that we absolutely need that LED Faucet Light, usually because there’s a mail in rebate. How can we tell when we don’t really need the water from our faucets to glow blue, even when it seems like the greatest idea that will impress our neighbors, make us more attractive, and prevent world hunger?

Here’s how I analyzed it. This requires a pen and piece of paper. Windows Notepad will work just fine as well.

First, write down all the specific benefits your purchase will give you. For example, here’s what I wrote down for my new PC build.

• Increased video encoding time, saving up to half an hour on each render
• Ability to play new games with good image quality
• More space on monitor, making image editing, video editing, and coding slightly easier and faster

That’s all I came up with. The reasons have to be specific, and explain how they help YOU. So for a PC, “faster” is not a benefit, whereas “saving half an hour of encoding time” is. Also, think about whether the product will actually fulfill these perceived benefits. This is best done by researching the product (Google is awesome). If it turns out they don’t do it, then cross ‘em off.

The next step is to write down the price of the purchase, in my case $1600. Now, think about whether you’re willing to pay the asking price for those benefits. The lets you get away from thinking about the nice fancy packaging, the ever so sweet new item smell, and the shiny gloss finish that wasn’t on last year’s model, yet makes no difference in how the product works. It’s important to draw a direct link between the price, and what you get. Not always trivial to do.

In my case, it didn’t take too much thinking to figure out that a bit more screen space, the ability to play a few more games, and saving half an hour every blue moon just wasn’t worth $1600.

I suspect that buying something where the value of the benefits don’t add up to the price of the item is a good way to get some serious buyers’ remorse. Then again, that’s probably a whole other issue. I’d probably have some buyers’ remorse regardless, after being out 1.6 large.

Here’s another example, for inline skate knee pads:

• No scraping knees when falling (happens about every other hockey game for me because I’m not too great at skating ^_^)
• Can skate faster and more confidently
• Added comfort when playing as goalie
• Cost: $30

Had I actually used this when buying a set of knee pads, this would have been a no-brainer. As it stands, I bought those knee pads 2 years ago, and they’ve certainly delivered on their value. Any single one of those benefits would probably be worth the $30 price.

Going back to the PC, I also noticed that some benefits on my list were more substantial than others. In particular, my 15″ LCD monitor salvaged from my parents business from over five years ago really is small, and it’d be nice to have a big, colorful LCD that could fit an entire web page. Not too much to ask, I don’t think.

So another useful exercise to do is to take the important benefits from your original product, and ask yourself whether you can achieve those without spending as much money. It turns out I can get a 22″ LCD for $300. It’s a decent price for a piece of equipment that will likely be used for a good amount of time down the road, longer than the life of a computer.

So what did I end up doing with my planned PC build? I scrapped it. Doing this made me realize that I don’t need a new computer. I’ll wait another year, when the shiny new computer I had planned will already be outdated, and my current one will then be 5 years old. At that time, I’ll go through this process again.