Spending log, day 4

Today’s spending was extraordinarily high and unanticipated, but not truly unplanned.

A few years ago I picked up an older model Android phone for what I thought (/still think) was an exorbitant couple hundred bucks. The phone has served me well, but over the past few months has begun to succumb to its designed obsolescence (unpredictable battery, screen issues). At the beginning of the year I started looking at what was available as a replacement – and holy moly! A shiny new (lilac! zomg I love purple) Galaxy S9 was coming out in March… for around $750. As in, three-quarters of a thousand dollars – a bit more through most carriers. I naively thought this would drive the price of the older generations down to a more reasonable (sub-$300) level, but not so far. In fact, this morning when I (spoiler alert) purchased the S9 for $569, the S8 was “on sale” for $599 – $30 more, what?! I even opened a new tab to check reviews and make sure the S9 doesn’t have some fatal flaw (can’t go on a plane, etc.) before completing the purchase. Since I couldn’t find any deterrents (other than yeah, it’s still way too much to pay for a phone) I hit ‘submit’ and should be able to retire my trusty 4-generations-old gal in the next week or so. The rest of the day pales in comparison, spending-wise: just a grocery run for some produce and other staples (read: cheese. I love cheese about as much as I love purple).

Spending totals:
$569 for a new phone and something called DeX (maybe for Desktop eXperience? looks like a docking station, Samsung threw it in my cart for free)
$73.42 for groceries (Full disclosure: $2.27 of that was for some fancy organic almond-butter cups. They were ok, but not $2.27 worth of decadence. Gonna try to make my own sometime.)
Grand total $642.42 – ouch, that hurts to type. Glad I’m doing this tracking thing, as it should help me stay focused despite this quasi-transgression (necessary item, unnecessarily expensive).