I admit it: I’m a gadget freak.
Nothing wrong with that, per se. Plenty of people spend their money on less useful things. But with techdom comes sticker shock: tablets, book readers, video gear and so on—they all cost money. So what is a gadget person to do? I hereby introduce you to a painless tech-buying method I learned about last year from my Beloved: The Tech Jar.
Here is how the tech jar works: Every time you buy gas or groceries, or whatever it is you normally buy as part of your daily life, pay cash. And then just stick whatever coins you have left over into the tech jar. It’s painless. You won’t miss those pennies and quarters, and by Christmas they’ll have added up into real money!
He’s been using this trick for years to pay for computers, video game consoles and so on. Our general rule is that anything over a dollar, we put back into the budget jar from which it came. So if we buy groceries and get $2.25 back, the $2 goes back to the grocery jar and the 25 cents goes into the tech fund. (Canada has coins for all denominations under $5.) Now that I’m dumping my change in there too, it’s piling up quickly. We’ve been wrapping the pennies and the loonies ($1 coins) as we accumulate them, and we’re nearly at $300 … and we haven’t even counted the quarters yet! He estimates we’ll have between $300-400 each to spend on toys come Boxing Day.
He’s got his earmarked for an Xbox Racing Wheel and a Kinect, maybe a Kobo Glo, and some video games. I’m angling for an iPhone, maybe a second Apple TV box, or a Kobo Mini. Either way, it feels like found money to me. We didn’t ever overspend on groceries, because we missed that extra quarter from the grocery jar. We managed our funds just fine without the quarters in our pockets. Who would have guessed it could add up to a phone or a tablet or a television?
Here is my challenge to all of our readers: Try it. Pay cash, save your change, and see how much you can accumulate by Christmas. You may be surprised at just how much there is.
