thoughts, words, deeds

a personal history of major purchases

First off, let me make clear that I don’t often have large sums of money given to me. I’ve been a college student for most of my adult life, and haven’t had much money at all. The largest checks I’ve ever written have been for tuition (which I think is worth it).

The largest single purchase that I have ever made was back in 2002, when I had just paid off my student loans from my undergrad and bought a computer. It was a major purchase at the time (nearly as much as a semester of tuition) and involved a huge monitor, a tower, speakers, a microphone that I never used, a printer, and more cords than are reasonable. I set it up in my bedroom and spent a lot of time online—mostly on Stories.com (as the site used to be called). When I went back to school in 2003 (quitting my job in the process—which meant more student work and more loans) we packed the whole thing in the back of a rental along with my clothes and books and headed off. My student apartment didn’t have the internet at the time, so the computer was only used for writing essays and stories and poems as needed for my major and my sanity. When I came home again, I shipped the computer because it was easier than taking it on the train, and it lurked upstairs for a while, still unconnected to the internet because I didn’t have reasonable virus protection. It died about five years ago, slipping away quietly and taking some files with it. I almost want to see of someone could open it up and make sure I have all my files off the hard drive. I think I have them all on a stick, but I don’t know for certain.

Another large purchase that I’ve made (more recently—2014?) was my insulin pump. It was the end of the year, because at the end of the year, when people with diabetes have met their out of pocket is when the pump companies start to congregate and tell you that this is something that you really need—a new delivery system for your insulin that will mean that you only have to buy one kind of insulin and only stick yourself once every three days (instead of two kinds of insulin four times a day). The insurance would cover most of the $6000 system. What they don’t tell you is that the system itself is nothing. But once you’re hooked, then comes the real drain. Infusion sets (the thing that sticks into you for three days, dripping insulin constantly into your body), and reservoirs (the thing that holds the insulin inside the pump and is only good for about 180 units, after which it needs to be changed) together run about $500 ever three months, which is okay as long as the insurance helps, but at the time . . . well, it didn’t. I was on the pump for a little over a year before I decided that multiple daily injections were the less expensive alternative, especially for someone who was about to graduate and was losing my work as an instructor.

I’ve been basically unemployed (and looking) since 2015. That’s when I spent three months helping out my sister who was having some severe health issues. She had three kids at the time, and I was nanny. Last year, I finally got my act together and finished my thesis, so I’m no longer in college, but I’m still looking for a job. So, my versions of major purchases at this point are things like new sandals when something falls apart, or yarn. I do knit. Recently, I made about $100 for a study I’m in (no, I’m not in the process of selling any important organs). I saw the money, and wanted to spend it, so I purchased a lovely gradient yarn (green to black to blue)—about 670 yards of pure Marino wool for about $45—and I made it into a shawl. And then, I bought another ball of the same stuff to make into another shall that I still haven’t chosen, yet. Which is a terrible thing to do when the yarn is worth more than my bank account . . . but there you go.