Bitter and Sweet: Reflecting on Significant Purchases and Regrets

I like to consider myself a minimalist and a frugal spender. I wasn’t always like this, but growing up tends to do that to you. In fact, some time back, spending money used to be my biggest motivation to make more money(if that makes any sense at all). But as you grow up, you morph into less and less of a spendthrift because you’re no longer just responsible for yourself, but possibly others.

Taking this into consideration, I haven’t been doing a lot of buying lately. And it’s not because I don’t enjoy it, but because I have so little money and so much responsibilities to spread it out on.

Interesting thing is, my frugality only seems to apply to myself. I am able to buy and do things for other people, but myself is ironically where I have a line. The last significant thing I remember buying for myself is my current phone. That is not to say that I don’t buy myself things at all, but that they’re mostly inexpensive.

The experience - bitter or sweet

Buying this phone is honestly one of the best decisions I’ve made the past two years. It’s impact is evident in my finances and general everyday life.

Before I bought it, I was using an iPhone X. If you’ve used it before, you’ll know that the iPhone X has serious overheating issues, among others. That caused the phone to slow down and lag a lot in the middle of important tasks. Considering that speed and efficiency was part of my reasons for buying the phone in the first place, I needed to change a new phone.

_{Picture is mine, but this isn’t the iPhone X I was using}

After stalking the iPhone 11 Pro Max for about 2 months, I finally decided what I wanted. Speed and efficiency aside, I considered a couple of other factors: I knew I definitely wanted to upgrade my phone’s storage with the next purchase and I knew I wouldn’t enjoy the iPhone 11 Pro Max experience if I got a another 64GB Device. So I decided to try to max out on the storage, but because of the higher price, I settled for a 256GB 11 Pro Max.

The phone has become an integral part of my major achievements in the past 2 years. It helped me significantly improve my blogs by adopting a unique signature of original-picture blogs. The iPhone 11 Pro Max’s camera has served me well, taking some of the best shots I’ve ever taken or seen on a mobile device. The camera was so great that I developed an interest in photography.

With a 3500mAh battery, I got significantly more screen time than I did on my iPhone X. This allowed me do more on my phone, especially write more. It also saved me some money as I was considering to buy a power bank to carry with me to supplement the X’s short battery life.

Overall, buying this phone has been a rewarding purchase in every sense of the word, and I would do it again if I could go back.

Most regretful buy

I’m not going to lie, it took me a very long time to point out exactly what my worst buy is because of how careful I was when it came to my spending recently.

You know what, I actually can’t think of anything that I regret…oh wait. I just remembered something.

_{Picture is mine}

Relocating to my new place of work about 2 months ago, I went grocery shopping because I got the impression there was no good food for sale where I was going. Come to find out, there’s a waakye (rice and beans) seller right infront of the school I work at, and her food is not just good, but affordable too. I’ve had the box of groceries I bought staring me in the face for over 2 months now and I’m still not even sure how soon I’ll start using them.

The plan was to start cooking now that I came back, but I only resorted to that cos I super broke and more or less didn’t have any money to live on. Let’s just say I received some money recently and suddenly got a change of mind.

The good thing is that these groceries are sealed, canned and tinned stuff, so they’re not liable to spoilage any time soon.

Regardless, I’ve learnt the lesson of not going grocery shopping until I’ve decided to start cooking that same day. I know myself and I know I don’t like cooking. But when I’m poor (I’m always poor, so let’s rephrase that to “when I’m poorest”😂) I get these bursts of motivation to get into my cooking element.

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