Who Cares About "Price"? It's What You Get That's Important!

As we screech towards the end of October and slippy-slide into November, you'll find me a very excited Max. This has nothing to do with the up-coming fireworks extravaganza that spans mid-October and finishes some time just after the start of January (known as Bonfire night). Despite my awesome plans, it isn't even Halloween either, for which the great wide world of the Internets has given me an excellent idea to confuse my neighbours. We'll make a door of our own, complete with frame, and place it in front of their front door with a "please knock" sign on it. When they open their front door and see ours, they'll knock on it, then we'll open it dressed as grannies, and coo over their "costumes" while we hand them sweets. Then, we'll pick up our door and move on, leaving them utterly confused as to what just happened. Failing that, I might just look to make an intricate and artistic pumpkin carving, just like this Lord Of The Rings one, this Native American one or this Octopus one. However I suspect that my hours of carving, cutting my finger, whining about it, followed by more carving will actually look like this.


But the big reason I'm looking forward to November is quite simply this: I'm getting an eye-phone! I know, right? I'll be able to browse the internets everywhere (except where there's no signal, which is everywhere), I'll be able to film my own face, followed by everyone else's face. I'll be able to find out the weather on it, because looking out the window is soo last year. I won't go for the massively expensive eye-phone "four-ess", because it only seems to come with a really nice camera (instead of a mere nice one) and a function that lets you talk to it, apparently. Sorry, not worth the extra gazillion pounds to be able to ask my phone how it's feeling today. It's like seeing the option in a car for sat-nav at nearly £2k on an Audi A4, when you know full well a Tom-Tom is only £100 or so, or the cost of asking someone to read a map is only a bit of hassle, arguing, then having to stop in the most remote petrol station ever to ask where the heck you are. Or, I'll just use the navigational thingy on the new eye-fone. Plus, that £2k sat-nav only adds something like £300 to the sale price when you get bored of it, making the whole thing as pointless as an ashtray on a motorbike.

On the other side, there was the man I saw on TV a while ago. He was on for one sole reason only: his unswaying, un-nerving tightness! He didn't own a mobile phone, because it involved spending money. When asked what he would do if he broke down on a deserted country road, his answer was to "shout for help", clearly missing the "deserted" part of the question. He also didn't see the problem with throwing a party and providing (I'm not making this up) eight cans of supermarket own-brand "beer" for his guests. Sounds like a wild night! Now I know that very few will go to this extreme, and very few are the "can't keep a pound in their pocket if it was the price of a ticket out of hell" kind, but there is a happy medium that needs to be looked at (and is in fact the reason I've not stumped for the eye-phone 3), and that is the value of what you're buying, not just the cost.


This is something I try and consider whenever I buy something big. Take for example, when Mrs Max was getting a car a few years back: Because it was a company car, the cost of a 90hp Citroen was something like £51 a month, whereas the nicer 110hp version was £53. Yes, you save that magical £2 a month (don't spend it all at once) but you clearly get far more vroom for that extra two quid! It's the same as getting a 100ml drink for £1, or a 200ml drink for £1.10. Clearly, the latter one is far better because you get more drink per pound. The value of that money is much better than the smaller one! This is also why I have my "£2" rule for Christmas presents, so that when people have to put a lot of thought into what they get me, the value of it is far more than a tenners' worth of seasonal garbage that will force me to give a "gee... thanks for this. It's.... wonderful" response and will be thrown away while still in that stupid impenetrable plastic wrapping that everything seems to come in nowadays.

So when I buy my eye-phone, I'll be happy in the knowledge that I've got the best one for the cash, not just the best one regardless. That way, I don't have to worry about it and I can spend every waking hour hopelessly carving a shapeless mess into a pumpkin (pics may follow, depending on how bad it is) followed by the sudden realisation as to how heavy and awkward a door can be while dressed as a granny.

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