This year, I was quick to do my taxes. QUICK. As in the moment I received my W2 , which was the last piece I needed to do them, I did it that night. I wanted to do it as quickly as possible because I’ve been aching to build a brand new PC (#PCMasterRace #PC4Life, heh!). I’ve been upgrading components of it over the years… 8 GB RAM, SSD for my OS and most used programs, GeForce GTX 750 Ti, Windows 81. (with Classic Shell, of course), etc. But my motherboard and processor are pretty ancient at this point. I have an ASUSTeK P5G41-M LX2/GB running a Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 @ 2.33GHz. There are some things I do that pushes it to the limit, such as video editing for my daughter’s volleyball stuff and I’ve noticed that Dragon Age: Inquisition just barely runs “well” on it.
Now, me being me, I could just upgrade my current system but my plan is to build a brand new one and use my old one to run off of my TV (my own version of a Steambox) or let my daughter use it since it’s more powerful than her laptop (GPU wise, at least). Either way, I have convinced myself to build a new PC from scratch and have it all specced out via PCPartPicker and Newegg. Wouldn’t be the super PC but it’d spin circles around my current one and have some good upgrade potential for the next few years.
Today I go to pay bills and noticed there is a chunk more in my account that there should be. Sure enough, my tax return came in! I, our course, have to express my excitement and tell Kat that we’ll be going to Fry’s today after I price-check against Newegg (so I can get the best deals, of course). And then I hear “Are you sure you really should do that, dad?” The moment I asked her what she meant, I regretted the words that came out of my mouth.
You see, when I was younger, I made some dumb decisions with credit (credit cards, lines of credit, loaning, etc). I luckily learned from my mistake(s) early on and have paid almost all of them off systematically. But I talk to Kat so she understands and learns from my mistakes so that when she is at college (too soon, too soon!), she doesn’t get herself in debt and learns to properly live on a budget.
So while dreams of new PC parts are flashing in my eyes, my daughter explains to me that my tax return is more than enough to pay off one of the last cards I have. I struggle with finding a reason to explain to her that normally she’s be right but in this instance she’s wrong. Obviously I failed because she is right. So I paid off that bill this morning, with her standing over my shoulder to make sure I do, and I still have some left over. So I figure out that maybe we’ll still buy all the pieces and put the rest of them on credit and before I finish my sentence I get the “Are you serious?!” look from her.
Instead of running off to Fry’s to buy all my new components, I’m just going to buy a few of them and start building it piece by piece. This volleyball club season ends in a few months so I’ll have more dispensable income at that point and can just buy the rest without putting anything on credit.
But seriously, I need to explain to her one day that I’m the parent and she’s the kid.