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Debtfree Magazine – Our Editor’s Note

 

It is nice to have nice things. I recently upgraded my mobile contract again and look forward to extra memory, extra screen, bigger this and faster that. It is a pity that manufacturers don’t just put the best stuff in every new phone they make. Instead, they make you decide how much to spend and you, as a non IT person, have to decide if the 317 chip is better of the 316(b) something??  or whatever is the one you want. Of course, we soon realize that what the manufacturers are doing is creating a variety of products with various parts (that they have lying around in the factory) so that they can move old stock at slightly lower prices. Otherwise, they have to throw that stuff away. And so on our end, we have to decide how fancy we want our phone to be within our budget. We don’t get to have the best they can make but rather we only get the best we can afford.

This is one of the reasons why so many people try to ‘keep up with the Joneses’. They want to show that they have the best or in most cases simply the most expensive. Often, however, the most expensive is part of a false economy.  Take my mobile phone for example. A little research quickly told me that last year’s “best” in the brand I was looking at is now basically rebranded to be the middle of the range this year – still with amazing stats and features. So, do I take this year’s middle range phone at this year’s hefty prices or do I take last year’s top phone at massively discounted prices? I think you know the answer.

This issue is crammed full of news and reviews. There are tips and advice, as always, and in this issue, we look at other important matters too, from industry events (that you never attended) to court cases (that you never heard of before). Why? Because they impact on you and your debt review in one way or another. You are doing ‘a little research’ into one of the biggest parts of your financial life ever. That research will pay off as you get a realistic picture of how things work and can make better decisions in the future.

‘avoiding the urge to keep up with the Joneses is fundamental to successfully staying in debt review’

So, we hope that you enjoy the issue and see how avoiding the urge to keep up with the Joneses is fundamental to successfully staying in debt review. How changing our mindset about what real value for money is and what we want from life (and even mobile phones) is important if we are to eventually become debt free.

 

This article first appeared in the April 2019 issue of Debtfree Magazine