How my paycheck disappeared
Generally, I think I am a good shopper. I tend to do my part as a consumer without wasting my budget. I am a single male in his early 20's, so I pretty much have little to no true fiscal responcibility. But, there is a darker beast that lurks in my house that I can't seem to kick now that I started doing it.
Bidding on Ebay.
It started simply, of course. A couple of computer games that haven't been made for about six years. Then, I started looking up Magic cards, I swear to re-live good memories. Soon, I was bidding on them, and in US currency at that. Pretty soon I had won 6 auctions and there was no end in sight.
Then, I won three auctions from one guy, and he tried to screw me on shipping. That bothered me. I mean, really, why would you pay almost double the price of the item in shipping? It was for 1500 magic cards and he wanted 36 US for shipping. I actually took a stack of 1500 cards to the post office and weighed it. $16.00 for shipping them to the states. My second cousin Mike does a lot of ebaying and he warned me about people like that. Shipping can be easily be twisted to suit the person. Greedy bastards.
I think that was my out. I think, if I had thought, that I would have learned from that. Nope. Instead I bid on two Diamond Valleys. Wait! What is that? Two Khabal Ghouls? Nice. Bid.
Old school nintendo game called faxanadu that I can't find anymore. Bid. You are highest bidder.
I ended up winning two auctions for two Playstation 2 games that I really wanted. The first was Dark Cloud 2, and hte second was Grand Thieft Auto Double pack. Hell, I got the GTA double pack for 1/3 it's retail price. How sweet is that?
Then, I moved on. Movies. There are literally hundreds of thousands of titles for dollars. As I continued to buy and fill out money orders, I came to realize that I am spending way too much. There is something about seeing that little red number saying that there is only two minutes left on a item that you really want and it's cheap. In the end, it's really not that cheap for me to buy from the States. The exchange, the money order fees, the waiting...
Yet, it is hard to stop. My watch list expanded to 40 items, and I had to delete some to see others. IT was a mass of confusion and chaos, yet...nice. I hope I never win the lottery. I might have to sit on the damn computer bidding day and night.
Finally, I spent all my extra money, and have enough left for my monthly expenses and groceries. I'm going to go to a friend, give him my password and ebay account, and gethim to change the password so I don't know it.
Sometimes, you just need to g ocold turkey.