[FidelCashflow]

And I, as an informed consumer, acknowledge that the my electronic devices are not going to last more than a few years due to either mechanical failure and/or processing limitations. To counter this, I don't buy the latest and greatest anything. My $60 (USD) Samsung J3 does everything that I ask of it and it feels light-years ahead of the HTC 626s that I bought ~2 years ago for $80. It finally died of mechanical failure and it didn't make me feel anything at all to drop sixty dollars and change on a new model.

I'll never understand the consumer dynamic that allows there to be a never-ending lineup of $800+ phones at every store that sells electronics. Congratulations, your [electronic device] was expensive and in about two years, you're going to need a new one, just the same.

[daveFNbuck]

I used to feel the same way about having a data plan. There's WiFi pretty much everywhere, so why spend hundreds of dollars a year for that small bit of extra connectivity?

Once I got a smartphone with a data plan, it turned out to have a fairly high value in my life. $2/day roughly covers my data plan and buying a new $800 phone every two years. The consumer dynamic is that having the latest phone is worth $2/day.

Dropping $800 recently on a new phone did make me feel something, but it was a positive feeling.