How I'm Saving for a Tech Gadget

I have a household full of tech gadgets. My husband and I each have Motorola Droid X2 cell phones, we have a Magnavox 42-inch HDTV, a Kindle, and a 1.5 terabyte external hard drive full of music. However, as a tech writer (me) and programmer (him), we are heavily immersed in technology even if or when we don't want to be. In a household full of tech gadgets, what else could we need?

Another 42-inch HDTV for the basement, of course. I am married to a man. Men seem to like TVs. Large screen HDTVs are not cheap, though. After buying a house and having a baby in the past six months, we have to formulate a plan to save the money for the newest among our tech gadgets. Here is how we plan to do it.

Extra Work. If you were expecting an article on how to pull money out of thin air, sorry, this isn't it. I happen to be working on a project where overtime hours are encouraged and my husband is still working on an hourly basis for his former company. To save up the money for "extras" like a TV, we will use the extra money we make working over 40 hours in certain weeks. Once we have paid for essentials, we should be able to put aside at least $50 per month toward the TV.

Save Instead of Purchasing Gifts. We don't tend to buy each other elaborate holiday gifts anyway, but another way we can avoid extra spending and instead save for the TV is to not buy each other gifts. Since the TV is beneficial for the whole household, it's not like it's much of a sacrifice to save instead of spend. Buy not buying each other gifts, we should be able to bank another $100 or more at the end of the year.

Watch for Sales on Older Models. We may be tech-savvy, but purchasing the newest, most expensive item isn't what we're interested in most of the time. If we can find a good quality HDTV, we will wait until a newer model comes out and purchase the older, cheaper one. The prices seem to go up around holidays and go down again around Super Bowl time. Perhaps we will buy a new HDTV in February?

We will likely buy another Panasonic model because we have had pretty good luck with our current model, but to make a final decision, we will read online reviews and ask around to see what other people think.

Another HDTV is not a purchase we have to make, it's just another furnishing we'd like for our new home. To save for this purchase, we will make use of our extra hours put in at work, avoid buying gifts for one another during the holidays, and watch for sales at certain times of the year and on certain models.