I’m sure as most people know the iPhone came out yesterday in the US as almost every media outlet is talking about it. Just incase there just happens to be people who don’t know what it is, the iPhone is a cellular phone with a lot of fancy features such as a large and bright screen, the ability to browse the Internet with similar qualities as say a laptop and it allows you to control a lot of features using a touch screen.

The thing that was interesting to me was the price as according to what I read you can buy a 4GB model for $499 US and an 8GB model for $599 US. Like most people, the thought of paying that much for what is intended to be used primarily as a cell phone is kind of shocking. What’s kind of more surprising to me though is seeing how cynical a lot of people are to the people who actually bought the product. I even saw some comments of people implying that if one of the owner’s of the iPhone gets mugged for carrying that around that they kind of deserve it for buying it in the first place.

That kind of made me think, what is it about this product in particular that makes some people so resentful to others for owning one? It’s not like people before didn’t carry around expensive mobile gadgets like this that have so much more features compared to a product that the majority of people would own. For myself, seeing people have expensive things like that may make me wonder if they bought it so that they can simply gloat about it or if it was to truly enhance their current lifestyle. I never view that as a reason to shower negativity on another person though.

The way I sometimes view it too, all the early adopters for these kind of things are in some ways helping to make the product less expensive and better for you too if you are more of the wait and see type of person. I wonder how it will be here should it ever come to Canada as the price tag will be even higher due to the exchange rate and all.

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One thing that I wanted to do this month was to make the office environment a little cozier for everyone by buying new things such as leather office chairs instead of traditional task ones. From general observation, most decent ones can cost well over $100 each normally. One thing that people have told me is to simply go to say auction places as you can often find perfectly usable items and equipment for sale from companies that have closed down. I’m not too big of a fan of that option as from the auctions I have seen you can end up paying more due to the bidding frenzy mentality while having to pay transaction fees on top of it.

Like in many cases, dealing directly with the person who is selling the product can often be a better way to save money. My friend then told me that he was informed about a company that wanted to sell a lot of their old furniture and equipment. So, I thought that sounded good and went to the place in question. Apparently they were moving to a smaller space and wanted to get rid of a lot of their old furniture and equipment. Of course, I was primarily interested in the chairs.

It was pretty apparent that they were more interested in simply getting rid of things rather than making a profit or trying to calculate how much the items are really worth as they simply said $25 flat for any one of them. While some were in pretty bad shape such as having rips, a lot of them were actually in a perfectly good to use shape and condition. I ended up buying four different types in total.

They then asked if I wanted to buy other things such as office desks. Similarly, there were a lot of them that looked perfectly fine, but I had no use for them though. That would have be a bargain for anyone setting up a new office though. One thing that did catch my interest was a boardroom table and this leather couch set that they had. The boardroom table was about 8 ft long and looked perfectly fine and the couch I thought would make the lunch area more relaxing.

This was one of those situations where you stand there and think even though you don’t really need it, is it a dumb decision not to if the deal was good? Without me even saying anything, they told me the price for everything including the chairs for the table would be $150. At that point, I figured it would kind of be dumb not to as I don’t think I can ever find it for that price and I was planning to buy something similar in the future while. Most importantly too, I had ways to use to make use of them right away too.

In total, the price for everything was $250 and factoring in the expense in having to rent a large vehicle for this to have it moved it was about $300. Not bad as I could have easily spent almost a thousand or more to get something similar. So if you are ever in the market for some equipment or furniture, don’t rule out the possibility of finding good deals from companies or organizations who just want to get rid of their old items.

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This was sort of an interesting but common predicament that a lot of people have and that I just saw recently. A person I know is currently trying to maintain a certain budget in his lifestyle by not doing things such as spending so much money dining out all the time. Now he mentioned that he has been able to follow that plan as he has been doing things such as bringing his own lunch to work. The weird thing is, just then I saw that he was spending money by buying his lunch instead and it was more than an average meal price. So, that kind of contradicted what he just said.

I then asked about that and the funny answer he gave was that he was wearing a suit and all as he was meeting some people that day and for him to bring something from home and carrying like a lunch bag to work doesn’t feel right to him while at the same time he feels that it will project a less than admirable image of him. I personally find things like that to be a little on the being too subconscious side. Surprisingly though, I guess this type of thing happens more often than we can imagine.

Special occasions and those types of things I can see where you are kind of expected to do certain things, but I personally think believing that dressing a certain way obligates you in having to say spend as much as you look is a bit much. I mean, do you mange your finances for yourself or to please others as an example? It just seems like something back in one’s early school days.

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This is always something that I have heard people do in order to postpone having to pay off their credit card balance. Basically, one would simply transfer their existing credit card balance to a different card just before their due date which gives them more time to pay it off.

This topic came up as someone kept telling me how Citibank has this credit card offer where if you sign up then you can transfer all of your balances to this card for 0% interest and not pay for a year or something along those lines. Does this method actually help people eliminate credit card debt? To me it doesn’t really make sense to do so normally as when you transfer your balance there is usually some kind of fee associated with it and so you are ending up prolonging your debt while increasing it.

With this particular scenario though, I’m just trying to think from a business point of view where interest rates are where the card companies make money normally and so that makes me wonder if there is more to it as I guess it would kind of make logical sense to do so otherwise if you are currently struggling to pay an existing card that is charging you an arm and a leg in interest every month.

I always pay off my balances all at once, so this type of thing isn’t exactly something that I have done before nor does it excite me. But, for those who want to try it and are in Canada, apparently you can apply for the card at http://www.applynow.citibank.ca and you have to enter in the code “G76” to get the offer. If you are one of those people that are going to try this route, maybe you’ll have an interesting story to share with us afterwards on whether it helped or not overall.

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As mentioned previously, this week I am buying some office furniture from a company for very cheap and thought that it would be better to simply rent a cargo van and have someone drive it rather than getting a moving company to do so. Renting it was kind of an interesting experience when it came to the invoice as I rented it from the company Uhaul, which is in no way a small company.

Now the invoice and initial contract was kind of an awkward experience. The person used a standard inkjet printer that people would use for home use and so it printed out kind of slowly, but that isn’t too over the top. The real strange thing was the paper that the person used as it looked like he basically used a piece of paper where on one side it had a photocopy of some school assignment while printing the invoice on the other side as you can see here:

This happened twice, so it was definitely intentional. I’m all for saving money, but this just makes it seem unprofessional as if it was a backyard type of business operation. In this case, I would have rather recycled that paper and use a new one instead. Sometimes it is just better to do it right from scratch.

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