College Computer!

So, we are not generally ones to make big purchases.  We blow a lot of money on tacos and books and such small family fun stuff, but big stuff?  Almost never unless you count those fun medical bills.  We also do not much, since the dark times, use credit cards at all.  The one exception is the Best Buy card in times of appliance emergency.  Corpus used to have a scratch and dent store at which we would replace the occasional worn out washing machine, etc., but it went away and that was a great loss because we so cannot afford unscratched and not dented appliances.  Enter the Best Buy card with those 18 months no interest deals.  We have several times now found ourselves using it for a washer or refrigerator when our old ones wore out and it has been a very helpful thing (if only Best Buy replaced bathrooms and furnaces, but that would take way more than 18 months to pay off anyways).

Today we used the card, with its 18 months no interest deal, to buy a computer for the Lone Star Girl to use in college.  The financial aid office actually suggested that a computer purchase would help raise her Estimated Cost of Attendance and allow her to keep more of the  scholarship money she earned (ask me sometime in person about how students do not always get to keep all the scholarship money they earned), but she needed one anyways.  We had purchased her a net book to use for high school in ninth grade, but it was never really very useful as running applications was often just too much for it.  It definitely would not meet her college needs.

Now the Lone Star Girl has a real laptop and the Lone Star Baby has gleefully commandeered the old net book and we have monthly payments.  Less than the ones to the hospital, though, and we will finish with them sooner.  Honestly, even though large purchases make me very twitchy, I am very pleased to be able to do this as a graduation present for my Girl as I know it is an important investment in her education that she will use everyday.