Think back to a purchase that you made recently and respond to the following: How would you describe your thinking before you made that purchase? Did you have any budget constraints? If so, what were they? Would you have made the purchase if the price had increased? Why or why not?
My recent important (and big) purchase was a laptop, which I’m using right now to write this Discussion Forum assignment. My previous one was still working satisfactorily, but I had to be very patient when loading something more serious than office applications. To compare with the new laptop, just imagine that Adobe Photoshop used to take 3-5 minutes to load, and now it opens immediately. Maybe for somebody, it will sound funny, but I also like to play computer games. It is my hobby, and I used to struggle a lot with modern games and other software because they did not work well and fast on my previous computer. Finally, I wanted to do some 3d modeling and animation, but my old laptop could not properly load some of the software features.
According to our textbook, a budget constraint is the number of goods you can afford to buy within the budget available (Greenlaw & Shapiro, 2018). It is about not simply using a great amount of only one thing, but about buying a little of this, a little of that, and some of another. Purchase such as a laptop is a definitely big one – of course, there was a budget constraint. I could choose between buying a less expensive notebook lacking modern hardware and spend the rest of the money on something else – food, clothes, or simply save it. However, after considering all pros and cons (and bargaining to pay $150 less), I decided that I needed this, more expensive, laptop, and on the rest (little) amount of the money, I bought a mouse, a mousepad, and a bag.
I would not make this purchase if the price had increased. In fact, I was not expecting to pay even that much. To be honest, if I knew that the total COVID lockdown would start soon after this purchase, I would not make it at all. It was a wanted, but not urgent purchase – as I mentioned above, my old 5 years old laptop was still functioning, and I could delay buying a new one.
References
Greenlaw, S. A. & Shapiro, D. (2018). Principles of microeconomics, 2e. Open Stax Rice University. Retrieved from https://d3bxy9euw4e147.cloudfront.net/oscms-prodcms/media/documents/Microeconomics2e-OP.pdf