Best Buy (& similar co.) ads for "buy your kids $3k worth of tech for the school year"

Fucking sense of entitlement, sense of unspoken obligation.

I'm bitter, too, bcz I had a 486 until two years ago...during my first three years of college.

What do you really need for college but MS Office?

To be fair: internet browser.

The real upsell here is that once you're buying a laptop, it's easy for someone to convince you you should be getting a really good one, which is more and more untrue by the second -- I'd guess the vast majority of people don't do anything on their laptops that couldn't happen on a $700 model.

Apple are especially good at this. If you sold computers or mp3 players at a standard price and then charged people hundreds extra for a "stylish interface package" or "more elegant button design" or whatever, nobody would be buying that.

Clarification: meaning not the browser itself (free), but a computer that's ethernet-ready, maybe has wireless, fast enough to handle streaming video and whatnot -- though obviously, like I'm saying, there aren't exactly computers for sale so cheap that this stuff isn't a given

Possible parent thinking = buy your kid a better computer and she's more likely to get out of college still using it, and after that new computers are her problem; buy too cheap and it might clunk up senior year and someone will be calling asking for a new one

Of course, this worked for my parents, and the computer I got when I went to college was so retarded it was frequently mistaken for a Mac Classic

I got a laptop and an 80 gig iPod

but to be fair, my school required me to get the laptop, which I'm paying for, and I pulled a "cash in both my christmas and birthday presents early" for the iPod. and really, I've needed an iPod for a while now; it was just the prospect of bringing 700 CDs to school with me that pushed me over the edge.

GTFO rich boy

computer-user in owning computer shocker!

I got computers out of my folx by being a CS major. ^_^ I way predated the iPod generation though.

Oh man, maybe it's just being raised by Mormon all ex-pioneers, parents were poor and raised by Depression-survivors, but I don't think it's true that anyone "needs" an iPod. I'm not saying they're not totally awesome and that I wouldn't love having one, but they're not technically a "need" in the economic sense of it.

They kind of kicked the idea of "wants" out of me (ie iPod, zippy computer, special funtime $$$ stuff, going to restaurants). They're all "shove you into the world and you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps because I was working from age 14 so I could buy a sewing machine to sew clothes for my abundant number of younger siblings." Don't agree with forcing that philosophy on yr kids, but it happened.

It's just kind of a mindblower to me, that there is this world where parents buy their kids stuff pre-freshman year, like esp. since 1/3 of kids tend to drop after freshman year and then what.

Also the idea of asking your parents to buy you anything, even something that would make your life easier like a less-obsolete computer your senior year...it's just a different world for me.

When I first started dating my fiancé and he'd ask his mom for things like an MP3 player, and then she'd buy them, the whole process just dumbfounded me.

PIII's held together with chicken wire etc. vs new laptop + ipod (though to be fair he "needed" that)

I kid, really. But come on, what is this thread about anyway? BITCHING

xpost

Yes, it's about bitching. I admitted that from the start. I feel like an old person who writes 5-page letters to the editor daily by being so scandalized, but, I am.

I don't want to cover my jealousy with self-righteousness, which I am attempting to avoid. I just don't get it entirely.

only thing my parents buy me anymore: guns.

(okay, they tried to buy me a watch last week, but Fossil didn't have anything that looked like I'd wear it)

My dad got all these free guns from Freedom Arms when he worked there. Fuck if he'd let me touch them though. I know where he hides them though: behind my mom's tampons. He thinks robbers would be too grossed out by touching tampons to look back there.

suckerborneveryminute.org

Freedom Arms revolvers are expensive. He should sell them and buy you an iPod.

People are suckers. In other news, Sun expected to rise in the East tomorrow.

I think my dad would consider those revolvers a "need." When I was real young, though, he'd bring us home the gun-shaped foam cutout from the cases. Played with a lot of floppy revolver silhouettes at age six.

xpost

Is it guilt what makes parents do this or the thought that it's a genuine need for the kid's college, or a keeping up with the Joneses nouveau riche thing, or what?

Probably a creamy blend of all of the above. Still, suckers, for real.

Don't think you can call it guilt - keeping up with the Joneses/they've spoiled them since birth so why not/etc. yes.

It's not a big stretch for parents with a big suburban house and three 50" plasma TVs to genuinely believe that Jr. needs enough electronics to remake War Games in order to survive.

That is kind of what I had for a while, four towers people gave me bcz they were crazy old, and I'd just switch out RAM and faster CD-ROM drives between them into my main tower. I seduced so many men with my tiny room wherein the whole floor was covered w/used, dissembled and broken electronics (part about seduction = one of lies).

(meaning "enough electronics to remake war games," def. never got to Real Genius levels)

If you sold computers or mp3 players at a standard price and then charged people hundreds extra for a "stylish interface package" or "more elegant button design" or whatever, nobody would be buying that.

See Watches for men thread.

My parents paid for me to go to an out-of-state college for four years. I took my dad's old computer, and he bought himself a new one.

Me tooo, that's how I ended up with a seven-year-old computer. Which, you know, I would have had no computer otherwise.

When I was real young, though, he'd bring us home the gun-shaped foam cutout from the cases. Played with a lot of floppy revolver silhouettes at age six.

this is awesome. although i did misread it at first thinking you were playing with the foam that had the gun part cut out. that wouldve been like really awesome.

We played with those, too, actually.

my mom never paid for shit
BUT. she couldn't really afford to

Hi no one owned laptops when I was in high school you babies. Hell, the only people who had computers at all were extreme nerds who had Amigas or C64s, I mean even Windows didnt exist back then. Going anywhere near a computer was instant social death. Oh how times change.

We wrote our essays in PEN on PAPER. I bet kids these days dont even KNOW how to WRITE WITH A PEN anymore.

I hate this thread. I get enough I-grew-up-poor resentment from my wife, thanks very much, but at least there are benefits in that relationship.

ew?

I got enough from my mom. She got mad if I spent more than $8 on an item of clothing but she also got mad if I shopped at thrift stores.

Well quit passing it on!

Hey Rock, does your wife get mad at you if you try to order things like litmus strips online, or such? I'm having a hard time not being a nag because my boyfriend actually wants to spend money sometimes.

How the hell do you get over this?

Abbott, I don't think it has to be some grand negative that makes people spend money on stuff for their college-bound kids! Plenty of parents are putting money into college in the first place as an Investment in Child's Future based on Wanting Them to Have Every Opportunity, and plenty of them either have the money to spare or figure it's peanuts compared to tuition, and plenty of them are actively proud of their kids for doing some good work and getting into college and want to send them off with a full pocket and the best of everything -- there are plenty of nice reasons that can also be involved. (And also plenty of people who make decent enough money that buying their kids nice things is just kinda par for the course.)

I don't know how you'd draw up generational trends on this, but there are those who bootstrap and work hard and then pass on to their children not to expect hand-outs, and then there are those others who bootstrap and work hard and then take pleasure in trying to make sure their children have an easier time and don't have to work as hard as they did (or anyway that their children's hard work will be directed at something a step above the basics they worked at hard at getting).

Ha, so many things to add to that first list -- like how it's surely easier to lavish nice things on a kid who's leaving you for the first time, or nervousness about your child's success in college that makes you spend to maximize the chances of their staying focused/happy, or a combination good/bad status-and-love thing that makes parents not want to see their kids live too much less comfortably than they did at home...

Yeah, I see your point and agree. I would like to strike a balance between the two with my own kids, but how. How is the question. Though I'd prefer my kids to have parents who will help them out when, say, they can't afford medical expenses at the very least. (And in the past of course I've wished that from my own parents, oil well.)

I suppose what gets me in these ads is like 'send your kids out with 200 k-awesome toys you can all get here at Best Buy.'

multi-xpost:
I have the opposite problem actually. My wife is the one who spends without regard to how much comes in or how much goes out, because "debt" and "wealth" are equally amorphous terms to her. She would spend right up to our credit limit if I didn't object, because she can't imagine how bankruptcy would be any worse than the poverty she knew as a kid. I'm a little more fiscally responsible because I had a comfortable youth that I couldn't sustain for years after I moved out on my own. I know what every single thing I want costs, in more than just dollar terms, and I really don't think J. does.

Yah, same with my fiancé, but not so much bcz he grew up poor, but rather with a mother who, out of love & desire for her kid to have nice things, bought him whatevs at the drop of a hat, asked or not. And she has NO idea of responsible finance, just filed her second bankruptcy in ten years...he's terrified of money bcz he doesn't know how not to treat it like she does.

I know what every single thing I want costs, in more than just dollar terms

I definitely know this feeling.

We were comfortably middle-class growing up, but it came wrapped up in a thick layer of waste-not-want-not, because my parents grew up in the Depression/War years. Actually, the where (Mississippi) is probably more of a factor than the when.