Frank the Financially Savvy Atheist - The F.S.A.

We all have stuff that we'd waste money on if we could. For some guys it's luxury cars. My brother-in-law only buys new cars. He recently got an Acura and takes good care of it. Not me though. I view a car as simply a way to get from point A to point B. My wife would add, "you need to get there safely", so we spend a little bit more money to buy used Toyotas (based on the Insurance Institute ratings).

For me though, I'd waste money on this: Area-51 ALX.

It's the Area-51 ALX from Alienware. The BMW of computer systems. It's stylish, powerful, and ridockulously expensive.

Check this baby out:
- Dual Pentium Processors
- Win XP
- Stylish Chassis in Saucer Silver or Space Black
- Liquid Cooling system that look like Alien eyes
- Dual x16 NVIDIA GeForceTM 7800 (256 MB or 512 MB)
- Up to 4 GB of SDRAM
- And a whole lot more

All for the low, low price of $5179.00. Slap on dual Samsung 24" LCD and you're looking at $7867.

I'm practically salivating right now. Slobber is getting all over my keyboard as I type. My co-workers are starting to wonder if I'm alright. This is the most awesome system that I could imagine.

As much as I want one of these, I have good reasons why I don't order one, sign up for their special financing ($237/mo) and blissfully sing my way into an electronic coma.

I can't afford it.

I can afford the $237/month payment, that's not the problem. What I can't afford is to take on more debt, to lose the opportunity to either save, invest, or pay off the existing debt on my balance sheet. Plus, I have young kids. Anything nice like that is going to end up broken, or written on with a marker sooner or later. And when am I going to have time to play computer games? The last computer game I played was Starcraft. Anyone remember Starcraft?

But oh man, if I did buy it, it would be totally sweet and awesome. I would have the most powerful personal computer in the world....for the next 2 months.

Tags: personal finance