Today, I’m going to go through the thought process that a financial blogger such as myself would go through to make a business purchase.

Understand that I’ve been considering this business purchase for a long time, at least since last year.  So you are probably wondering what has been holding me back?  The financial considerations involving such an expensive purchase…

When I initially started looking for the type of laptop that I wanted, they were running at a cost of around $700.  Since my blog is small and for the first five months I only made about five dollars, I couldn’t justify spending that much money for what was basically a borderline business, but more of a hobby.

So what has changed?

First, the Apple iPad and other tablets have come on the scene and made me rethink whether I wanted a laptop or a tablet.  After playing with my son’s Apple iPod Touch and my dad’s IPad 2, I’ve come to the conclusion that they are both awesome products but for me, the larger screen of the laptop just fulfills my blogging needs better.  I especially like the larger screen when I’m working on graphics for my blog.  Needless to say, the apple products were very tempting and it wasn’t an easy decision.

Second, the price of the laptops that I was looking at dropped by more than half the original cost!  The particular type of laptop that I wanted now costs $300!  That makes a four gigabyte laptop with a 320 Gig drive cost as much as my son’s iPod Touch…  As awesome as the iPod Touch is, the pure horsepower and larger screen make the laptop an obvious choice.  Still, I think an iPod Touch or iPad would have been very useful and functional…  perhaps next year.

Third, my blog is finally making a little bit of money.  Not enough money to quit my day job, but enough to afford better tools for working on the blog.  I plan on pouring some of the money from my blog back into the blog itself.  This purchase will enable me to blog from many more places than I previously could.  Now I’m able to be more mobile with the longer battery life of my new laptop.  Previously, I was occasionally using the laptop from work but this feels more right, and the longer battery life and greater processing power will enable me to do far greater things with it than the older laptop I was using.

All told, it still took me longer than 1 year to make this purchase.  In fact, had I not see this bargain on one of the bargain sites (techbargains.com), I wouldn’t have made the purchase.

Even after the salesperson brought out the laptop and handed it to me, I had to walk around for about 30 minutes before going up to the cashier for the purchase.

Thanks for letting me share my largest business purchase with you!

MR