Opportunity cost and the digital recorder

I am pondering the usefulness of a digital voice recorder. I’ve actually pondered it for a long time. I do a lot of reading out loud to my kids and have thought that it would be nice to record some of that. I’ve also thought of the usefulness of letting kids record their spelling lists as practice. Kiki could use it to record her Japanese vocabulary words. And the biggest motivator of all is that Link needs practice reading aloud. I could have him read to the recorder so that his brother and sister could listen to it as they fall asleep.

So, brim full of plans, I surf my way out to Amazon.com and look at what is out there. I find this one from Olympus which seems to do everything I want. Then I hit the brick wall of the price. $60 is not too much for this little device, but I have to ponder the opportunity cost. If I spend the money on a digital recorder, then I will have to skip buy something else. Do I want to skip ice cream, or socks for Kiki, or the doctor’s check up for me, or pizza for Link’s birthday party? Fiscal responsibility means making careful choices. It is funny how some things I will drop money for almost without thinking, but other things I have to pause and consider.

So I put the recorder on my Amazon wish list to keep track of it, and I wait. It joins a long list of things that are waiting for awhile. Sometimes I get carried away with the shininess of my ideas. If buying it is really a good idea, it will still be a good idea next week. Also I can look at Best Buy and other places to comparison shop. This is being responsible. The little kid inside me wants things now and the grown up in me is such a killjoy.