Seeing as how I’m a bit of a gadgetphiliac (which is like being a fecalphiliac but with marginally less, you know, poop), I cannot tell a lie: I love the new iPhone. I covet it. Deeply. Which is completely stupid because it’s a PHONE. A $600 PHONE. (Which I want.)
But I won’t buy it. (Not least because if I spent $600 on a phone there’s a non-trivial chance my wife would kill me with a thatching rake.) I just don’t need it, which is how I justify most of my expensive doohickey purchases:
- New acoustic guitar: $800. Needed because my sister wanted back her guitar, which I had been borrowing. Or something. (I’m not sure she noticed she didn’t have it.)
- New camera: $900. Needed to take pictures of my adorable infant. (The camera I already had, well, it just didn’t DO it right.)
- New 50mm lens for camera: $100. I totally needed it to take more pictures of my adorable infant INDOORS. (I will use a similar justification next year when I spend $400 on an external flash with wireless remote.)
- New 28mm-300mm zoom lens for camera: $250. I just wanted to take better pictures at baseball games, really. But I do take pictures of my adorable infant/toddler with it.
Spending money is like an addiction, though, and sometimes it takes a hard moment to break one of it, like when one checks one’s bank account and discovers that one has overdrawn same. Not that I have, of course. But in the last few weeks, I have discovered that I need new pants, so I had to buy those; I couldn’t find my softball glove, so I acquired a replacement; I needed new batting gloves, so I bought those too; it adds up! Luckily, when taxes come around, I will deduct all these expenses because I’m writing a new novel about them, or at least that’s what you’re going to tell the IRS on my behalf if you get subpoenaed during the audit. (Burning questions: can other people be subpoenaed? Is “subpoenaed” the hardest word I’ve had to type all day? If I sell a single picture of Charles to my mother for like 50 cents, can I deduct all the camera-related purchases?)
dude. Take current camera. Take pictures sideways. Show them while one hand on scroll button. Hold finger on screen, keep still. Move phone across finger while pressing scroll button. Presto: redneck iPhone.
Yes, you should claim all camera equipment, and then you should claim a SUBSTANTIAL loss on a home business. Of course, you MIGHT want to acquire, I dunno, a business license first.