Some unexpected circumstances have converged to give me an extra thousand bucks this month. I’ve been without a working TV for a couple if years now, and the one I had was more than 10 years old.
I have cable internet, so I can turn on a TV option real fast. Is there any point to one of those Chromecast dealies if I can pug the internet cable straight into a smart TV?
Sell me something people! The fever’s burning and I want a new toy in my hands by next week.
I recommend that you visit Costco. If not a member, find a friend or join.
Lots of sets to compare and great return/support policies.
Put it on your mortgage.
Thank you Jaysus. I didn’t want to say, but from other threads…Get a grip and get the stars out of your eyes? and your hand out of your pocket? Whatever you’ve been “given” isn’t free and now is not the time to indulge. Question the money.
Spend 200 of it on a cheap used TV, and save the rest… if you must spend any of it at all.
I have a Chromecast, and it is not that great. You can’t stream local media with it because it’s locked down so tight. You can only do youtube or netflix type stuff. I’d pass.
I hate to be a negative nancy, but “omg bonus money have to spend it now!” is buying further into the “poor mentality.” I’m not saying you can’t buy a tv, but why not buy a modest tv for around $200 and put the rest into a savings account for your next emergency? I’m guilty of blowing windfalls too, but I always end up regretting it when I need new brakes (or whatever). You’re only going to hurt yourself if you waste this cash.
Well, you might want to read this first, but if TV it is, consider doing your homework to the last suffix letter. The sets sold by many discounters are not necessarily the ones that got high reviews.
It’s VERY common for a “model GTV2250” to have three or four or five variants, distinguished by nothing more than a suffix letter or number but spanning the range of quality from tech award winner to junk that will ruin your eyesight. Both of the TVs I’ve bought in the last ten years (Panasonic plasmas… and I will likely never buy another, now that plasmas are disappearing) had absolutely rave, top-of-the-list reviews… for ONE model. The same model number, with a -C or -2 or -XPR or something appended, was much cheaper at Sam’s or Costco or even Best Buy… and sometimes had such different specs it bordered on bait-and-switch. Mostly the differences are in number of inputs, whether or not it has the super-high-tech adjustment features, whether it’s a smart TV or not - that is, the actual picture and tech are fundamentally the same. But many actually substitute lower-quality ‘glass’ and display tech to make the Costco version seem like such a great buy.
Do your homework, don’t overlook the small differences in model numbers, and start with the online discounters to get the best price on the actual model you want. (Visiting the manufacturer pages will let you list the model variants side by side… it’s possible you’d be okay with a “lesser” model if you don’t need 8 HDMI inputs or built-in 5.1 sound.)
It’s not bonus money. It’s money that was already budgeted for something else and it turned out I didn’t need to spend it for the other purpose.
I just came back from buying an LG 47G2 for $700. It was an unbeatable deal, and since it has built in wi-fi and, Google Chrome and Netflix, I’m going to skip the cable TV service I was planning to get.
So is this a Dope record for fastest time between getting advice and ignoring it?
Because I didn’t ask for anyone’s advice on whether or not to buy something, I was entirely comfortable ignoring it.
Boyo Jim, enjoy the TV.
Your advice ignored the OP so why expect to him to listen to it. He asked a simple enough question.
Second this.
Boyo Jim, I hope you have many, many years of viewing pleasure.
Well, the problem I think we’re having with this is because we’ve read the other thread.
From that, we know that you have this money at your disposal because your bank finally gave you the rules to follow, and it somehow unexpectedly left you with a payment you don’t have to make that you thought you had to make.
The problem here? Given all you’ve told us, along with all that we think we know from all the other evil news we’ve heard over the years about banks in general and this one in particular – WE DON’T FUCKING TRUST YOUR BANK! We think it’s a total crapshoot whether they will or won’t suddenly discover that you owe them thousands of dollars that nobody ever thought of before, and what they might do about it.
They had your case dismissed without prejudice, remember? They can start up on you any time they get a bug up their asses to do so.
It ain’t over until it’s over, and in your case, it very possibly ain’t over!
ETA: To some or all other participants in this thread, whom I’ve presumed to speak for by saying what “we” think: Do you think I’m right about this?
ETA-2: To repeat a suggestion others have made: Re-finance your house with a different bank just as fast as you can. Then think about how to spend all your new-found money.
I am told reliably that it will be at least 2-3 years until my credit rating is recovered enough to refinance my house. I now have written documentation of my mortgage amount, the APR and the term of the mortgage. I have a new, signed mortgage modification contract.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s over now, even though it wasn’t a couple of weeks ago when the case was dismissed. I’m not saying they won’t or can’t sue me, but so long as I make my payments on schedule they no longer have legitimate grounds. When they DID sue me, they did in fact have legitimate grounds for it, as I was unemployed for more than 3 years and hadn’t been able to pay my mortgage for more than 6 months.
And if they DO sue me with no legitimate grounds, well, then they might do it any time for the rest of my natural life. That’s not something I can plan for or anticipate.
My advice ignored nothing. I recommended he spend $200 on a used TV.
My gf is mad at me. I decided we aren’t going to fly to California, rent a car and stay at a hotel by the beach this summer because it costs too much. I’d have to pay for pretty much all of it, and there are other things we have to do this year.
Like move. Our TV is more than 10 years old, and it is literally about 2 feet thick. This just isn’t going to work in the new space- I think we will have to get some kind of flat screen. If I’m buying a TV I only want to do it once, so I’d want to get a good new one. And we move right after when we thought we might take this trip. It just doesn’t work!
If I got a smart tv, I might become motivated to get the wifi in my computer fixed. Or maybe just some LCD thing. I don’t know- Boyo Jim decided so fast that this thread never produced much in the way of TV suggestions.
I think there’s probably some understandable resentment behind some of the responses. There are tons of people (some of them no doubt posting/lurking here) who were foreclosed on by their banks and kicked out of their homes because they couldn’t get the arrangement that you got. So you are truly lucky. And I think most people can accept that some individuals get to be lucky sometimes and it’s no big deal.
But this thread kind of rubs it in. Especially since it’s clear you didn’t need anyone’s advice in the first place.
I don’t think you intended to rub anything in, because you strike me as a nice guy. But I’m just letting you know how the thread comes across…to me, at least.
My best luck was getting a job before it was too late to save my home. 2nd, if you can call it “luck”, was that I was in a pool with millions of others who faced losing their homes for similar reasons, and in a depressed real estate market, and the financiers decided it was better to make deals with the people who could pay something rather than take back and re-sell the property. 3rd was, for some reason CitiMortgage doesn’t want a June mortgage payment, I dunno why but I suspect it’s related to processing the revised mortgage. In any case, I would have paid them even if they spent the money on hookers and blow for the attorney who handled the case against me. But they didn’t want the money, and I didn’t ask twice after I got the first answer in writing.
As to this thread, I might have waited for some advice, but most of the early posts were about why I shouldn’t buy anything, or buy some junk TV. In fact, not one person suggested a TV to buy. And I found a great deal – 60% off the original retail price of a TV with every single feature I even thought of.
Two-year-old, discontinued product remaindered to the discounters, average to poor image quality, Android implementation considered somewhat gimmicky and hard to use. Me, I would have done some direct research instead of tossing out an inquiry here and coming home with my purchase to see what folks recommended.
I have a Chromecast and I really like it. We only use Netflix and hulu either way, so it isn’t very limiting for our needs. I only wish it had Amazon instant watch, but at least the PlayStation does.