2015: The Real Cost of Tech (and How to Afford It)

**Farnoosh Torabi** (0:00)
Hey friends, if you've been sitting on a book idea and wondering could this actually become something, this is your moment. Join me in New York City on October 9th for Book to Brand. This is my intimate full-day immersive designed to help you turn your idea into a clear, compelling, pitch-ready book concept. You will meet the insiders, agents, publishers, and recent authors who can help bring your book to life. Spots are limited and early-bird tickets are on sale now. Head to booktobrand.co to reserve your spot. This episode is brought to us by Back Market, the world's largest pure play premium refurbished tech marketplace. Back Market's mission is to make refurbished tech the mainstream choice by extending the life of devices, fighting electronic waste, and challenging today's throwaway culture.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:47)
You're listening to So Money with award-winning money guru Farnoosh Torabi. Each day, get a 30-minute dose of financial inspiration from the world's top business minds, authors, influencers, and from Farnoosh herself.
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**Farnoosh Torabi** (1:14)
Welcome to So Money, everybody. I'm Farnoosh Torabi. All right, real talk about tech. I did the math on our family's tech budget the other day and I had to sit down. We're about to go from two phones to three and eventually to four.
And somehow between phones and laptops, iPads and the Apple watches that we're all wearing, our tech spending has quietly become one of the biggest line items in our budget. And the timing could not be worse because Apple has just raised their prices. In June, Apple said that it would raise the prices of certain MacBooks and iPads by up to $300.
And Apple itself said it had shielded customers from these increases so far but had reached a point where it needed to begin raising prices on several products. We're talking a MacBook Air going from $1,099 to $1,299. An iPad Air jumping from $599 to $749. The iPhone was left out of this round, but analysts expect the new model this fall to get a price hike too. If you were already feeling squeezed on tech spending, it's about to get tighter. So today, I'm talking to someone who thinks about this problem for a living. Lauren Benton is a general manager of Back Market here in the US. It's the marketplace for refurbished tech that's basically built its whole business around the idea that you don't have to pay full price or buy brand new to get a device that works exactly the way you need it to. We're going to talk about why refurbished doesn't mean what you think it means, how families can actually cut this expense down, like way down. And some tips heading into back to school season, which is about to collide head on with these new Apple prices.
Lauren Benton, welcome to So Money. It's great to have you on the show. We're going to unpack a lot of important information around the cost of tech and how to save on tech, which is becoming just a bigger piece of our monthly budget. I know for us that's very true. So I appreciate you coming on the show and helping us out.

**Lauren Benton** (3:06)
Farnoosh, thank you so much for having us on today. I'm very excited for this conversation.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (3:10)
So we're going to learn a lot about the refurbished market, specifically refurbished tech, how to save, what's driving the cost of tech these days. But let's talk about your own relationship with tech spending. I'm just curious if you, Lauren, are someone who loves to upgrade every year, or you're someone who's like me and you're still using a cracked phone. It's on the back mostly of my phone, so thankfully a cover doesn't reveal it. But what's your tech personality?

**Lauren Benton** (3:38)
We're going to talk about the importance of taking care of your tech later, so the covering. But you know, no, I'm not on the upgrade cycle. I'm still carrying my 14 proudly. I think my text message read just as well. My AI apps work just as that. My pictures are adorable of my kids. I actually faced a decision recently when I also cracked the back of my glass, and Back Market allows us to get a discount on buying a device each year since we work for the company. I was thinking about that upgrade, and I actually stepped back and made the decision to buy the same device again. I carry an iPhone 14, but I'm now carrying two of them.
What I did was think about what do I want this tech to do for me? Do I need the latest and greatest device to get that done? What I needed was to actually set better boundaries. Not somebody who does that wonderfully, and so I use a device to set a boundary against the other one. One device is my pictures, I text my mom and I can tap to pay, and that's quite honestly all that it is. Then the other one is my Slack and my e-mail, and it gives me this opportunity to be really intentional about which device I have with me at what times, and to be more present in the way that I want, making the tech work for me versus working for it.