I decided to replace my aging iPhone 6+ a few months ago with a refurbished one- or two-years old iPhone model. The iPhone XR seems like a solid choice and I looked forward to some Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals. I assumed I’d purchase a “renewed” model rather than pay full price from Apple.

Then reality hit.

The “renewed” unlocked 128GB XR went from about $560 a few weeks back to $600 on Black Friday and soared even higher over the weekend. Today, it’s back “down” to $630 although it exceeded that price at its height..

Apparently, secondary markets plus high consumer demand create different pricing outcomes than shiny loss leaders.

This lead me to a sea-change in my planning and expectations.

An unlocked brand new SIM-free 128GB XR retails for $649 from Apple plus they throw in a $50 gift card today. If I hand over my existing iPhone 6+, my price goes down $80 (although I’m tempted to hand it down to a child). Not having to deal with Gazelle or the vagaries of Amazon vendors seems like a happy outcome.

Oddly, this is the last major purchase from my yearly “Pick up on Black Friday/Cyber Monday” list. The rest all went fairly smoothly, especially the $129 Apple Watch 3 for my middle child (Thank you David Ashman!) and the $649 MBA for my eldest.

I find year-by-year my purchase requirements are shrinking and changing. I’m spending more on services like iCloud and Backblaze, VPNs and NoIP, and less on hardware. I didn’t bother buying any external backup hard drives this year as I still have a couple in boxes from last year.

For those keeping track, I didn’t replace or upgrade my 2012 Mac mini although I am seriously considering the dual drive upgrade several of you recommended. I now run Mojave and Catalina installs on separate machines because I don’t want to lose access to thousands of dollars of software from the 32-bitpocalypse while I need access to the latest dev tools and OS. It’s a fairly frustrating situation.

So where did I spend my BF/CM money? This year, it was mostly about  gifts (carbon fiber PLA filament for the boy, Switch games for the girls), education (the watch and the laptop), and prosaic things-we-simply-needed (replacing a broken space heater).

It was also a good lesson on what not to buy during the rush.