Personal Computer

I glibly mentioned that I had bought my first personal computer, or as we called them back in the day, an IBM clone or a PC. However, I did not say why this sudden diversion away from the Commodore 64 or Amiga was warranted.

Stan Solomon, my accountant, had educated me in 1990 about the power of deferring a portion of taxation to the following year, and, assuming that all circumstances stayed the same, the devious plan would have worked out quite well. The unfortunate aspect of the game of numbers, now that I was not under contract anywhere, was that in 1991 the deferred part would have to be efficiently disposed of so that I would not be hammered for taxes.

It was decided that a major legitimate expense would be a personal computer and a printer. I remember welcoming this suggestion and did some research and then promptly bought one at the Toronto Computer Fest.

The company was called "First Choice Computers" and the machine was a 386 with 2mb of RAM (which I increased to 4mb at the cost of $190) and a 100mb hard drive (which I increased to a 200mb unit at the cost of $200) - the grand total was somewhere in the region of $4000

It was a lot of money for sure but solved an uncomfortable tax situation, plus there was another life changing benefit.

I could play Doom!

The secondary thing that Stan Solomon instructed me to do was to maximise my RRSP contribution, something that made less sense to me than throwing money at a computer, however, I reluctantly agreed and in 1991, prior to the deadline, we both put our first RRSP contributions away.

I did not realise at the time, but that advice was one of the key ingredients in changing our financial habits and oddly enough, that home PC, as it evolved, became an invaluable tool that over the years solved every financial situation we faced.