Doug Van Pelt

My Flat Screen TV Story

This is a story I had an idea to share, but I really didn't want to share it. It's kind of personal. It deals with some of my own fears and doubts and, gosh darn it, people won't like me. Ha ha.
(clears throat)
"Sorry, Al Franken." Er, should I say, "Senator Al Franken?!"
That's insane, but weirder things have happened right there in Minnesota.

I digress.

I have been wanting a letterbox, widescreen TV for over 10 years. As soon as I started buying DVDs, which goes back to at least 1998, I wanted to have a widescreen television screen to watch them on. I went over to Holland on a visit as part of my trip to cover the Christmas Rock Night festival in Ennepetal, Germany. I went to Holland to visit my friend and former intern, Wilco deLonge. When we visited downtown Amsterdam, I stopped into an electronic shop or two and saw lots of widescreen TVs that were short and super wide, to display the panaramic 16:9 ratio of widescreen movies, like how they were shot. These were not plasma screen TV sets, but CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) sets that were very deep, like most sets of the day. Seeing all those furthered my great desire to have one. The flat panel plasma televisions of that time ranged from $15,000 to $5,000 for a widescreen 42" plasma model. There's no way I had that kind of money then, nor would I have spent it if I did.

Fast-forward 8 or 9 years. My wife and I both receive our income from HM Magazine. As you might (or might not) imagine, this is not an extravagant or lavish income. We live on a budget and have been able to take advantage of government assistance in various contexts due to our income.

Parenthetically, this is one of those reasons why I shelved the idea of blogging about this. Who shares with the entire world what their salary is? I guess certain very public figures and public servants, etc, have no choice. But it's not a very polite thing to share -- especially in a compare-with-others kind of society we have here in the West.

Anyway, there is not a good reason to spend the $600 to over $1,000 on a new flat-panel television set in our present context -- especially when we have a perfectly good 4:3 ratio 30-inch television set (a display model I got at Best Buy for $300 back in 1996, by the way). So, what I would do is try to earn extra income. I would do this by picking up freelance writing jobs or selling CDs and DVDs that I no longer listened to. I'd keep this money in a coffee can at times; or at other times give it to my wife to deposit into our personal account, keeping a mental note of what my "extra" balance was.

Sometimes I'd get some good opportunities. Last year (well, that's 2007, actually) I was offered a cover story assignment on David Crowder for CCM Magazine. Like most magazines (unlike HM, unfortunately), CCM Magazine paid a fair market value for their writing assignments. I got a nice $500 check for this piece. 'Ahh,' I thought, 'this is almost enough by itself to get a 42" plasma TV at 720i resolution. That was kind of my plan. But our daughter needed braces. Do you know how much braces can cost?

Six months to a year previous Revolver Magazine asked me to compose a list of "Top 10 Christian metal albums" of all time. Both of us wanted to cradle a balance of past and present, so narrowing down the greatness of our scene into 10 albums was an exercise in futility. But they paid me handsomely for that. I can't remember, but probably at least $200 for that. For the past two or three years (but not counting the last 9 months, since CCM stopped printing), I was doing an album review or article for CCM every month or so. This provided maybe an extra $100 per month. But our family needs to go on a vacation of some sort at least once every three years (or at least that seems reasonable to us). We went Disneyworld after Christmas about 5 years ago, and stuff like that ain't cheap. But mostly I'm talking about just a family excursion to a place like Schlitterbahn (which, if you haven't heard of or gone to the place, you must check it out) or Six Flags Over Texas, and those types of trips aren't cheap, either.

Anyway, if it wasn't a personal family medical need or a vacation type need, it was something else. All my plans for getting a 42" widescreen TV just seemed to get blindsided by other needs that were just as or (most of the time) much more important than an unnecessary TV purchase.

A year ago, I was asked to judge the final round for Famecast

in Austin, Texas for the Contemporary Christian, Latin, and Country music categories. It was shot and edited like a show like American Idol, with 3 judges sharing comments and choosing a winner, along with online votes, behind-the-scenes footage with artists, etc. Anyway, they paid me what is (or at least was) the Statuatory Rate for the television industry, which is a nice $500. 'Alright, I thought, if I can earmark any of my extra income with this $500, surely I can afford to buy a $700 TV.' As with all real important decisions, of course, I needed to have agreement with my wife. If I demand on spending our money a certain way and she doesn't, well, that promotes dissension, and that's not good. I thought I had a good argument and I could make this purchase without hurting our budget.

These are just a few examples, but this Famecast check opportunity was squelched by some other need. When your income is so much and your expenses are so much, it can take discipline and care to budget those things, like keeping limit on spending in the Spring and Summer so that you'll have any money left over to buy Christmas presents. Even birthday presents should be accounted for. That is, if you want to avoid being in debt and a prisoner to high interest rates from credit card companies. That's another story altogether, right there.

Last February my wife and I went to Uganda, Africa. While my expenses were covered, we stepped out on faith and covered my wife's trip. During that trip, we got to see real poverty up close and personal. We sat on hard-packed dirt/mud floors in 4-foot by 8-foot homes. I got to talk to some of the people that made the trip with us, like Shaun Groves, who shared with me during one of the 16 podcast interviews I did (which is a great episode of the HM Magazine Podcast from last year, by the way), where he told me about how his mind and heart helped him to change the way he lived. "I had the awesome enterainment system," he said. "I had all that." He's since become a full-time Compassion Int'l staff member (I believe) and has moved into a house and neighborhood that's much more modest than the keep-up-with-the-joneses music industry peers in Nashville. He lives a simpler life so others can escape poverty. Making some minor changes in his life can mean huge changes in the lives of children and families that are in the midst of poverty.

Besides having "real life" expenses and events shoot down my television acquisition plans, there was the concept of simplifying as a means of being responsible with the riches God's given me. It's been stated here and other places many times before, but if you take the monetary incomes of all the people in the world, the average American is in the top 1% of the wealthiest. Of course, none of us "average Americans" feel like we're living large, but that's because we compare ourselves to some successful, multi-platinum artist we see on MTV Cribs. Trying comparing yourself to some family in El Salvador or Kenya or Singapore.

Anyway, there was that unexpected trip to Africa. There was my high school reunion this last October. Since our kids are home schooled, it seemed like a good idea to take everyone along for one of those family vacations. These type of trips cost a lot of money. That sure seems like no time to be buying a new TV set.

So, anyway, back in September we got one of those checks from the government, which is meant to offer a boost to the economy. Having two kids, we got about $1,600. I was finally able to badger (or did I say bludgeon?) my wife into agreeing to letting me buy a TV. I had a couple hundred bucks from my old band's merch account, which I kept active long after the band split up in 1994. I did some freelance design work for some advertising clients who didn't have the resources to design their own ad, nor pay the industry standard rate to get a private designer to do it for them, and I used that with a little bit of this tax incentive money to buy a Vizio 42" LCD HDTV that was a 1080p set that was on sale for $897.

I had my eye on this model as the one I'd be willing to get, but I kept shopping around -- both online and in stores -- to see if I could find a better deal. I figured that, if I spent an extra $100 or $200 than what I really wanted to spend (which was about $700), then getting the extra quality of 1080p would be worth it over settling on a 720p... I really wanted one that did split-screen PIP (picture-in-picture), but it seems that most HDTV's these days aren't including that feature.

Anyway, it was comical, but one attempt to purchase a set in this range after another fell through. When I went with my family to a Walmart, finally settling on this Vizio (which is now going for $797, by the way -- ), I had the blessing of my wife, but this store didn't have it. "Let me call around the other Walmarts," the clerk said. Nope. All regional Walmarts were out of this TV at that time. I waited another week or two. When I went into a store that had the set in stock, I brought my checkbook and found out that their quantity on their computer included two in-store display models. My wife even said something like, "See, God is telling you not to buy the TV." It was frustrating. Even though I knew what I wanted and I was running out of patience, or so I thought, I had to consider that she might be right.

However, while I think God can lead us with circumstances; I think it can be foolish to put too much stock in them. Personal prayer -- even about buying a TV or a car or a house or a guitar -- can give us access to God Himself. According to the Bible, He loves it when we ask Him for wisdom. Wisdom can come from lots of places, too. Anyway, I was cautious, but didn't really think or was ready to believe that it was God shutting the door on this TV purchase.

More important than the TV, I think, was having harmony. Spending large amounts of money on things when your spouse does not agree does not promote harmony.

Finally, one of the Walmarts in Austin had two units in stock that were not in-store displays. I went down to the store late at night and picked up the TV. The place was packed on a Friday or Saturday (or maybe it was a Sunday) night at about 10 or 11pm. Crazy! It looked like Christmas, but it was only late August or early September. I struggled to make the TV fit into our car, noting that I probably would not have made it fit into our smaller VW. See how rich we are? Seriously! (I'm not trying to be silly here) We have two cars. This is really a luxury and a blessing not to be taken for granted.

I am excited to get it home, unload it carefully from the box and discover that it's not wrapped in cushiony material like a $900 TV should be. I decide to wait a day and take it back the next day. At the time, it seemed like another example of a shut door in my quest.

sigh...

The next evening I take it back to Walmart, put it on a cart and carefully drive the boxed TV set to the Customer Service counter. "Reason you're returning it, sir?"

"It had obviously been opened before I purchase it. If I'm going to spend this much money on a TV, I'd like to know that it's really brand new."

These LCD and plasma type TV sets have so many thousands of hours in the lamps inside. It should last 10 to 20 years with normal use; but if it's a display model ... do you know how many hours they've been on already? My goodness! Walmart's are open 24 hours a day and those TV display units have to be going non-stop for several months before they are sold. There's no way I want to buy one of those for near full-price.

I go into the TV department and find the other large box with this TV on the floor. I peek through the handle and see the kind of soft-material wrapping a new set would have, and I cart it back on a normal shopping cart (very carefully). After processing the return, I notice that it's one of those items that is so large that it gets people looking. Once the exchange was final, I wheeled the large box on a big cart along the back of the store, behind row after row of check-out registers.

I had a lot of eyes on me and, all of a sudden, it was like I could vividly imagine myself wheeling this TV set down the streets of Kampala, Uganda. Lots of kids, looking at me, curious. Watching the rich man wheel his giant and luxuriously cool gadget item home to his castle. While not a single look was a glare or judgment in my mind's eye, it was like all the guilt was self-imposed. Man, that was a weird experience.

I felt kind of like a cold-hearted man that was buying a luxury item to pamper himself, ignoring the hurting and impoverished around him.

In some ways, I feel like I deserved to have an Ally McBeal moment like that, because I was buying something extravagant. I don't give myself too much grief or punish myself for it, but I do give myself pause and remember what's really important and think about how, 'If I can spend so much energy to get my hands on a prize, why can't I spend that kind of energy to help others -- with no motivation to better myself in the process?'

Now that is an interesting thought.

By the way, I was pretty happy to find out that the HD signals from our cable provider are part of the normal package we pay for. Someone had told me, 'Oh, if you get one of these new HDTV sets, your hidden cost is going to be the higher cable bill you pay to get the fancier High-Def channels.' That frustrated me, because I did not want to pay an extra dime for that type of service. But, wow, do football games and other coverage look so much better in HD! I knew I'd be tempted if it was extra, but I was committed to just enjoying DVDs with this HDTV and normal TV signals. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that all or most cable providers just pass on the HD signals as part of their normal coverage.

I apologize for the lengthy blog post, but the idea for this has been jelling awhile and I felt like doing it.

Posted by Doug Van Pelt at January 13, 2009 11:40 AM