I don't bother with meta tags anymore, it was too much effort to create unique keywords/descriptions for each page and Google doesn't appear to use them anyway. They used to be useful but I think they got abused so badly that they're not really seen as a trusted source of information. None of my sites appear to have a particularly low ranking as a result of not using meta tags, so I guess they're not really a big issue anymore.
But that's just not true -- Google DOES frequently display as a snippet the text from the description tag Your choice, but do remember that ranking decently in the search results is only part of the goal -- another part is interesting people enough to click on YOUR link instead of someone else's -- a good description can do that. I'd say you are missing out on a potential edge...