DD saw a friend she used to know from when we lived in the apartments. The friend's mom had gotten into a minor car accident. Her driver's side mirror got cracked when another car almost side-swiped her. That was the only damage and she wasn't sure she was going to repair it even though this car was only a couple of years old. When my DD's friend was dropped off, DD asked, "Did your mom get a new car?" The friend said, "Yes." DD later asked me, "Mom, why did they buy a new car just because the mirror was broken on the old one?" I didn't have an answer.
My hubby makes weird justifications all the time. When we bought out very first house, he ran out and bought a circular saw. He came home and proudly showed it to me. I questioned the purchase and he replied, "Well, we're homeowners now. We're going to need one of these!" I don't know about you, but "circular saw" wasn't then nor has it ever been high on my list of "needs" in home ownership. Yes, we've used it a couple of time in the past - oh - 25 years. But we "needed" so many other tools first.
He did the same thing to me a couple of weekends ago. We had just picked up the car from the body shop so my head was filled with the fact that we had just spent over $2600. Yes, most of that was insurance money but I have this little mental self-limiter that says, "Spend $X and it is time to go home." But since we were in the area of the hardware store (45 minutes away so when you're in that town you should stop if you need anything), of course, hubby had to go in. He picks up a manual weed-whacker off the wall and says, "We should buy this." I ask if we could wait until next week since that'll be after his paycheck arrives. He replied, "Well, I'd really like to get to the weeds this weekend." Really? I don't think so since it is raining and everyone knows that he'll whack at the weeds for a few minutes then go inside the house because he is hot and tired. He hasn't even used the electric weed-whacker that we've already purchased!!! Of course, I think all this since it isn't very polite to actually say it. Thankfully he agrees to wait. And sure enough, I bought him a manual weed-whacker later and he whacked at the weeds for a minute ...
Back when re-financing your mortgage for 120% of the value of the property was all the rage, we had friends who were re-financing every 3 to 4 months, taking out more equity every time. It was a crazy, crazy time. They'd then turn around and use the money to go on vacation and buy weird stuff. They even re-financed and financed a new car because the rates were so low (who'd have imagined how the low interest rates are now!) They said it made sense to re-finance because "Uncle Sam is practically paying for it with the tax deduction." Little did they realize that the portion of the mortgage interest NOT spent on the house is NOT tax deductible. I didn't say anything.
