So, Barb thinks that men are idiots when it comes to money. I beg to differ in her assessment. I think women are much worse than men when it comes to spending money.
Being a homeowner for the first time, I have discovered that the average home requires a substantial amount of maintenance. Paint, light bulbs, carpet cleanings, unexpected repairs, etc. All of this requires some bucks to do. I try to have a few dollars set aside for those times when something unexpected (like my son breaking the faucet off the kitchen sink) needs to be replaced. This is a challenge at best. Along with the necessary maintenance, I would like to do some things around the house to make it more pleasant to live in. None of the things I would like to do are cheap (in other words, they probably cost more than $500). However, I probably won’t get to do most of what I (we, because my wife would like to see them done as well) would like to do. Here’s why.
First of all, I have to lay a little groundwork. My wife and I have separate checking accounts. I had to do this because whenever I had some money in the bank for a specific purpose, she spent it. She believes in having zero (or less) dollars in her checkbook. Even if I said the money was for a such-and-such, it got spent. Therefore, in order to attempt to protect what I worked for, I had to get my own account.
This being said, my wife is a shopaholic. If there is a “bargain” to be had, she will find it. It doesn’t matter what store, or what it is. She can smell a sale 3 blocks away. Some of her “bargains” are all right. Some years ago, she worked at Mervyn’s. We had decent clothes to wear at prices I didn’t mind paying. She would shop the clearance racks on the special days when they were having the 40-percent-off-clearance-price sales and then get her employee discount on top of that. I had some $40 pants that she got for $3. The kids were wearing $1 shirts and $2 pants. Nice ones, too.
She doesn’t work there anymore, but she still shops. My daughters have enough clothes to last 2 months if nothing ever got washed. But for some reason, my wife thinks they need more. She can not resist a good sale if there’s one out there. Target gets a lot of her business. Too many people who work there know her by name.
Here is where the problem is. She will go shopping (if she goes with her Mom, it’s doubly dangerous) and come back with something. “Oh John, look what I got.” And she will pull out a shirt, or trinket or some other useless or unneeded article and say “and it was 60% off!” That doesn’t tell me how much it cost. So I say, “How much was it?”
“Well it was regularly $14.96 and it was 60% off of that. What does that make it?” And I am left to do the math and figure out that she spent $5.98 on this thing. And then comes the killer line: “I saved a bunch of money.” No she didn’t. She spent $5.98!
Then I get this. “My checkbook is a little short. Can you put some money in it for me?” So, there goes the little fund that I’ve managed to start putting together for the umpteenth time, right into her checking account. And when she sees that there is an additional $50 in there to cover what was already bought, plus enough to cover what she probably didn’t tell me about, the cycle begins again. She leaves the house to “save” me more money.
My stand is this: The only time you save money is if you don’t spend it! If you have to spend it, then try to find it on sale so you don’t spend as much. If the kitchen faucet handle gets broken off, it has to be replaced. It’s a little hard to wash dishes and hands if the faucet doesn’t work. If I go down to Home Depot and the new faucet is $38 instead of the usual $45, that’s a bonus for my wallet. I did not save $7. I spent $38 for a necessary item. Saving money only works if you don’t spend it.
Here is a good example of the fallacy of “saving money” when you spend it. One of the projects we want to do is to install a deck in the back yard. It is going to be a nice deck, with a cover, hand rails and lights. Along with this project, the front and back yards will be killed, tilled, trenched, sprinklerized and seeded. Initially, I figured it would cost about $3000 to complete the entire project. If I can manipulate the big home improvement stores, I think I can knock off about $500 due to competitive adjustments. I am not saving $500. I am spending $2500. If I wanted to save the money, I would put it into the bank. Instead, I am going to spend a lot of money, but I am going to spend less than I originally figured and the remaining $500 will probably be left to cover more of my wife’s “bargains”.
My wife is not the only one who is driven to shop for bargains. I have learned that bargain shopping is passed from generation to generation. She learned it from her Mother. Her Mother taught it to her other two daughters as well. My Mother learned it from her Mother, and my sister is the same way. My daughters will probably learn it from my wife (I don’t think there is anything I can do to stop it). In fact, the majority of women I know do the same thing. “Oh, honey, I got this and saved you a lot of money!” Don’t believe it guys! It’s a lie! Women say things like that when they spend your money without your permission and hope you will be deliriously happy that their checking account is now bleeding red ink!
Now, tell me who the idiots are!