Your biggest splurge of all time

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bank5

Recycles dryer sheets
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This is sort of like a confessional thread for all of us LBYMer's :D What's something that you bought that even spenders would think you were crazy for buying?

My biggest splurge ever was $2,400 for a mountain bike. My bike is worth more than my car. It get's better gas mileage through and many more smiles though :)
 
Not crazy spending, since I had the cash in the bank. It was going to be my 50th birthday present to myself.
I just bought it 3 years earlier than planned. :D
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In terms of the largest amount of money spent that was totally wasted, probably the $1200 I spent on a dating service about 20 years ago.

I've certainly spent a lot more money than that on "stuff" I didn't really need, but for the most part I've received value in return. Not on this one.
 
CuppaJoe said:
Could you say that it clarified what you wanted?
Click to expand...
Nope. Not even close.

In my age range, plus or minus a little, there were like 4 men in the dating service for every one woman. (Dating services tend to suck for men who are younger and women who are older in terms of ratios and competition.)

And I was short and bald, and in your 20s that matters a lot more than it does in your 30s and 40s. If you're close to 40 and you are successful and stable with a good personality, short and bald doesn't matter so much. At 25, it really does.

For a one-year membership I got three dates. (Yes, that's $400 per date, and I never even got more than a handshake in any.) I could tell none of them saw any potential in me from the get-go, especially with the odds I mentioned above. I was a sucker for a pretty, well-dressed face in Sales who was selling me on how (ha!) desirable I was.

Still, it does make me more grateful for what I have now and reminds me of how lucky I ultimately became...
 
This is a difficult question, Bank5. Probably the thing an LBYMer should do is look at ways to reduce monthly expenses like cable, gym memberships, phone, cell phone, etc. I do that sometimes but the splurge part would be that I wait too long.

I don’t bother researching stuff too much so might overpay or buy the wrong thing. Had a $25.00 certificate from Amazon and decided to buy this rice cooker. Deleted my order for the rice cooker recipe book because I see lots of recipes from that book on the internet. The machine seems okay for my purposes, don’t know if it’s the best deal. I’ve been thinking about replacing my hard-to-clean 3-cup rice cooker from the ‘70s and I’m convinced I’m the sort who will use all the features on this little baby.

Amazon.com: Sanyo ECJ-D55S 5.5-Cup Micro-Computerized Rice Cooker/Steamer: Home & Garden
 
When we were first married DH spotted a used Leica M3 camera in a camera store. We had been into photography for a while and had collected a few older cameras. He really wanted the Leica, it was a 35mm so the film was still current, unlike some of our other cameras.

I think it was $310, a completely uneeded and expensive item for the time, maybe 1977 or 78.

It turned out to be a good purchase, the photos are stunning and we used it for many years, until digital became the norm. We still have it, the body is not in the best shape but it still works and it turns out the lens is worth quite a bit.

His most recent splurge is a new bike, about $500. He's been pretty miserable in his job and he needed a new toy. His old bike needed work and he needed a distraction from the crap he has to deal with. And it's good exercise.

I'm too thrifty to splurge very often, but last year I bought an EEE PC for $350. DH had sold some old electronics on eBay in order to buy some new electronics and he ended up with a surplus which he offered toward the EEE PC. He knows it's hard for me to spend on myself so it was very nice of him to share.
 
Rich, nice treat for yourself!! :D

bank5 said:
This is sort of like a confessional thread for all of us LBYMer's :D What's something that you bought that even spenders would think you were crazy for buying?
Click to expand...

Confessional? OK, my turn... (drawing a deep breath)

Last August I bought a wireless color laser printer, when I had a perfectly good black and white laser printer and a perfectly good cheap color photo printer.

I bought it, a new desktop computer, and a new wireless router at the same time, just as Hurricane Gustav approached, perhaps as a form of therapy for a bad case of hurricane anxiety. I didn't even have everything hooked up and working yet when we evacuated. The computer and router were just replacements for older broken equipment, but the color laser printer was a completely unnecessary splurge.

(love having it, though!)
 
I bought a $30,000 new SUV, that I had to finance, when I already had one worth about $5K that worked just fine. When I was 19, I spent $2000 on chrome wheels and low-profile tires for my car. I put it on my credit card :banghead:
 
Doggone Rich, that is a big ole step up from the van you brought to Charleston just a few short years ago. Now you are too fancy for me to even park next to! Good one!

I think the most expensive thing that others would think was crazy was our trip to Mongolia last summer, mostly because who else would want to go there but us? But it was a trip of a lifetime, and I try not to think about the fact that it cost more than all three of our cars plus the truck! :)
 
Bought one of these in 1994. Still have it, sitting in the safe deposit box. Picture borrowed from the Bay.

img_827800_0_f66297dd06907dabc4f8c9b80e04515a.jpg
 
Our worst (most educational) splurge was trying to buy a North Shore dream home in 1990 just as the Hawaii real-estate market was beginning a decade-long implosion. The sale went bad when the seller changed their financing terms. Luckily the $5000 deposit was a drop in the bucket compared to what our losses could have been. And when we found our "real" dream home in 2000, we were ready to snap it up.

Our biggest infrastructure splurge has been our stamped-concrete lanai & driveway. Seems unfair to call it a "splurge" when it fixes so many problems.

Our most productive splurge was sodding a median strip in our rental home. We'd been weeding its ground cover for years and sodded it for curb appeal before a possible sale. We never went through with the sale but the El Toro zoysia has totally crowded out the nut grass and saved us several hours of weeding every month. I guess the impending sale gave us "permission" to buy something that otherwise seemed too indulgent.

Our biggest automotive splurge has been a used Prius. I'd lost faith that a car could provide so much engineering entertainment.

Splurges that we now can't live without:
- a laptop computer
- a wireless router (set up & run by our kid, not by me, as a condition of purchase)
- TiVo #1 (spouse birthday present)
- TiVo #2 (spouse birthday present to get our teen off spouse's TiVo)

Flying first class will no longer seem like a splurge after a few more posts here on deep vein thrombosis…
 
Splurge

Viking kitchen appliances. Great products, but I could be served quite well with less costly makes. I do use them everyday...at least the fridge and the microwave. They do look great!
 
bank5 said:
My biggest splurge ever was $2,400 for a mountain bike. My bike is worth more than my car. It get's better gas mileage through and many more smiles though :)
Click to expand...
Depends on how you use it. DW and I bought $2200 bikes a couple of years ago and consider it one of our best investments. We ride 100+ miles a week and are in the best shape we have seen in decades.

Now Rich's splurge -- wow. I wanna come along for a ride.
 
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