Wow, thank you for this! It's an excellent article and I am slowly going through all the profiles about how people spend their money.
It's amazing! This is another reason why I have not followed 80% of the people I know and moved from Montreal to Toronto or Vancouver, Montreal is cheap to live in and the car insurance here is peanuts compared to Toronto.
Oooh, nice find.Originally Posted by lb71
I bought a $1000 Bugaboo stroller 5 years ago (actually $988 US). Best piece of equipment I have every used. 5 years of heavy use, 20 plane trips, over 1,000 kms of walking through all kinds of weather and terrain. Sold it on Kijiji a few weeks ago for $600, still looking pretty much brand new and will likely get another 5 years of trouble free use.
Not that MoneyGal is calling out people buying expensive strollers (I know she just used it as an example in her post) but every article or blog post criticising self-important yuppy urban parents with screwed up values always refers to $1,000 strollers and it makes me laugh.
Like most things, you get what you pay for. My house is filled with things that cost more money than average but are great quality, last a long time and I love using them. My Global kitchen knives, Weber BBQ, Specialized mountain bikes, etc, etc, etc.
At the end of the day, I'm not a consumer buying crap that ends up in the landfill after a year of substandard use. And hell, my house is paid for and I am putting a lot of money away every month so I don't feel too bad for the odd higher end purchase.
Last edited by Ihatetaxes; 2012-02-17 at 09:40 AM.
What you said. The example that drives me nuts personally is "the latte factor."
I LOVE coffee. I spend A LOT on coffee (well, "a lot" in my world...still a tiny, tiny fraction of the wine budgets in the article). But because I bring my lunch to work and cycle there, my spending on coffee is irrelevant.
Wait they bought the house for $419,000 in 2007 and their mortgage payment is $2500? Something doesn't add up there!
Depends on their downpayment and also the mortgage term (15 years, 30 years, 40 years), how often they pay (monthly, twice-monthly), regular or accelerated, etc.
I suppose, but seems high to me.
Anyways, what is with the wine? I spend $0 on wine
i haven't read the article yet but what I don't understand is why people would submit themselves to ridicule by disclosing this stuff. Maybe their lack of financial acumen is matched by their lack of other smarts. This certainly makes them unrepresentative if perhaps somewhat common. You don't see any senior execs disclosing how they spend their multi-million dollar comps, but I would guess they save quite a bit. I certainly did. Smart savers don't sell magazines either.
Last edited by Square Root; 2012-02-17 at 10:21 AM.
@jamesbe: We bought our house in 2007 for $375K, $75K downpayment, and our mortgage payments are $2,600/month. That's because we took out a 15-year mortgage with accelerated bimonthly payments; we're currently on track to pay it off in 10 years instead of 15.
As for wine, hey some people like it. I live with a French woman who knows her wine, but we save it for the weekend when we can appreciate it more fully. If we need to unwind during the week we might drink a beer. We spend about $80/month on wine.
This thread made me thirsty. I'm glad my taste buds don't differentiate $100 bottles of wine from $5, and I can only drink a half dozen cases a year.
I wish I could manage these people's money for them. I'd happily do it for free but if they gave me even 1% of what I saved them in 20 years - I'd be laughing.
Last edited by mode3sour; 2012-02-17 at 10:23 AM.
When everyone thinks the same they don't think at all
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