Monday, May 01, 2006

Carnival of Personal Finance

Flexo is hosting this week's Carnival of Personal Finance at Consumerism Commentary. I got off my butt this week and contributed my post on Time and Money and Really Good Hamburgers.

After writing about my mom, here are a couple of Carnival entries I think I need to check out:

Stop Buying Crap asks "if you have a friend or relative whose spending habits drive you bonkers."

Personal Finance Advice asks "if there is any time when it is acceptable to hide money from your spouse."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for mentioning the Carnival!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the mention - kind of a sad situation all the way around.

Bitty said...

I posted on the StopBuying Crap, but I'll paste it in here, too, because it is quite a story and I hardly do it justice. (I definitely think there was some weird psychological thing going on here. SOMEBODY didn't get enough love as a child!):

My former co-worker and her husband were the ultimate consumers. They kept the economy moving single-handedly, but since I no longer work with her, maybe things have changed. I doubt it, though. I watched this insanity for about 8 years:

They had no children and hadn't planned to have any. They were constantly replacing their possessions with new ones: furniture, TVs, houses, cars, even pets. Rarely did any one item last more than a year in their possession. They bought and sold homes at least 6 times in six years. When the Mazda Miata came out, they had to be the first to get it, paying something like a $5000 premium for the privilege. When CDs (music kind) started being marketed in earnest, they got rid of all their cassette tapes and repurchased their music in CD form.

Her sister (also a co-worker) was driven crazy by this, but she was also the beneficiary of her sister's nuttiness: she bought a huge-screen TV off Sis for $40, new beds for her kids, etc.

The saddest situation was the pets. They'd take in little Fido or even buy a purebreed kitty for big bucks, then find a new home for the pet within months for one reason or another.

Me, I was a single mother of three hoping my kids were getting enough nutrition from mac & cheese. This drove me crazy.