Why Manicures Cost Less Than You Think
Wedding vows should come with liability insurance. If you ever want to see
a grown man cry, just come to my house the second and fourth Saturdays of every
month. There you can hide amongst the clutter of my dining room and watch the
3:30PM tableau of horror that unfolds like clock-work.
What happens is the love of my life (and bane of my bank balance) comes sweeping
into the house fresh from her 11 o’clock manicure. Upon seeing me reconciling
the accounts at the dining room table, she sits across from me and utters the
most terrifying sentence a man can hear from his wife.
“Guess how much money I saved today?”
She always says it with a smile, as if she doesn’t comprehend the horror that
she has just inflicted upon me. Then again, perhaps she really doesn’t understand
that the only way she could have saved me money is by not spending it…of
course that’s crazy talk. I’m not saying my wife is a stupid woman (far
from it actually, because if she is stupid, how dumb is the idiot who married
her), but she makes the same mistake as most folks by thinking in terms of cost.
Rather than cost, a better way of thinking about money is in terms of assets
and liabilities.
Everything has its own cost and opposing benefit, but when you think of it
in terms of assets and liabilities, it becomes clear what counts as a “savings”
and what counts as a gaping wound in your budget. Let me give you an example.
My wife spends about $100 dollars a month getting her nails done. As far as
cost-benefit goes…well besides seeing her smile (which means I haven’t
done anything wrong yet), there are no monetary benefits. However, when I try
to determine whether her manicures are an asset or a liability, I have to take
into account that manicure weekends she only spends a few hundred dollars, as
opposed to non-manicure weekends where she spends thousands. If you don’t believe
just take a look at my tear-stained credit card bills.
So here’s the fifty dollar question:
Should I tell my wife to get a manicure every week?
