Comments on: Share your story: What's the most expensive thing you've ever purchased?

By: t-luck

t-luck — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:17:18 +0000

Dumbest (& expensive) thing purchased: – house. The same mistake. no proper research or homework done on my part. That is leading to major repair works currently.

Super dumbest (& expensive) thing purchased: – brand new cars for both me and my wife. especially regretted my wife’s. 6 months after we booked the car, the distributors, decided to slash almost 15% of the price. Now the 2nd hand value of the car seems to be so low. Dropped drastically within the last 3 years.

By: Carnival of Money Stories « Funny about Money

Carnival of Money Stories « Funny about Money — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:58:07 +0000

[...] Guy Gather Little by Little What’s the Most Expensive Thing You’ve Ever Purchased? GLBL invites readers to share their [...]

By: Schedule Pete

Schedule Pete — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:06:26 +0000

Don’t know if it counts as a thing, but I paid about $60,000 to go to college.

By: Funny about Money

Funny about Money — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:10:17 +0000

Hmmm…. While on the surface a house is obviously the most expensive thing most of us are likely to buy, I wonder… In real terms, IS it? Let’s assume you live in the house for the duration of a fixed 15- to 30-year mortgage.

By the time you’re nearing the end of the payoff period, inflation has driven the relative cost of the mortgage payment down. It’s now fairly low, compared to, say, a car payment, the kids’ college education, insurance, or even the cost of food. Meanwhile, the house’s resale value has risen. Thus if you downsize to a smaller house now that the kids have gone off to work or school, you collect some cash to enrich yourself in retirement.

I wonder if a car is actually more expensive…especially if you buy it new and pay on time. It instantly depreciates by some unholy amount, and it continues to lose value all the time you own it. The payments, however, do not track the value of the car, nor are they affected significantly by inflation, because the duration of the loan is only about five years (maybe less, if you prepay or get a shorter loan). By the time you’ve finished paying for the car, the vehicle is worth LOTS less than you’ve paid for it. Meanwhile, you have to pay taxes, registration, and insurance on it, plus gasoline (a cost that never will go down), oil, and maintenance. True, you pay for tax, insurance, energy, and maintenace on a house…but in my part of the world car insurance costs more than homeowner’s insurance and during some months gasoline costs more than the electric bill. If you drive the car for 10 to 15 years, its resale value is practically nil.

Seems to me that in a sense the car costs you more than the house, because you pay a lot for something that ends up being worthless, whereas the house’s value increases. In theory. We hope.

By: Kristen

Kristen — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:10:31 +0000

For us it is surely our home. We bought a house on 100% financing and it has lost 90,000 worth of its value since then. But the ARM is very high, and adjusts every 6 months.

It is the debt that keeps on giving…

By: glblguy

glblguy — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:37:10 +0000

Thanks for sharing everyone. Very interesting to read your answers (and stories).

By: stocks

stocks — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 20:09:04 +0000

I would probably say
house
wifes car
my car
school

It’s not so much the big ticket items, but the 4 times a day visit to a coffee shop that add up. We spend more on little things a month then the payments on the big things…

By: Frugal Vet Tech

Frugal Vet Tech — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 02:00:43 +0000

First would be my education (the out-of-pocket cost of which was relatively low until I went back to school last year – now it’s not going to be so low).

Second would be my car.

Third would be my husband’s car.

We’d buy them all again. We needed the cars when we got them and paid good prices for them.

Those aside, I think the most expensive thing we’ve bought was, hmmmm, probably our laptop computer. Probably wasn’t the smartest use of our money, but we’re happy we bought it. We’d do it again. It nice to take to the coffee shop so I can access my online classes while studying there. It’s quite nice to take with when we travel, too (though certainly not a necessity).

By: Trish

Trish — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:45:38 +0000

Our house was the most expensive purchase we ever made. It was a great deal though – my husband works for a construction company and they gave us a discount on the home they built for us. We feel very blessed to have been able to build a house that we were able to somewhat customize. (Of course most changes were extra money, which helped us make decisions easily – if it wasn’t in the budget, we couldn’t do it.)

By: Gina

Gina — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:15:09 +0000

1st most expensive – our home; we moved in w/equity and it has increased $20k in value. It has been totally worth it! Although when we have another child we might have to look into moving or add on a room.

2nd most expensive – “matching” $600 Christmas gifts: for my husband a 14 ft jon boat that he uses often; for me a mountain bike that I haven’t ridden in 2 yrs (since the little one arrived).

Thanks for having a picture of my FAVORITE car since I was 14 – a Lamborghini.