The market closure afforded the chance to get a few things done including the always budget-busting new tire purchase. They were originally going to be $950 but thankfully I thought to ask how long the old ones should have lasted. It turned out they should have lasted a lot longer than they did so the tire place took about $400 off the price.
There are two recurring themes I can tie in here. The first is that I believe the tires I get are quite ordinary. The need for tires doesn't come up often but there is never a good time for a $1000 one-off expense and tires isn't the only one that can reasonably come along. We've looked at this before and readers have offered input along the lines of padding their budget by an extra $1000-$2000 per month, to having a separate bucket of money for one-offs that would be replenished so often and there have been other ideas too.
Someone with $800,000 who is disciplined enough to live on 4% is going to have a tough time paying for tires this month, a roof repair next month and an unexpected veterinary bill the month after.
The other tie in is living beyond ones means. While I was squaring up on my tires I glanced over to a display for a tire that cost $2000 for a set of four. These were some serious off-road tires and I know someone with a set of these on each of his two vehicles. The out the door cost for these babies would be much more than $2000. My $950 set is only $168 per tire, the rest of the expense is service provided. There can't be too many people outside of the military and jeep tour operators that need such serious off road tires but there is clearly a market for them.
We probably all have things that we spend too much on, relatively speaking, but beefy tires would seem to be a costly indulgence.
In case you didn't see this picture on Monday.
DIGITAL JUICE
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