Q & A

A couple of readers asked questions about my responses to the weekend memes Saturday 9 and Sunday Stealing, so I thought I'd address those.

One question I answered asked about money. I answered that I have "purchase rule" in my house.

Managing money, either personally or as a couple, is probably one of the harder things to do in the U.S. I'm not sure about other nations that are not so capitalistic. But here, the advertisements to buy and spend your money are fairly constant. My ad blocker that I installed in November tells me it has blocked 1.445 million ads since then - and that's just on my desktop. Who knows how many ads I've seen on TV, on my Kindle, etc. That's a lot of advertising in less than six months.

I feel like it's my job to hold on to my money, and everyone else's job apparently is to try to take it away from me.

Our "purchase rule" began early in our marriage. We decided within the first month that we would not make any purchases over $100 without discussing it with each other. Of course, now you can drop $100 on groceries so the figure has increased, but we still discuss major purchases. In the back of my mind, I still keep that $100 figure in the foreground.

The other rule is to wait a day, unless it's the last day of a sale. If you can wait a day, then you may decide it's not something you actually need or want. We live 30 minutes from a city, so the drive was often enough of a barrier to stop either one of unless we really wanted something.

I have always thought that young couples should go grocery shopping and watch each other's shopping habits before they live together or marry or whatever they're doing these days. If one person carefully checks prices while the other throws stuff in the cart willie-nillie and doesn't blink when he or she swipes the credit card, those two might need a discussion about financial management.

We track our expenses using Quicken, which I try to update fairly regularly. If it looks like we are spending too much on something, then I speak up. Generally, I am the most fiscally conservative, though my husband is fairly good about it. It depends on what it is. If it's something to do with the farm, he doesn't hesitate to spend the money. I wait until stuff blows up to replace it.

The other question had to do with my car. I said I might have purchased a different vehicle than the 2014 Camry we bought that year, if I'd had the chance. But our old Camry had a safety issue that wasn't worth the price of the car to fix, so we made the trade in a hurry.

The 2014 Camry is not a bad car, but I can't see well out of it. It has blind spots for me because I am short. The console had changed shape by the time we traded in the 2003 model, and it makes the car feel close and less spacious inside. I would have liked to have driven various other vehicles to see if I could have found something I could see out of better (fewer blind spots) and perhaps something that felt more open up front.

Also, we have had the same issue with doors in the 2014 Camry that we had in the 2003 Camry. The doors in the 2003 Camry started locking up and I couldn't get out of the car. Or in the car, sometimes. This became a real safety hazard because I would have been trapped in the car in the event of an accident, or stranded somewhere if I couldn't get the car doors opened. (That actually happened, and that was the day we traded the car.)

The 2014 Camry developed the same issue with the front doors last year, and we had it fixed. Obviously, Toyota has some issue with door locks.

So that is the answer to that question. I may have ended up with this car anyway, because I may not have found something I liked better for the price, but I do wish I'd been able to take the time to look around and see if some of these issues could have been addressed by another vehicle manufacturer.