Today’s lifestyle section of our local newspaper featured an article titled, Husbands have to grovel to get gadgets. It talks about how men love their toys and gadgets, but must often talk their better halves into authorizing their big ticket purchases. They call it the WAF, an acronym that is short for Wife Acceptance Factor.
Here are some stats from the article:
- Women control 85% of houshold income in the U.S.
- Women accounted for $55B of the $96B spent on electronic gear in ‘03.
- 90% of married women ID themselves as their household’s principle shopper.
The article goes on to describe how men are finally owning up to the WAF and accepting that they cannot just go out and, without consulting their wive’s opinions on the matter, plunk down thousands for the latest and greatest big screen TV; at least not without a cost.
One point raised in the story is so typical of our marriage:
It’s not as if women don’t also dabble in pleasure spending. The sting, though, is typically far less painful to the wallet.
Jennifer Grizzle, who works in public relations, indulges in comfort purchases and occasional retail sprees. But the stakes are typically lower than when her spouse eyes a toy.
“Women bleed money $100 at a time; men bleed it $1,000 at a time,” she said. “Men kind of like those big-ticket items. A couple hundred dollars on a pair of shoes and we’re happy.”
She is right. Going out and shopping for shirts, shoes and such does nothing for me. Take me to the electronics store, however, and watch me drool at the sight of plasma screens or wax poetic about the high range of titanium dome tweeters. As for taking any of it home, it is the WAF that keeps my head grounded in reality (most of the time).
7 Comments
Feel free not to answer this question…. but who do you think bleeds more money? The husbands on big ticket purchases or the wives $100 at a time?
Shopping for shirts, shoes, etc. does nothing for me either. Electronics, sort of. But, OH, how my pulse does quicken when I walk into Lowe’s or Home Depot!!
I have never done a side by side comparison, but I can see how those little purchase can easily add up. A chunk of change on a big boy toy sticks out a lot more than shoes here, purses there…which only proves the point that women are smarter at getting what they want.
I’ve actually done the math on this one as it applies to us. You have to allow a handicap for the fact that people actually have to have clothes of some sort at some point…I haven’t figured out that anyone actually needs IPODS or Taylormade clubs. At least for us, the big purchases amortized over any given year (well the last two years anyway), still outweigh the smaller clothing/accessory purchases. Of course, I hope we don’t have to buy golf clubs again next year or whatever the heck it was Tim got before that. LOL.
This would make for an interesting experiment. Have several couples track their spending over the course of a year. Figure out some way to account for “necessity” items, but also capture those “above and beyond” types of purchases.
Wow does my wife love me.know new golf clubs needed. but a new taylor made rescue hybrid in the old golf bag would be nice. LOL
When did we men become so hen-pecked and demeaned that we allow women to control us as they do? All laws protect the woman, and men are automatically at fault no matter what the situation is. No man better even touch a woman, because all she has to do is call the cops and file a complaint and he is taken off to jail, even if she is a visitor in his house and she looses her cool. I don’t mean sexual touching, but just a touch on the shoulder or arm, and not a hit, or hard touch, but just a slight brushing. I know, it happened to me. MEN LOOK OUT FOR YOUR MANHOOD. The women no longer need us as they can have children without us and are fast becoming more affluent in wages. Soon we will become slaves, or are we already?