How many of y'all out there have issues with spousal permission for high-tech purchases?

How do you go about easing your burden for obtaining permission for these purchases?

Have you ever been known to tell a lie regarding a purchase, or cover up the purchase entirely?

I've always been in the position where it wasn't soley my decision to make a purchase regarding an Item, typically $100 and up. However, I've never been consulted about clothing/accessory purchases in my life.

My problems are compounded by the fact that I have an addiction to expensive toys. I must have them, immediately. Co-Workers called me Instant-Gratification-Man ... Don't get me wrong, I don't go out and buy the latest crap because it's out there (no x-box or tivo) ... I research and debate and research and think ... once I've decided that a particular product really is for me, and that I would get a bit of use out of it, I am on a one way path to the purchase. Nothing I or anyone else does can change the fact that sometime down the road, that product will be mine.

This has typically manifested itself into items which cost anywhere from a couple hundred dollars up to several thousand dollars.

My wife has historically frowned (understatement) on this activity, but since I manage the finances, it is at times a little too easy to disguise some of these purchases as less significant than they really are, if she finds out about them at all. She's no fool, but on occassion a secret will stick and remain stable in its secrecy. Sometimes a $500 remote control is transformed into a "$100 on-sale" item. A $1200 mp3 player for the car is transformed into a $200 gadget, to ease the would-be pain.

I've been busted a few times simply by savvy friends who come over and remark on said $500 remote control, asking my wife why she would allow me to get such a thing. (Thanks Alex Harper!). Other times I'll be forced to confess my transgressions.

Luckily my marriage hasn't suffered. I know other guys who aren't so lucky, my wife is generally pretty forgiving and she even has a sense of humor about that Pronto remote.

My question to you is, do you have this adiction or permission problem? How do you cope with it? Have you been able to overcome your purchasing urges in the past? What are your thoughts on this?

Greg

Please understand that I'm not condoning lying to your spouse or any such thing. I'm simply giving you some examples of my problems in the past, and I'm looking for examples or discussions from your experiences.

Greg

I wonder if the "need" to acquire desirable items is related to the male territorial urge? E.g. internally come to an understanding that Grass is Greener On The Other Side, formulate a rationalization and Acquire Said Grass. Repeat. Whereas the females of the species has more of a tendency to be happy with the pre-existing Grass and nest with it. The female of the species will rationalize this as Being Responsible With The Grass. Any secret machinations by the male of the species to modify, alter, or add to the Original Grass without permission of the female will result in a pissed off female?

Calvin :-D

All major gadget purchases in my family are made with the full cooperation of my wife. We have a good relationship in that area. Although she doesn't share my fondness for gadgets, she understands it and lets me have the occasional indulgence.

An interesting story: A couple years ago, when we went to get a new television, I was expecting to grab a 36" Sony Wega. We were sick of watching widescreen movies in letterbox mode on a 19" screen and wanted a bigger screen for the DVD player.

She looked at the biggest Sony Wega they make, and she said that the letterbox movies were still too small. Buying the widescreen hi-def Mitsubishi projection television was actually her idea. Can you believe that?

My wife has the same instant gratification problem I do except with different items, usually crafting-type items. Her purchases are usually much less than mine, but often more frequent. We recognize that we both have the same problem, so we don't complain about it in each other too much. On the other hand, we don't seem to be doing much to solve our problems, which is probably why we never have any money to speak of.

A similar place where we do have a problem is that my mother tends to be waaay too generous. My wife always wants me to refuse such generosity. I find this to be nigh impossible, and my wife can get very angry at that. Of course, she has no better success rate at it than I do, but bringing up that fact only makes her more mad.

This actually makes quite a bit of sense to me. I even tried an experiment once. I thought about something a couple of years ago that I hadn't considered since I was quite a bit younger. A remote controlled helicopter. I knew their expense was great, and the complexity of operation quite vast. It shouldn't be too dificult to resist.

I figured if I could examine these remote controlled helicopters in detail, and resist the urge to buy one, I was home free. I could beat this gratification quest. I studied up on them for some time. Then I started looking at prices for a beginner's solution. Into the thousands of dollars for a TOY. I succeeded in resisting for a while. Then a manufacturer produced a product they call the Raptor, which is a decent quality helicopter at one-half to one-third the price of other solutions. They claimed it to be easier to operate, but still challenging enough to maintain interest. The price was unseen in this area previously.

I was vanquished. The wife conceeded, and I purchased one. It's a great gadget, but I can't help but feel that I've lost more than I gained. It's like I set a precident to cave into myself whenever I want something.

I can honestly say that one product which I have no regrets for purchasing is the empeg. Expensive, but well worth it. It's something that I use several times a day, rather than once a month or even less.

Oh well. I have a feeling the "next big thing" on the horizon for me will either be a Tivo or X-Box (Replay is just too expensive). The wife is already defensively positioned against the Tivo ... but she's beginning to cave on the X-Box due to the fact that the Soul Reaver series of games is appearing for that platform. I think we'd get more use out of the Tivo ... but that would give us an excuse to "do nothing but watch TV day and night, don't you think we should have a social life, Greg?"

Alas, I still feel like a whipped servant boy to my desires. Maybe one day I will conquer this economically debilitating disease.

Greg

Once you get the TiVo, your wife will be lost without it. Mine is, even as she makes fun of me for getting it. Keep in mind that while you might sometimes fall into the trap of watching way too much TV, think of it more as a utility to watch the programs you really want to watch without having to be home at that particular time, thus giving you more free time, as you don't have to be home for half an hour at 9:00PM, and you can spend that time out with your wife having a nice dinner.

Her canned response so far seems to be that this is what the VCR is for.

My counter is that the VCR is of poor quality (both audio and visual), and has a limit of only small amount of shows which can be stored.

She says that more tapes can be purchased for a lot less than a Tivo.

And on it goes. I'd love a Tivo to baby-sit our DSS receiver, since that works pretty poorly with the VCR. I'd also like to get the network card for it so that I can store programs off-line on my file server. I'd like to finally be able to get all the Sopranos and Simpsons episodes automatically, without worrying what I'm recording over. I own their respective DVD collections released so far, but they don't release as fast as I watch them ;-)

I'd love to be able to sit down to watch TV, not see any commercials, and watch exactly what I feel like watching, start to finish. Wouldn't Tivo be the perfect solution to this?

But again, I'd be caving and fighting an uphill battle at the same time. I know she'd like it once we got it, but the pocket-book will never let me forget.

Greg

I've heard of some households where the wife is the one that falls madly in love with the Tivo/Replay after they get it.

Explain to her that it's like an empeg, but for the TV.

Not having to manage tapes is well worth the extra money. It's hard to convince someone of this without doing it, but it's true.

A caveat about DSS control, and it being better than the VCR: I have the TiVo controlling a DSS receiver (a Sony SAT-A1) via the serial control and it freaks out the receiver unfortunately often and it stops changing the channel. I'd do some research first and see if anyone has any similar problems with your receiver. The other option is to buy a DSS-TiVo combo unit, but these don't have a tuner to record broadcast TV, which is a glaring omission, as a lot of what I want to tape is on UPN or WB, which don't have DirecTV channels even if you do get your other local channels. There is also, as of this writing, I believe, no ethernet hack for the combo units.

I'm with ya on that one. I purchased a TiVo when they first came out. My wife thought it was another one of my crazy gadgets that we didn't need. Now, she can't live without it. She went home to NJ to visit family for a couple weeks and every night on the phone she complained about not having a TiVo at her parents house.

Now that the dual tuners work on the TiVo, there is nothing you can do to take it away from us. It is by far in my top 5 gadget list.

1. TiVo
2. Empeg
3. Pronto Remote
4. Titanium G4 Powerbook
5. Digital Camera

grgcombs - I caved in on the RC Helicopter also. I first sold off a bunch of toys I don't use anymore and splurged on the ECO-8 electric helicopter. I fly it nearly every weekend when the weather is nice. I also caved in and got one of the small electric Hornet helicopters. It's a blast to fly around the house except when my wife finds nicks in the furniture from the blades.

I believe starting this month Directv will have both UPN and the WB.

Aha! I may have to get a new receiver after all. Now if I only had a job....

I simply got divorced...

Her canned response so far seems to be that this is what the VCR is for.

Tivo is to VCR as a 5-disk CD-changer is to an empeg.

Imagine what it is like to never have to watch television again -- you only watch TiVo. You don't care what programs are on at what days and times, you don't even know anymore because TiVo takes care of all that.

Imagine turning on your TV and TiVo, and always having 20-30 hours of programming you want to see, and you didn't have to record it, because TiVo knows what you like, finds it, and saves it for you to watch at your leisure.

Imagine holding down the FF button on the TiVo for four seconds to skip a complete commercial break.

Imagine never having to swear because you forgot to put the new tape in your VCR and all you have is 62 minutes of a two hour movie?

Imagine not being a slave to the clock. Just try watching a program on your VCR while it is recording another program you want to watch. TiVo can do that...

Imagine always having at your fingertips synopses of every single program that is going to come through your antenna during the next two weeks?

Imagine never having to label videotapes, and then dig through them to find that episode of "Malcolm in the Middle" that you just know is on one of them, and then when you finally find the right tape, not having to fast-forward through five hours of other programming to get to the program?

Imagine not having to deal with a VCR recording of "When Salamanders Attack" that is on your videotape instead of the program you really wanted to record because the TV station re-scheduled it for an hour later and you didn't know?

If you are even a little bit interested in Television, TiVo is not something you can live without. I absolutely promise and assure you that after you've had TiVo in your house for a month, you would not hesitate an instant to trade both of your helicopters to get a replacement if that's what it took, rather than live without it. I am actually going to buy an inexpensive, used, small-capacity second TiVo to take care of the occasions when there are two programs I want to record that are on at the same time.

tanstaafl.

It don't matter. She won't buy that until she's experienced it. Same as anyone who hasn't experienced the empeg.

How do you go about easing your burden for obtaining permission for these purchases?

I have a system that works very well in my household.

I am assuming that you and your wife each have your own sources of income. If it is a single-income household, then this will not work.

We have three checking accounts: Mine, Hers, and Household. Every month, we each make a contribution to the Household account that covers the shared living expenses: mortgage, insurance, groceries, joint savings, etc. These expenses don't vary that much month to month. In our case, we each put $1000 per month into Household and the person who actually deals with managing the Household account gets to keep any overage. :-)

Everything that doesn't go into Household goes into our own respective accounts, to be used at our own discretion for whatever we choose, with no oversight or objection from the other.

It works for us. YMMV.

tanstaafl.

Imagine holding down the FF button on the TiVo for four seconds to skip a complete commercial break.

I'm imagining the crap out of this. I'm imagining it so hard that I'm doing it right now. Unfortunately, holding down my FF button doesn't seem to do anything more than make the LED on my remote blink like the nose on a Parkinson's patient's game of Operation^TM. What do you know that I don't know? (Other than tact?)

What do you know that I don't know? (Other than tact?)

Ooops... sorry. I mis-spoke. You press the FF button once and you get 3x normal speed. Press it a second time and you have 20x speed. Press it a third time and you are at 60x. So instead of press-and-hold, you press it three times quickly. Then when you see you are past the commercial break, either press it a fourth time, or press the play button and TiVo will revert to normal speed, having backed up a fixed amount to compensate for the lag in your perception of normal programming and the pressing of the button.

This is for the Sony branded TiVo and remote. I don't know whether the Philips unit operates the same way, although I suspect that it does.

tanstaafl.

Oh. I thought you meant automatic commerical skip. Oh, well. More of my dreams dashed.

Like an empeg, but for the TV. That's EXACTLY what it is, and yes - my wife treats it like most folks treat email or, previously, the fax machine: indispensable.

She won't buy that until she's experienced it.

True. I sensed this, and so my parents, her parents, and I went in on it as a group purchase quote-for her-unquote for Christmas 2000. At first she was a bit perplexed ("ohhh, c'mon, this is really FOR YOUUUU ...") but now, forget it - she swears by it.

So, yeah, if anyone wants to try the "it's a present - FOR YOU!" tactic, you heard it here first (?) ... worked for me!

(FF behavior on Sony remote described)

Yup, happens that way on the Philips remote as well.

I suppose we oughta pad our sigs with our TiVo models. Hmm. I wonder how many folks have hacked their TiVo's and added more disk space! (Don't get me started ... heh-heh-heh.)

I am single so I don't have this problem but your method is pretty much what my parents did and they never complain about what the other is buying.

I have never understood the spousal approval deal since in most couples both parties work.

Good news at least for the Dallas area .. they've included the WB and several other local channels in the lineup provided by DSS.

Check yours and see if they're doing it nationwide.

Greg

I don't even need a new receiver!!!! My local channels are now on the original satellite! I am so stoked! I just ordered all my local channels for $5.99/month and I even get to keep the west-coast NBC feed! I'm in exclamation-point overload!

Has there been any effort of hackers to move those recordings off-line over the network?

I'd like to not worry about space requirements, and simply store episodes long term on a server, anyone know if this is possible yet?

Greg

That was actually not due to the niceness of DirecTV or Dish Network, instead it's due to a law that went into effect 1/1/2. Aparently now if a satelite, and potentially a cable company want to carry local stations, they have to carry all of them that meet a certain spec. So that means WB and UPN for many people.

The nice thing about the potential merger is that they will be able to offer local stations for more then the top 100 TV markets.

I was not aware of that one. Thanks for the info. It might have been nice that they added them to the original satellite. Until you consider that that's probably an element of that law, too. And the amazing amounts of bandwidth that just dropped off of the rest of the channels....