The cost of a car

[Chris "drooze" Wertman]

Originally Posted by Bimbo Jones

The cost of building a race car reminds me of the mindset of someone after they've played poker. Most guys when asked how did they do they reply they about broke even. Translation, they lost a bunch. As with race cars we tend to not count the small items we obtained with out of pocket purchases. Very few of us really ever admit to others, wives, or ourselves what we actually paid totally after the project is completed. If a guy can keep the price of their project to less than a 30% over their budget I think they have done a pretty good job. In my class within a 50% over predicted costs.

I think that fairly accurate across the board. I years ago learned to set up a seperate account for my "play money" something my wife a)didnt know about b)couldnt access and c) was completley funded from my toys themselves and their sale, hence it was no money out of the household. After spending over 10k on some bike parts for a pair of vintage racers I heard no end of it from my wife, daily, hourly this that or the other, made me sick to listen to it because it was nonsese the money came from other toys I had doubled and tripled my money on. So I quit for about a year, one day she said "When are you going to build more bikes ?" Wehn asked WWTF She was talking about, she realized when I sold them and was able to put a downpayment on a new house with the money it was a "winner" Just because I will put Toy money into the household, I woundt take household money into my toys.

Well, divorced her, problem solved

But what I learned aside from hiding it from her was it was a GREAT way to Track all expenses I never had more than 1 going really, so use the CC for all things related, I could wait till the end of a build and tally up months x-z and see what it REALLY cost.

Even thought single I still do it, I use Paypal becuase I get a CC and a lot of the items I buy and sell are on Ebay so it works nice.

But youre right, MANY (not all) of us never tell our wives, but she might not have liked me spending it, it became clear she sure liked when I sold and doubled, and put about 1/2 the profit back into the household accounts.....(she never knew what really came in But my toy account became self sustaining.