If you think it may be time for a new bathroom for example, you know it’ll cost a few K. But that could well be spent on a fun holiday instead. How do you work out which one to spend the money on, and it’s an either or here, so a real opportunity cost for the economists among you.

It’s also a bit of a theoretical question as the trip to Italy has been booked for later in the year already, so I’ll spend another year with a bathroom I am slowly starting to loathe.

How do you work out which one to spend the money on

I ask my wife, obvs.

😉

As long as everything in the bathroom works, I’d take the fun thing every time.

After that it becomes ‘can I live with it?’ If yes, I do the fun thing, if absolutely not, the dull thing gets done

Just keep a copy of Lonely Planet/holiday brochure by the shitter and read it while you sit there. This works on 2 levels

1) You aren’t looking at the bathroom so won’t notice the sealant is mouldy
2)You’re thinking about the holiday so won’t care as much about the bathroom

Job done. (Pun intended)

It just comes down to personal priorities, shirley?

so I’ll spend another year with a bathroom I am slowly starting to loathe

This sentence give me the impression that perhaps the bathroom should have had priority over, this:

the trip to Italy has been booked for later in the year already

but if it’s already booked, then there’s no point worrying about it….

How about setting up a ‘home improvement’ savings fund, so that anything in there you are already mentally preparing to spend on DIY stuff, rather than fun holiday stuff?
It’s what I do for running both our cars – have a car maintenance account that all costs come out of; tax, MOT, insurance, servicing…..that way, I don’t begrudge it when the annual insurance bill needs paying etc. as the money has already been put aside for it.

People are generally shit at this.

The consumer debt industry knows this and takes full advantage.

Depends how bad the bathroom is but both are pretty justifiable expenses if you can afford it so you just need to prioritise (or spend £1k on the bathroom and have a slightly cheaper holiday). Just look at the car registration/range rover thread for utter wasting of money.

Do both. You don’t have to spend a lot to get a nice bathroom, and you don’t have to spend a lot for a nice family holiday.

No such thing as wasting money. It’s a commodity that you accumulate in life and you decide what to spend it on. You can’t take it with you so get what you want as long as you either have the cash or can leverage the debt and manage it. Spend on a big car and others benefit…it creates a demand for premium product….gives a lot more to the tax man that is beneficial for us all, creates well paid jobs, which in turns increases the tax take, supports shareholders and large corporations, the success of which most of our pensions rely…so not a waste at all. Far better than spending your money on a second hand car from which nobody benefits…the buyer just chucks their money down the drain, drives a banger round that is less fuel efficient and worse for the environment than a nice new modern car, and it’s ultimately scrapped for virtually nothing retuning nothing back.

As i’ve got older and more married i’m finding the whole self-justificiation thing really tough.

I’ll happily spend £200-300 on something for the wife, but for myself, anything more than £50 and i’m frowning and end up not doing/spending.

Recentyl i booked Donington GP for the wife for trackday… All fine, she felt bad because i wasn’t riding… Now a mate has a space in his van for my bike but i’m thinking “Hmmmm can i justify that”

Far better than spending your money on a second hand car from which nobody benefits

….except the previous owner who can use the cash from the transaction to buy a shiny new car and perpetuate the industry.

If no one bought second hand cars, there would be virtually no market for new cars

Hah, there’s a lonely planet guide in the bathroom already @cubist!

My wife is fully in the ‘have fun and travel’ camp, she’s fine with our bathroom, it’s just got some really brightly coloured tiles and naff shower, I’m up for something more civilised looking and potentially a walk in shower so I don’t have to step over the bath.

As for some of the other comments, the separate account makes sense, thanks for the suggestion. Would allow me to just trickle feed into it and then spend when the money is there.

We are pretty debt averse (with the exception of the mortgage) so we are only talking about things we can afford/have saved for here. Aside from that we have no other debts, no overdrafts, clear credit cards, no loans. Although the boss is thinking of going to uni full-time from September so all this may well go out the window!

If no one bought second hand cars, there would be virtually no market for new cars

If no-one bought new cars, there would be virtually no second hand cars 😀

For me it depends on how bad the bathroom is, if it’s just tired but functional then it can probably wait a while longer so go on the holiday. If it’s a state it causes issues daily then get it done first.

drives a banger round that is less fuel efficient and worse for the environment than a nice new modern car

Have you ANY concept of how damaging building a new car is for the environment?!

Our bath split in two and was held together with Duct tape for a good few years before I finally installed a new one….

Amazing what you get used to….

The consumer debt industry knows this and takes full advantage.

Eh? Money is cheap to borrow at the min so I would be doing both

The sooner you get it done, the more time you will have to enjoy it, either before you sell the house or die 🙂

If you end up with more water efficient sanitary ware and pay for your water on a meter, remember that you will be saving money on re-doing the bathroom by using and paying for less water (and possibly gas to heat the water) that comes into the man maths calculation as would money saved on new efficient LED lighting and a modern extractor fan.

If you keep on leaving it, eventually it might need to be done at a time when you really can’t afford to do it or you end up doing it in order to sell the house. You will then never get to enjoy and appreciate either it or the money spent.

Tot up how many hours a year you spend in the bathroom compared to how many hours you will be awake on holiday in Italy.

Loads of man maths reasons can be created for this 🙂

Having two recently retired parents with cancer, I’m firmly of the fun-now approach. But it depends on what gives you the most pleasure: two weeks in Italy or a 50 weeks of a nice bathroom. It might not be Italy!

We moved into a new house 6 years ago and one of the first things we said was that the bathroom was awful and needed replacing…..

Ski holidays in the winter and foreign summer holidays mean we still have a shit bathroom. This summer is camping in this country!!

When I moved into my house I pulled some of the textured wallpaper off the wall in the bedroom ready to re-decorate.

16 years later I’ve been to New Zealand twice and SE Asia 4 times + innumerable EU holidays but the bedroom still needs decorating.

Unless the bathroom is absolutely knackered (bath leaks, shower is crap, bog is like something out of Fungus The Bogeyman etc…) I’d be doing the fun stuff. Will you look back fondly over a beer or two with your friends and and reminisce about ‘the year you had the bathroom done’ or will you look back and think ‘balls, wish I’d gone to Italy instead…’?

Depends, planning on selling the house anytime before the new bathroom becomes an unfashionable liability? £5k on a new bathroom now might translate into £10k for an epic holliday in a couple of years in that case.

Some people like buying stuff (new car, bathroom).

Some people like buying experiences (education, holidays).

My compromise is buying stuff I can have experiences with (aka big boys toys, bikes, boats, sports car). You can go on holiday once, you can drive an nice car or go sailing whenever you like.

I’m enjoying this view into the split in STWorlders, seems there are a good few like me who are happy enough to tolerate the bathroom; moved in 9 years ago, have painted it twice and replaced the shower when the first leaked, re-grouted the tiles when they started letting water through and the kitchen ceiling got a bit wet. Overall it’s functional and clean (no fur in the pan) so there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with it, I just don’t like the look very much.

Given my car is having it’s 17th birthday this year I think I probably fall on the side of spending my money doing things as opposed to on things 🙂

, so I’ll spend another year with a bathroom I am slowly starting to loathe.

How do you loathe a bathroom ? I’m sat in mine at the moment. Its a total shambles but everything works, I come in to use the toilet and get clean, that’s all I want or need from it.
I’m hugely in the have fun camp 😁😁

How do you loathe a bathroom

There are 5 colours of tiles on the walls around the bath in a diagonal pattern, like a kid coloured it in. The shower is noisy and not that strong for something that makes as much noise as it does. The panelling at the end of the bath is getting wet (/mouldy and expanding) as we have a crappy pull over curtain that doesn’t keep all the water in the right place. Rusty radiator and I don’t like the floor tiles.

All very minor things really, but all adding up to a slowly annoy me, clearly not enough to do much about it though 😉

All very minor things really, but all adding up to a slowly annoy me, clearly not enough to do much about it though 😉

The tiles sound fun, but the other stuff will need doing sooner or later. £200-300 sorted. 👍

Go for the holiday unless you literally cannot wash or perform bodily functions in the bathroom.

As you are clearly not that fussed about spending money on the bathroom how about watching out / asking for on Freecycle. Many councils now charge to dispose of bathroom suites so I see lots of people giving old ones away. Likewise – many people overbuy tiles and give away what they have left – buy some ultra cheap plain white tiles then decorate with a feature strip of the donated ones. A bit of imagination and I reckon you’d be able to do the whole lot for £500.

Ah @johndoh – I should probably mention my poor standards of DIY, I’m not sure that’d ever work out well. But thanks for the suggestion!

There is a hole in my bathroom roof and it looks like a set for one of those gorenography films. As long as the shower is clean and works it’s all good. At the end of the day it’s a room that you shit in. I’d take the holiday if I had the choice.

, so I’ll spend another year with a bathroom I am slowly starting to loathe.

Generally if the bathroom is getting on my nerves I will move to a nicer rental 😉

The new bathroom will be out of date in 5 years and your old one will be retro fashionable and worth more or at least the same.

Which will you look back on and remember with a happy smile in 20 years time?

Better spend the money on a bike come to think of it… 🙂

My wife wanted to spend 7 grand on amtico flooring. 7 GRAND!. After some skillful negotiating I managed to get her to forget that and take me and the kids to NYC for a week. Who cares about floors (or bathrooms?).
Live your life and make memories!

Things don’t really give you long term utility (economics speak for pleasure) unless they are a means to an end. So, a new bike will initially give you some utility just for being a new thing, but this will soon fade, and its ultimate utility will come from the access it gives you to doing things that make you happy.

I’m not sure how much long term utility you can derive from a new bathroom, but for me it would be very little. Each to their own, though.

JP

Make the most of the holiday as it’s already booked, then look forward to a new bathroom next year. You can look to save a little cash in the meantime and have a cheaper bonus holiday next year if you have anything spare.

“You get to enjoy your new bathroom for longer”
Holy Crapola Batman I cannot see the enjoyment of a bog , a sink and bath .
Yes , they may well be clean and white and also easier to clean , but enjoyment . nope
I go in there for a turd, or a shower . Do i enjoy the dump, and the shower? I do, but to be honest they really do not feature on the list of things rob enjoys doing

the buyer just chucks their money down the drain, drives a banger round that is less fuel efficient and worse for the environment than a nice new modern car, and it’s ultimately scrapped for virtually nothing retuning nothing back

If you ignore the huge environmental cost of manufacturing a car plus the fact that a new car will become a second hand car at some point, and the fact people are employed repairing older cars, all points are valid.