Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater HELP!!!!!...The wife just threw a curveball !!!!!!

Those are some very good points Austin that i had never previously thought about, which being a 20 year old college kid is definately a good thing.

Dog,

Sell the wife. This will solve several problems 1) you can get the M60s/VP150/QS8 combo, 2) clearly eliminates the groveling requirement, now and in the future and 3) may allow for larger digs, depending on the sale price.

If you find that is not a viable solution, then the M22s are good and you can drop to the VP100 and Qs4 selections. Frankly, this will still be a massive improvement over the selection you will be dropping, er carrying to the basement. A sub would be a good thing if you can swing it and the STF-1 should be up to the duty plus be a bit cheaper.

I may have missed this earkier, but have you also taken advantage of the 15% factory outlet discount and the 5% for 5+ pieces discount? You may end up waiting a bit longer, but that's better than not at all.

BTW, there have been several suggestions on how to negotiate. I should remind all - you are MARRIED. For the rest of your life, you will wake up each day to find out what your opinion is. That's how negotiation works in a marriage.

Good luck with it.

You should use the old "it'll enhance our marriage" line. I've only been married for half a year or so - and this argument/suggestion has gotten my foot in the home theater door nicely. She's given me a $5,000 budget, for everything, from soup to nuts (I will need to buy a complete new system, including TV, reciever, cables, SPEAKERS!!!!, etc.)

I keep telling her how much quality time that we will be able to spend, cuddling on the couch, enjoying our favorite movies and TV. This, I tell her, will enhance our marriage.

Now, she knows that I am just tryingto be cute when I say this, and I know that HT will not enhance oru marriage, but, it a nice way to contextualize the purchase with the relationship. She also feels like she's being a trooper for letting me buy "men's" toys (even though she knows that she'll enjoy it as much as I will).

Every woman has a key that will open her up to suggestion. Mine may not work for you (because my wife wasn't very hard to convince on this issue). The trick is to make her recognize what the purchase will do for her and the family. I suggest buying a HT for the new baby, so that when she's little, the whole family can watch movies at home, just like they were at the movies!

Man oh man... You guys are making me think I should perpetually date. In all honesty I am trying to buy all the tools and electronics I can now (one quality piece at a time so they last) so that when I do get married I'll be set for a while at least. Problem is I can't buy anything too big (aka, no nice tv for me...although a projector...?) because I'm gonna be moving around more before I settle down. My current girlfriend is pretty awesome though, in that she likes it when I fix her stuff (tools instantly justified), and she forces me to watch more movies than I knew existed (HT setup instantly justified). So I know that if I marry this one, she'll be ok with my hobbies.

One thing I recently discovered that made me feel more justified in my speaker purchase, might help you out as well:

Keep the old speakers! Buy a used 5.1 reciever for $100 from somewhere, and set it up in your bedroom (or wherever.) Now for essentially the same amount you were going to spend, you have a great HT setup, and a whole other room is wired up and ready to go. 2 for 1, can't beat that. In a few years when junior is watching kids movies, she can be relaxing upstairs to her favorite tunes while you watch "Buckaroo Barney Across the 8th Dimension" for the 3000th time!

In regards to:

"So I know that if I marry this one, she'll be ok with my hobbies."

Er ... UNTIL you marry might be more accurate. You may have been onto something with your initial comment about how we all made you feel.

Bman

I think that you should try a different tactic altogether. You must keep telling her (and do it with a serious face) that you are doing this for the sake of the children. Keep using the line "Just because I have gone through life with a mediocre sound system doesn't mean that OUR children have to." You may want to practice that in the mirror a few times.

Wow, where's BrenR with his comment about misogyny when you need him!

In defense of marriage and wives -- life becomes very dull if you get to do exactly what you want all the time with no resistance. Your mind turns to mush without challenges.

My advice to you? Only you can know whether your wife has really put her foot down or not. If you really want the Axioms, now is the time to buy -- before all your discretionary funds are sucked up by diapers and other baby-related costs.

On the other hand, with a new baby in the house, you're not going to have much time to enjoy your new Axioms unless you don't mind neglecting the new child and your wife -- and trust me, the temptation is often great.

So the way I interperet this is: Once my income becomes "our" income, I can't spend it as I wish anymore, but she becomes able to? Let me know how far from the target I am. I knew about the whole:

%(arguments won) = ((#years married)^2 + 2)^(-1)

business. I was hoping the formula for:
%(disposable income spent)
was a little more optimistic...

Well, here's what we do:

Our paychecks go (mostly) to the joint account. Each of us has our own personal account. Both of us keep back the same amount of money each month for our own personal use. She buys shoes/clothes/whatever every few months, and saves a lot more than I do. I buy expensive stuff, and consequentially, never have any money. It works out ok. Plus whenever I get something expensive that we'll both be using, she'll usually throw in some extra money.

OK, that's very reasonable. I think I could live comfortably with such an arrangement. (I'm assuming that things like bills, gifts for the kids, home improvement projects, furniture, etc, all come from the shared account.)