This is likely to be a small thread drift, but, I often have conversations with my wife about my spending on toys, (cars, boats, bikes etc) against her wish to have many nice and expensive holidays. My feeling are, that if I buy, say my little 23', 18 year old sail boat for £15,000, against her wishes for us both to have a nice holiday in the Antipodes for much the same price, on our return there are only fading memories of a lovely 4 weeks of our lives, whilst with the toys, we still have a lot of fun, different admittedly, and I will still get 50% - 80% of my original capital back, less of course running costs.
This of course makes it much easier to do the man maths, which is what we are talking about here, bringing it nicely back on topic. :-)
Thats exactly my logic. I am now on my fifth small boat and whilst I have been able to sell 3 of the previous 4 at a nominal £k profit, the last one cost me £15k loss - and all these of course exclude inflation losses , marina costs etc. The toy cars have incurred bigger losses, and the bikes much the same percentage wise.
But then statistically speaking I probably only have 5 years or at most a decade of life left, SWMBO gets her holidays ( 5 this year!!! ) and the kids are provided for so the losses are reduced by the 40% IHT the govt would take if I didnt spend a bean. I get some satisfaction from looking at it that way. No pockets in shrouds anyway
