When my mom was going through her most recent divorce, she decided that she had to remodel most of her house, complete with new kitchen cabinets, new kitchen floors, new carpeting, brand new bathroom fixtures and flooring, etc. It cost tens of thousands of dollars, which she took out a new mortgage on her home to pay for.
It is ugly as sin. The kitchen has a “hospital waiting room” vibe to it now. Nothing matches. It looks kind of like what happened when I let my 6-year-old decorate a house in The Sims.
But it made her feel better about the divorce! Until the bills started arriving, anyway.
My former sister-in-law was constantly spending her husband into the poorhouse. She henpecked him until he built her a huge new house that they could just barely afford. (Coincidentally, my husband and I had just purchased a new house. Theirs was 100 square feet bigger than ours.) Then, it was a neverending stream of her demanding new furniture, jewelry, cars, and vacations that might have been affordable before they became house-poor, but just spelled credit card debt at that point. The final straw was when she actually fell for one of those Nigerian scams. Several thousand dollars were lost. (I kid you not.) The house was foreclosed a mere 2 years after they moved in. My brother-in-law was pushed to the very brink of bankruptcy. He filed for divorce and started over with mountains of debt. A couple of years of good financial decisions later, and he’s doing just fine for himself. Now that he doesn’t have “Mrs. Bad Financial Decisions” hanging around his neck, LOL.
When I got out of college I had an entry-level position doing online customer service. I had a coworker I was friendly with. I was broke (we made $24,000/yr) but she was Stupid Broke. She lived in this 1 br garden apartment and bought this GIGANTIC purebred dog (I believe it was a Mastiff) that she had to make payments on.
Payments. On a dog.
I was pretty much aghast, but I kept my mouth shut.
Not to my knowledge, LOL… His assets were pretty close to zero at the time of the divorce, so I would imagine it was a fairly inexpensive divorce. She went home to live with her parents in a 3 bedroom, clutter/squalor house with umpteen pets.
I never asked exactly (I feared for my sanity) but based on the fact that her payments were a more than a hundred dollars, and she mentioned them for several months, I’m guessing in the $500-$1000 range.
Not to mention special giant-sized Mega Crate, vet visits, food, and dog walkers when she couldn’t be home at the right time…
Hehe, a $1000 giant mastiff in a 1-bedroom garden apartment, eating though sack after sack of dog chow. I bet that was one hungry pooch. I wonder if she’d make THAT choice again?