I wonder what a woman that spends $50,000 to freeze her eggs in her mid thirties would say about a man who spends $50,000 in his mid thirties on a sports car.
A luxury sports car could be a signal used to attract mates, like colorful plumage on a bird. So he might also be spending that 50k on having children (albeit indirectly).
I simply wondered if I could play devil's advocate by looking up some research about men spending money for cars in order to attract women. I mean, most psychologists are men right? Surely, someone had the bright idea to look into this (I wonder if anyone has done it regarding the other way around, I'm too lazy to look it up since I can't play devil's advocate with that). As it turns out, there is research on it!
The introduction is the most juicy bit as the particular article I found is about intra-sex competition but states a few interesting studies in their introduction about being desirable to women.
In short what I skimmed so far related to this idea is:
"And indeed, a man who was seated in a luxury car was perceived
as more attractive by women compared to the same man seated
in a nonluxury car (Dunn & Searle, 2010). Hence, men appear
to use showy spending to attract women in intersexual competition contexts. Sundie et al. (2011) further revealed that men’s
flaunting of luxury goods signals their desirability as a shortterm (rather than long-term) mate."
Personally, I don't car about any of this. However, academically (from an evolutionary psych. view, lol): yes, men are seen as a more desirable mate!
If this conclusion is also actually true (and not subject to whatever ails the field of psychology) then I'd chalk it up to most of humanity being vain and if you want to get vain people you need to be the vainest of them all and get the sports car, the fancy house, other desirable 'high value' women in pictures and all that jazz. Though, why not just immediately go for the private helipad and private jet with built-in Jacuzzi? Nothing attracts as much as offering young people in general a trip around the world in pure luxury! Or so I presume. So don't buy the sports car. Buy the helipad with helicopter on top.
Source
Title: What If the Rival Drives a Porsche? Luxury Car Spending as a Costly Signal in Male Intrasexual Competition
The most expensive display of status that I see around my friends is having a new car. I have a 12 year old beautiful BMW that was created just after the design refresh. It's expensive to maintain, but far not as much as buying a new car. My friends are trying to pressure me to upgrade it to a newer one, but I see that just as money going out of the window that goes to compound investment right now.
Also in the US I listen to Dave Ramsey callers, and there are lots of people whose car is worth more than their whole net worth, which is totally unjustifiable in my view.
I'd strongly suspect that this guy is definitely in the upper middle, to begin with. "Why buy a Porsche when a BMW will do?", complaining about the duldrums of a six digit income... talking about being easily able to have quarter of a million in savings at age 24... etc, etc.
> Nobody ever looks at a person driving a ferrari and thinks, "wow, they must have washed a lot of dishes to afford that car," and yet we still think "if I just wash these dishes hard enough I'll drive a ferrari one day."
At least where I live, what car you drive has mostly come decorrelated with wealth. Obviously at the extremes there’s still a relation (the guy with the beat-up 1990 civic is probably not rich, the girl with the $120k AMG wagon is), but is a new Tesla 3 driver richer than the person with a 2005 Subaru Outback? Who knows!
well its not like he is asking whether he should buy an F430 Scuderia or a 911 GT3-RS.
50K is really not that much for a car, all things considered. Most college grads end up with a 30K car after college anyways, even when they start with 40K salary.
So 50K for someone who is running a startup, which is beyond noodle profitable(I doubt someone would be buying something as big as a new car, if they weren't) seems pretty normal.
That stereotypical insecure sportscar owner is certainly real. But not every one of them is insecure. Some just feel like they’ve won and deserve the spoils. And of course there are far more variables than I listed. I was just making some sweeping generalizations. I’ve met both. Old money, true to stereotype, tend to drive inconspicuous cars. I’m not old money, but I do the same.
Mercedes is the car you buy your wife to signal that you're a person of means. A person of means does not scoff at the wishes of their wife, especially not for such a paltry sum.
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