Spending dosh on a unnessary item

lalman

Is it stupid to blow a months savings on a watch? I have a perfectly functional one that I have had for 6 years... and I haven't spend crazy money on myself like this for a long long time... I actually want this watch... and I don't want things very often... but I feel abit guilty spending money...

The watch is £2480- but normally retails at £3800 (Omega brand).

It takes me on average a month to save that these days...

Any and all thoughts welcome.

[Deleted User]

So you can save just under £30k a year? I don't think spending that much is insane on those figures.. yes, i do think that much is a big fat waste of money on man jewellery and I'm sure you can buy a much better watch for the money (you're buying the Omega brand). That'll depreciate very quickly forgetting what it retails for.

Reaper

Sounds crazy to me BUT you are not me.
It is fair enough to save up for something you want, and it doesn't matter in the least if that something is not what I would choose.

So as long as you can afford it, you really want it, and as long as this is a one-off rather than the start of an expensive spending habit (e.g. got the watch now for the clothes/car/speedboat to match) then I don't see why not.

Archi_Bald

At 35% discounts, I'd make sure it is really an Omega.

B_G_B

Whenever i want to buy myself a pressie, I always build my own “cooling of period” into the equation. Funny thing is, over half of the stuff that I really want now, I don’t give a hoot about in a weeks time.

izzy65

Go for it, why shouldn't you, as for it depreciating I don't think so, my dh has an omega and it is still worth what it cost I and my dd have Rado's what I would say is check the costs of battery replacement my dh pays £90 for a battery and a service is around the £360, dd Rado is the perpetual motion one and she has a box that spins the watch at night so it keeps time.

Goldiegirl

What are you saving for?


Or are you saving just for the sake of saving?


If you can afford it, and want it, just buy it.


Get some pleasure out of your money.

Bravepants

I think as long as you save plenty for your future and don't go buying a collection of expensive watches! I have two watches, one Tissot that cost me £360 about 7 years ago, it's been serviced once at a cost of £150, and I wear it every day; and I have a cheap Casio (£14) for if I have to do more "manual" work. Any extra watches would just be clutter to me, and I'm seriously trying to declutter my home and my life right now.

I don't think I would ever spend a few thousand on a watch personally. However, so far this year I have spent £8000 or so on buying and doing up a "weekend" car! I also take piano lessons (I feel less guilty about spending money on personal development!) and a small collection of electronic music gear I mostly bought off EBay second hand; but if I'm noodling with my music gear and my pride and joy, I'm not down the pub spending money! If I want to buy something I sell some other stuff to help pay for it...also part of my decluttering mentality.

bowlhead99

To be honest if you buy well (25-35% discount off list), and you are getting one of the more classic styles, and a proper automatic movement rather than a cheapo quartz with battery from the bottom end of the scale, the depreciation won't be toooo horrendous and it will still have some value 5 years down the line - which you wouldn't get from a battery operated pure fashion brand like Gucci or whatever.

I have to say I would never spend £2k+ on something with a battery or a seiko kinetic type quartz movement. For real money you should be getting some sort of real engineering with impossibly fiddly springs and complicated bits that wind themselves. Like looking under the bonnet of a classic car. Not some microchip on a circuit board.

Archi is right to make sure it really is the genuine article of course. But nobody pays list price on a £4k watch - that's just published to catch a few suckers and to keep the illusion of real prestige. Like nobody pays RRP of £29,995 to a car dealer when you know he has a huge commission he can eat into to make the sale and give it you for £26-27000 with a load of extras thrown in. So even if you go to an authorised dealer and get a full Omega dealer stamped guarantee, you shouldn't be paying £3800 or even 85% of that if you look like you'll give them any repeat business ever again.

You'll probably find that someone selling as new for 30% off list is not an authorised dealer (as the dealer networks don't want their product heavily discounted to online buyers for example, even though they still have wiggle room to cut you some slack when you negotiate a price).

It could quite easily be a 'grey market' one where it is legitimately sourced, perhaps through surplus stock via a different country - and has the proper papers and boxes and manuals, but the vendor will sell it 'as new, condition 0, unworn', being a step up from 'used, mint condition'... and give you his own guarantee, rather than being able to literally say it is new with a factory warranty and authorised dealer stamp because Omega don't want him to do that if he's selling for a third below list price.

If it is just a used second hand one that has literally been pre-owned and used properly by someone else, and it's only a third off RRP, then walk away, as you could be getting something unworn for that price if you buy carefully.

If you check out the pricing on http://www.chrono24.com/ you should get some idea of going rates and whether you have a good deal or not. Some of the dealers on there might be a bit less legit than others so pay attention to ratings and what sort of physical presence they have and where. Plenty of dealers all over Europe and the US use that site as an extra shop window, in the same way that physical and internet stores sometimes also have an ebay store as an extra sales channel for their business even though they have their own perfectly functioning website and bricks & mortar storefront.

If you like the watch as a pretty piece of jewellery with some engineering inside it, or as a style statement, no harm in splashing cash on it if you actually have the cash to splash. It's a bit like art really - you could get a poster for £10 that might fill a wall as adequately as a £5000 painting but only you know whether the extra cash is 'worth it', to you. Face it, you probably have a smart phone which would be more accurate at telling the time (maybe by several minutes a month) than an automatic watch. So it isn't really about functionality but what other pleasure you get from it. Obviously if you need to use a credit card, even at 0%, it would point to it being something you can't actually afford yet, so that would be a bit foolish.

It's true that most people selling watches in the £1k-3k street price range, even if they are automatics, are not selling a completely custom in-house designed piece of engineering. At that price range the main internal movement will be an off the shelf unit from a Swiss company like ETA or Sellita or the like, maybe with some custom modification by the brand you're actually buying from, if you're lucky.

Most watch companies in that range - low end Omega, Baume Mercier, Tag, Raymond Weil, etc etc have very similar internals bought in as a finished movement (Omega overlay a few tweaks depending on the model), so it comes down to what the outside bits look like and what 'image' you want to project as your brand of choice. Higher up the scale, Rolex or Patek or Audemars or Vacheron or even Glashutte Original will do their own completely custom designs and you can say you have really bought a great piece of engineering which you pay handsomely for... but then you're looking at something north of £4k and then some. Unless you go off the beaten path a bit and get something like a Nomos who have their own inhouse manufactory and can do you a 'real' watch for more sane money.

Cyberman60

Personally I think it's crazy to spend that much on a watch. I've not worn one for a decade or so but now if I need the time I just check my smartphone.

To me an expensive item is just another target for a thief to nick, and another possession to worry about. As I travel a lot to 'poorer' countries I would not wear jewellery at all for obvious reasons. Incidentally, I once bought a fake Rolex in Phuket for 10 quid. Who knows the difference ??!!!

[Deleted User]

Cyberman60 wrote: »

Personally I think it's crazy to spend that much on a watch. I've not worn one for a decade or so but now if I need the time I just check my smartphone.

To me an expensive item is just another target for a thief to nick, and another possession to worry about. As I travel a lot to 'poorer' countries I would not wear jewellery at all for obvious reasons. Incidentally, I once bought a fake Rolex in Phuket for 10 quid. Who knows the difference ??!!!

I do know a very wealthy man who was robbed of his Rolex watch by thieves who boxed his car in, then beat the hell out of him..

(I've just got a £200 Seiko. It keeps the time. I don't want to spend any more money on something that, nor do I have the disposable income to blow on it). If I had that money I'd be wasting it on overly expensive cameras (Please go buy a Leica M instead, please)