To All Husbands Who Want a Sports Car

The other day, while gathering information online about car life, I came across several articles titled “How men with wives and children can convince their wives when they want to buy a sports car.”

I had seen similar questions on Yahoo! Chiebukuro before and thought, “I see… there are quite a few husbands out there struggling with this kind of dilemma.” In fact, on this blog too, articles about husbands convincing their wives when buying a car or how to win over their wives consistently get a lot of views.

Looking at the content of articles about “how husbands convinced their wives,”

– Actively helping with housework on days off
– Quitting smoking and drinking
– Stopping unnecessary spending
– Giving gifts to their wives

it’s clear that many are making various efforts.

If You Want a Sports Car, Earn More Money

When I told my husband, “It seems that many husbands out there really work hard to buy a sports car,” he said this:

Sure, I think it’s important to save money and do what you can in the current situation, but the common theme is always ‘saving’ or ‘keeping the wife happy.’ Why don’t more guys think about ‘earning even a little more than now’? I think if you earn more and bring more money home, it’s easier for your wife to say yes. That’s the quickest way. If the husband earns more, you can hire house cleaning services or babysitters, and the wife can relax more, have more time for herself, and be happier. Then, even if the husband does what he likes a bit, she won’t complain. At least, that’s how it seems from the people I know.

That’s true. While money isn’t everything, married life and living together often aren’t just about ideals, so money is extremely important.

As a wife, it’s out of the question if buying a sports car causes financial strain, and even if it doesn’t, I really don’t want the money available for myself and the kids to decrease, forcing us to make sacrifices because of it.

Once you’ve experienced that even once, your image of sports cars worsens, and if your husband says, “I want to buy another sports car,” you’ll probably strongly oppose it.

Also, reading online articles made me think that it must be pretty troublesome if a husband “used to take the lead in housework and childcare before buying the sports car, but stopped doing anything right after.”

Of course, if such things become habits and can be done without much effort, that’s totally fine. But since married life is long, if it’s done with strain, it will become stress and eventually things won’t go well.

So, looking at the long term, I think it’s better to focus on something “that can be continued and is a WIN-WIN for both yourself and those around you.”

That said, when I said, “Even if you want to earn more, it’s not like your salary will suddenly jump up, so it’s pretty tough,” my husband said,

Sure, it’s hard to do it immediately, and some might say, “If you’re independent, maybe, but as a salaried worker, it’s impossible.” But thinking only about saving money and cutting costs is wrong. That’s like unconsciously telling yourself, ‘I can’t earn any more than this’. Of course, your income won’t increase at that point. There’s more than one way to earn money. Besides ‘working yourself to earn,’ there’s also ‘having people or things work for you’ and ‘having money work for you’. You can increase income by getting ad revenue from a blog and having things work for you, or instead of just saving money every month, you can invest it. There are plenty of ways to earn a little extra in today’s internet age. Yet many people are too fixated on ‘earning by working (at a company, etc.)’. So first, changing that mindset is important. I want to tell dads out there, ‘Don’t look away from earning money.’

Have Your Wife Drive the Sports Car Too

My husband continued with this:

Many wives oppose buying sports cars, but when you ask, “Have those wives actually driven a sports car?” I think most haven’t. If they try driving a sports car, they can feel how great it is and experience the difference from regular cars. Also, it’s important not just to ride shotgun but to actually drive it. Some people take their wives or girlfriends along as passengers to help them understand sports cars, but that’s actually counterproductive. No woman will understand a sports car if she’s stuck in a cramped, uncomfortable car. It makes sense if you go to a dealer together, test drive it, and then she says, “I still don’t like it.” But I wonder why so many wives oppose something they haven’t even experienced themselves.

Well, that’s true… In my case, I was a long-time non-driver with zero interest in cars, but I became interested in cars when my husband let me drive his SLK350 at the time.

I was amazed, thinking, “This is totally different from my family’s car…!” I couldn’t believe that I, who used to nervously crawl along the left lane on the highway, was now confidently driving in the right lane.

Mercedes-Benz SLK

You might say, “Even so, it’s pretty tough to take a wife who isn’t interested in cars to a dealer for a test drive,” but I still think it’s worth the effort.

Because seeing is believing. (Or rather, driving is believing…)

No matter how much a husband talks about how great the car is, if the wife isn’t interested, she’ll get bored and dislike the topic more and more.

But if she actually sees a shiny sports car with her own eyes, she’ll understand how cool it is, and when she drives it, she’ll realize how amazing it is. So if you want to buy a sports car, having your wife drive it at least once might help move things forward.

Of course, every family has its own right answer, and what I wrote here is just one example from our family… but I hope it can be helpful to someone out there.