A few days ago I was in a waiting room in a service station (while a mechanic was doing my car’s annual inspection) and I noticed a man and a woman and their 2 children. The man and woman appeared to be in their 20s; one child was probably less a year old and the other was maybe two or three. As far as I could tell, they were a happy and healthy family.
One thing I couldn’t keep from noticing was the tattoos. The man was covered with tattoos. Every visible inch of his arms (he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt) was tattooed. He had a tattoo on the back of his neck. He had tattoos on his face, between his eyes and ears. Most likely, he also had tattoos on his chest and back, though I couldn’t say for sure. The woman had only one visible tattoo, on her upper arm.
Being someone interested in personal finance, I wondered: How much did this guy spend on his tattoos? Assuming his whole body was as tattooed as I suspected it might be, he might have spent at least few thousand dollars on decorating his body. Maybe more, especially if the tattoos are “customized” and “high quality” or if he had them done by an experienced tattoo artist in a high-rent urban area. (Or maybe he spent less, if they were done outside the United States.) I wondered if this expenditure was a good idea, financially-speaking.
Of course, I have no idea what kind of financial situation this couple is in, no idea how much money they have. It’s possible they are both highly-paid professionals. Perhaps they inherited a fortune. Maybe they won the lottery. If they are debt-free and earning $200,000 or more per year, with money in the bank and invested in retirement savings, maybe owning a house, … then I say fine. It’s all good. Decorating your body to suit your vanity, like some pirate, or sailor (or south-seas savage, or whatever) isn’t something I’d do — but it’s a free country, different strokes for different folks and all that. Financially-speaking, an expenditure of, say $3,000, is only about 1% of a good-sized household income. Once done, a tattoo lasts a long time (which is one of the problems with tattoos, in my opinion), so the argument can be made that a tattoo provides years of use (enjoyment?) at no additional cost after the initial expenditure. (Although, I think they look really awful after 20 or 30 or more years.) Also, the amount of skin people have is finite — so there’s a limit to how many tattoos they can get.
But let’s assume that this young couple earns no more than an average income. That might be $50,000 to $60,000 per year if they are both working. If one of them is staying at home with the kids, then their household income might be half that. If they earn less than the average income for 20-somethings, then they might be struggling to get by on $40,000 or less. Now that tattoo is 5% to 7% of what they earn in an entire year.
Can they afford that?
How does that compare to the other spending?
How much do they owe on their car(s)? Are they carrying large balances, and being charged interest, on any credit cards? Student loans? Do they have money in the bank? An emergency fund? Are they putting 10% to 15% of their earnings into a retirement account? Do they own their home? Do they even own a washer and dryer? The money spent on those tattoos could have been put towards any of those things.
If the later is the case, then I have to say, No, They Really Can’t Afford Their Tattoos. They’ve got their priorities mixed up. They’ve put too much money into something that is the ultimate example of 100% depreciation. Spending too much money on things that depreciate (that is, go down in value) is the best road to financial ruin. Cars, SUVs, and trucks are the classic example of something that goes down in value after it’s purchased. A common financial mistake is spending too much money on personal vehicles. But at least cars can always be sold, even if at an immense loss. Money spent on tattoos is gone forever. Once the tattoo artist has the money, that’s the end of the story. There’s no getting that money back. Not even the smallest part of it. In my honest opinion, that’s not much of a return on thousands of dollars.
