One of the themes of this blog is buy less spend less, work less, stress less. Some things are essential. Others are far from it. Like personalised licence plates.
I've never fully understood the desire for them. I get that people like to express themselves. But it still feels like a waste of money. I took a deep dive to find out how much people pay for this self-expression.
The plates website says each plate "has a character behind it and a story to tell". Let's have a look at some of the 'stories' being told and what they cost.
Colour
This is the "colour" category of plate (though the owner chose white on black). Buyers can choose a combination of 3 letters and 2 or 3 numbers.
Why has this person chosen to make a word like camera? Are they a professional photographer - or do they like the irony if they ever get caught on a police speed camera? I'm not sure, but at $485, it's an expensive joke.
Theme
Another motorist is spending $485 to announce that he is Australian. What a surprise. An Australian. Here in Australia. Who would have guesssed?
A more common example in this category is the owner's initials and the last two digits of their year of birth (eg. RJC83). As a friend remarked, that feels great when you're 21 and want the world to know it; not so great when you're approaching 40.
Oh Max
This is one of the options in the "prestige" range. To charge $2,395 you have to call it prestige. That's marketing.
The car is a mini and has a "99" sticker on the side, so I'm assuming it's a reference to the 1960's TV show Get Smart. Clever, but I'm thinking "Oh Max, that wasn't worth $2,395".
Half Mad
To have 7 characters on your plate you can pay $3,500 as this person did.
When I found out this plate cost three and a half thousand, my reaction was that "half mad" was possibly a 50% underestimation.
$5,000
There is also an option to have a two-character plate for $5,000. I haven't seen one yet.
6-figure plates
The plate website also offers a marketplace for selling no-longer-needed plates. I suspect some people have seen a business opportunity here and registered a plate they think they can sell for much more.
Currently the most expensive plates available are "CRYPTO" for $100,000 and "B1TCO1N" for $250,000.
Yes that's right, they're asking a quarter of a million dollars for a number plate. If that's a little high for your taste, you can get "BABY" for a mere $75,000.
I was astounded that there are plates that cost more than a car and flabbergasted that some cost as much as an apartment.
Why do people buy these?
Perhaps the answer is in their alternate name - vanity plates.
There's a saying that in today's society, we "spend money we don't have, buying stuff we don't need, to impress people we don't like".
To me, personalised plates are a prime example - particularly regarding the people we don't like. The main viewer of your number plate is some stranger sitting behind you in traffic. Why do we need to impress them with a story about us?
Or is it about showing off wealth?
The description for the "B1TCO1N" plate says "this plate is the ultimate show of your new found wealth, a guaranteed head turner, and a great conversation starter".
From my perspective, it's a show that you've thrown away a chunk of your new found wealth.
It's that strange paradox where the person owning something thinks people are impressed but people actually aren't.
The 1% solution
Bumper stickers are available for about 1% of the price of a vanity plate. If we're so keen to tell the world that we're Australian, that we like Get Smart, or love Bitcoin, can't we just buy a bumper sticker or a decal?
If they want to show off wealth, why not buy a bumper sticker and donate the remaining money to a charity and post the receipt on social media. That might actually impress people.
Is it really an admission?
Are people just admitting that we work too much and therefore have too much money?
The job market is mostly 5 day a week jobs. Social convention is to work until your 60s. The maths of that means that people on a good wage, who follow convention, will have way too much money.
Basically it has to be given away, or spent recklessly.
Perhaps this is really a good thing
The secret about all of this is that the money goes to the government. For reasons I'm yet to fully understand, humans will object to paying a tax, but love to buy massively overpriced items. (Bottled water, anyone?)
If someone's willing to pay $3,500 to have "half mad" written on their plates then that's $3,500 the government can spend, that didn't need to come from the taxes of the rest of us.
So from that perspective, thank-you vanity plate owners for voluntarily paying more tax so the rest of us don't have to.
In short
As I mentioned right at the start I've never fully understood the motivation for getting these things. It fascinates me, mostly as an obvious example of an expense that is right down the bottom end of the value-for-money range. Part of the purpose of this blog is to waste less, so we can work less and stress less. Vanity plates seem an obvious waste.
I can also see that there are people who have money to burn. While I'd prefer they donate their unwanted money to charity rather than waste it (at least they might get a tax deduction for that); it's their money to waste if they want. At least in this case it's going to our state government for services for everyone.
What do you reckon?
Have you bought personalised plates? What prompted the idea? Was it a gift? Do you have insights for me on the reasons people get them? I still don't completely understand it.
Further reading
While personalised plates appear an obvious waste of money (very little value for a significant cost) are there other things that are in a similar category?
In my article $200k for a coffee and sandwich you can see how small costs add up (there's a calculator for you to do your own numbers). A friend found that choosing the cheaper coffee at work makes a big 5-figure difference over time.
Also there are categories where a small-medium sacrifice can make a large saving. I look at three of these in my article How to waste a year's wages. For housing, I also wrote about how we save $1,800 a year in rent - and how you may be able to save even more.
I've also got an article coming up about car costs. You can subscribe to my monthly-ish email to be notified when that's up.
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