Tom...PAYMENTS??? really??. Look man, as much as I don't like you...well you're stories, you NEVER buy stuff on credit except for a house and maybe a car, but even a car I pay cash for. I don't even have a credit card and I don't buy anything on credit through a store plan. Credit for stuff is for banks to make money off of you. And as wealthy as you say you are there was no reason to had to go get credit to buy that stuff, a better way would have been either to save up the cash and buy it all at once or save up some cash buy one item and then save again to buy another, sure it would have taken longer but so what? Some of the stuff you replaced still worked so I would have replaced that stuff last and only replaced the most critical thing first. You would have still gotten to where are you now but it may had taken a year or two without any interest, plus the time you take saving money you could have found sale prices to make the whole project cheaper over the long term.
Kitchenaid is pretty decent though we went with Bosch stovetop, Bosch oven, and Bosch dishwasher when we bought our house two years ago (the original appliances were from the 80's and pretty well done for), back then Bosch had the best ratings and so far they've been flawless, should have bought a Bosch fridge! Even Kitchenaid and Maytag aren't as good as they use to be because they are no longer stand alone companies, they both got bought out by other companies with less than stellar reputations, but Kitchenaid seems to be holding up pretty well yet just not the bullet proof reliability (like Maytag) they enjoyed when they were a stand alone company. I don't think any company these days have that bullet proof reliability, we're talking about appliances from the 60's and 70's that would last 30 years, to where now the average life expectancy is just 8 years! 8 FREAKING YEARS! I'm not sure how we can say that companies are environmentally concerned about the use of natural resources when they have to build 3 to 4 times as many units in the place of 1 that they use to have to build! It's not natural resources they're concerned about it's about how much money they can make by keeping us poor by churning our money out of our pockets constantly to replace **** they build. I had a house ceiling fan that I moved from one house to another, this fan is about 40 years old! it still works without any noise or help, I bought a couple of new ceiling fans that I left in the previous house that were only 7 years old and were making noise, and one I had to spin the blades to get it to spin! I had a 286 computer that was still working when I dumped it after 13 years of use only because I couldn't find software for it anymore, all my newer computers since then have lasted about 5 years. So far though I've had great reliability with my Panasonic 48" plasma TV which is now about 14 years old which means it's out lasted the average life expectancy of a TV by about 12 years (but plasma has a far greater life expectancy then LCD does). Had a $450 sofa that lasted us 30 years before we threw it out because it was showing signs of wear, so we bought brand new $2,500 Lazyboy sofa, the fabric was showing wear after just 4 years! Our original bed lasted us 20 years, since then all the beds we've had lasted about 7 years. We live in world of ******** and nonsense.
I don't think it's fair that I should have to go out and spend $12,000 on a sofa to get one that will last 30 years or so, that's insanity,and I have been told that in order to get something to last that long I would have to look at $8,000 plus sofas, and the style my wife and I liked was $12,000, being tightwads we said no way. I'm at the point where I'll just buy some cheap ass $400 to $500 sofa and replace it every 4 or 5 years! Just think I can change the decor of the living room every 4 or 5 years! Bonus.