Most of us are pretty mellow about the way our hard earned money gets spent. We don’t make too much fuss about the fact that entirely too much yogurt (a “food” that no self-respecting man would ever touch) ends up in the refrigerator week after week, and we don’t even make a big deal of the fact that, on average, we only see about 4 or 5 percent of our take home pay after we sign the back of the check. But there are some things that women buy that absolutely drive us insane, especially if they take out personal loans to do it.

Most of us hold on to the delusion that if we work hard enough and save our nickels, at some point we’re going to be able to do or buy something fun. Women, it would appear, were created for the sole purpose of making absolutely sure that never happens.

I knew one woman who actually took out personal loans for a dress. No kidding. A dress. Granted she needed a formal dress for a business function. And granted the business function was sponsored by the guy’s employer, but a loan for a dress? Come on, that’s crazy.

Here are the 3 other things that women I know have used personal loans to buy, driving their husbands bat shit crazy in the process:

• Furniture. OK, we all like to sit down, and who wouldn’t like new furniture? A person with perfectly good furniture to sit on, that’s who. It may be ten years old, but it’s still perfectly good, right? And if it doesn’t match the room’s paint job, wouldn’t it be easier (and cheaper) to put up some wallpaper? What is it with women and new furniture, anyway?

• A mini van. Perfectly practical, there’s no denying it. But they could only afford one car between them. Since it was older and cheaper, she used personal loans. Now, he might not have been so mad about it except it meant he had to be seen driving the ugly thing (instead of the truck or muscle car he would have preferred). She said it would be good for hauling kids. Maybe if they’d had any kids, it wouldn’t have made him so mad.

• Clothing. Actually, we know a lot of women who have borrowed from the bank for a wardrobe adjustment. Most men will agree that if you need to finance clothes, you need to shop somewhere else. Maybe the fact that this particular wife had lost 100 pounds with weight loss surgery and actually needed new clothes should have made a difference. At any rate, he wasn’t complaining about the new body. Just the cost of the new clothes.

OK, you’ve got us, ladies. Women are practical, and men are jerks. Jerks who really don’t like financing practical things when there are so many fun things that could be purchased instead.

Photo via Joe Shlabotnik