Dear Tim,
Yes, I agree with you and I fully respect everybody attitude about this. Most families do the same
I find quite surprising that most young people, when they are asked about what phone they want, they answer "an iphone, of course" and they don't care about the price. Its a kind of status: if you don't have an iphone you don't have "the phone".
Apple marketing is very powerful and dangerous about this... and if you compare current iphones with older ones, or first ones, they were terrible, but everybody had the sense that they were marvellous. A similar thing is happening with Tesla: the quality control of Tesla is not very good (many videos on youtube clearly explaining it) but it is becoming a "status" car. This is dangerous, specially for younger people. Money is time of your life, and time of your life is part of your freedom. If you have to stay working as a crazy all day long to pay all those so expensive gadgets, you don't have time to be with your kids, with your family, with your friends, etc. Thats the dark side of ambition.
I may becoming older...