I don't even know where to start. I work for the government and the combination of good pay, job security, and defined benefit plans seem to make otherwise intelligent and responsible people desperate to spend every last cent they earn.
One time my supervisor was lamenting about his refrigerator was broken. He had a repair guy out to give an estimate on fixing it. I thought, "Good for you - seeing if it can be fixed instead of running out to immediately buy a new one."
Then he said the repair estimate was $400, which was a lot, but still much cheaper than a replacement.
I said, "Wait, what? That can't be right. Granted it was a few years ago, but I'm pretty sure we only paid like $400 when we bought our last fridge. How much did your fridge cost?"
He said "$1200."
My eyes must have been bugging out of my head because he quickly explained, "Well we need a big fridge, we have two kids." The kids in question aren't even starving teenagers... they're elementary school age. Do children require stainless steel and french doors as well? Because those are the only $1200 refrigerators I've seen.
Seems like a lot, right? We bought our fridge in 2001 when we moved into a rental that didn't have one. It was $600, from Sears, energy star.
Well, darn it they are so expensive now! Our fridge started having issues a few years ago - the fan in the freezer broke (it keeps the fridge cold), and the guy who came to look at it (from Sears) said it would be $300 to fix or we could go buy the part ourselves for $75. Which is what we did. Also, one of our drawers/slides broke, and I found the part online for $35 and fixed it myself (I was so proud).
Occasionally we wish we had an automatic ice maker in our fridge. There was a nice stainless fridge for sale used, locally, for $600. I would have jumped on it except it is 33.5 inches, and our space is only 30 inches (when we bought our house, my husband built cabinets around the fridge).
So anyway, it looks like the current version of what we have is about $510 (19-20 cu ft? I honestly don't know how big our fridge is).
If you want freezer on the bottom, which is more practical I know, is $1000 or more.
Icemaker and french doors? $1400 and up.
I'll just keep making my two trays of ice a day, thanks. I guess if I were to spend $1500 on a fridge, instead of $500, and it lasted me 20 years - that's what, 50 a year for the ice feature? Hm.