On male-bias, or anti-female, or what-have-you.
I do think we need to relax just a wee bit. I was about to comment that perhaps if the person posting about the diamond rings had reworded it just a bit, maybe it'd have been ok. Then I reread and saw that it already had the "correct" wording (I was going to suggest that it be edited to read "most", but saw it already said "generally"). I didn't find the comment anti-woman. Instead, I found it anti-consumerism. Or anti-anti-MMM. I don't find offense at posts that infer that MOST men like their gadgets, or sporty cars. Because it's most likely true. Not pretty, but true.
Also, the founder of the site is male. Most members on this forum are male. So that means the majority of posts that are complaining about the poster's spouse/partner, are in fact complaining about a female. To change this, just #1 point out if someone says something offensive (sometimes we just might not know) and #2 get more women posting on the site. I've seen several threads where the op was a woman, and complaining about her husband/boyfriend, let's get more of them! Edit: I'm not saying MMM makes posts complaining about women; in fact he does his complaining rather gender-neutrally. What I mean is, being a man writing from a man's perspective, he attracts more of a male audience to this site, and most men (er...most people) aren't sophisticated enough to write in such a gender-neutral way.
BTW...easy enough to forgive the newbie mod who initially moved this...but who is the one who asked to have it moved? Was he/she a newbie too? Just curious, hopefully the offender won't actually be pointed out (else I'd be even more wary about using the "report this post" feature).
As to the actual topic of the thread; no one's asked about their finances! It's one thing to say "go for it!" if you're out of debt and have a healthy emergency fund; it's another if you're up to your neck in credit card bills. Assuming your financial house is in order, I'd agree to loosen up just a bit. Whether upping the actual food budget, or making a separate "baby made me do it!"category.
And to merge both topics together; sometimes threads like these make me rethink things that I've done/are doing, as they show me the other person's point of view. Perhaps I should have upped our grocery budget when my wife had cravings; then again I did go on lots of dates where we ate sushi (sometimes I'd just watch, I was sushi-ed out). Gives me something to think about.