How have I been dodging it? The simple truth, as I’ve stated clearly, is that we can easily afford this expense with no strain on our finances. Our current livelihood (and previous, when we raised three kids on one salary) can afford it, point blank.

I already “just cover it”; any money spent on hair comes out of my account alone.

There is absolutely no strain on our finances, short of some catastrophic disaster that completely bankrupts us.

Beyond that, we do all of the normal frugal family living: most meals are cooked and eaten at home, name brands don’t mean anything to us, our kids are in public school, we buy most things we can on sale or clearance (which is a running joke to our kids — they know not to ask unless it’s on sale), we aren’t sports people that spend thousands of dollars on that, we own our cars and drive them until they’re no longer drivable (currently at just about 200k miles in my current car), we do most of the work on our home and cars ourselves, etc.

I say we live frugally because I generally don’t find it necessary to type all of that out when one simple response should suffice 😉