Truck Parts

I was washing my truck the other day and trying to figure out what I was going to do about fixing it. As I mentioned in my tire rotation post, I have a bad upper ball joint. I won't go into detail about what an upper ball joint is, but it's enough to say that because of how this truck is designed, I have to replace the whole upper suspension arm instead of just the one piece. Because of a deep psychological flaw (shared by many engineers) I don't want to just fix it, I want to make it better. I want to replace it with a part that is stronger and higher performance with longer life. This is the first part to need replacing on my truck and I want to use this opportunity to make it better.
It has snowballed though, gotten way out of control. The arms I found (which are MUCH better than stock) cost $700 instead of the $200 that two replacement arms would cost. Then I need new shocks to take advantage of the increased travel that the new arms provide. Never mind that most of my driving is driving the kids to school. This is some serious off road grade stuff and I'm an off road kind of guy. At least in my mind. So I'm spending too much on parts that are certainly worth what they cost, but probably not to me. Why? Why am I doing this? Because it's interesting. It makes my truck more interesting to me. The process of taking the vechicle that I drive every day and making it better is very engagning to me. The actual mechanical work of replacing the parts uses parts of my brain that don't get used folding laundry and making dinner. Having a truck that I still truly like after 4 years and 85K miles is cheaper than becoming bored with it and thinking that I need a new one.
In the end, this might be more about justifying spending money on my truck than anything else. I first had to come at it from a variety of angles to convince myself. Then I had to figure out how to justify it to my wife. All of you ladies reading this who think it would be great to have a stay at home husband need to remember that, at times, we can be an expensive luxury.