the 2nd association it resonates is the highly consumption-driven society we live in. in my area (coastal, urban southern california) i'm surrounded by 2 distinct lifestyles. there's the majority: seems like 95% of the local population who are renters, driving luxury cars, sporting fancy clothes, jewelry, hairdos, etc but obviously living paycheck to paycheck as exemplified by hardly a day somebody or the other is spotted  getting their car repo'ed by a camera crew. the rarer are the landlords, who in this area seem to be of mostly asian demographics (chinese, koreans, japanese) who live obviously very frugally: old 80s model sedan, oldfashion business cloths, always eating simple meal from home, seemingly never splurging $$$ other than into expanding their portfolio), my observance is relatively very few landlords in the area own relatively huge portfolios, each.with the advent of these infomercials and the internet (ie, BP) more and more people want to get a 'piece of the REI pie' and more power to them. there does seem to be this dream of rags to riches and while its ok to dream, do most people actually expect their life to turn around like that, as portrayed in most of the infomercials or even in the everyday setting where the masses living paycheck to paycheck, are spending their last expendable dollars not on depositing into savings acount, but blowing $20 on scratchies etc. in summary, is my observation reminds me of my days when i worked on wall st and the 'ra trace' was so obvious with dime a dozen stock brokers makin 6fig salaries at some point but blowing it on recreational drugs apparently costing thousands of dollars a pop to the point the next week they are broke again and that $ wasnt invested but wasted.  

In contrast, your 20-year old, gas heaters most likely have an efficiency between 60 and 75.If you do the math, you will likely find that if your existing water heaters run for another 5 years, the difference in fuel consumption to a new heater would pay a considerable amount of the acquisition and installation cost for a new heater.   

He was in a rush to get away from living with a alcoholic brother. 

The only downside to investing in IN is alcohol sales; you can't buy on Sunday.

If the painter had to go to an advanced check place that evening instead of waiting until 9:00 am the next day, there is a problem there such as drugs or alcohol, etc.

@Jackson WuAnd alcohol

In your own home, the bulbs, particularly the replacements for halogen (GU-10, PHAR-20, etc) are a must - massive reduction in energy consumption and waste heat.In our rentals, we've moved towards using LED fixtures w/o bulbs {students will finger the LED bulbs just as readily as any other}.  

Some people turn to drugs and alcohol to escape.

Add in drugs and alcohol and even my model will see problems now and then.  

Yet they end up doing too much alcohol or drugs.