Well, I no longer have a wife to reason with, just myself and my bank account!
But when I did, it was just a matter of; “All the bills paid? Money in the bank for emergencies?“, if the two answers to that were a “Yes”, then all was good. And that’s still my reasoning now, really…..and thankfully, because in my 20’s, that was not a concern at all.
When it comes down to the guitars themselves; I feel it’s important that I have enough guitars that cover all the ground I think I’ll need, IE- all the classic guitar tones whether it be a Strat, Tele, LP, something with P90’s, a hollowbody, etc. I know at some point I’ll have a desire for those tones and I HATE being in the middle of a recording and get hit with, “Man, this part really can use that Strat tone…..too bad I don’t have a Strat or something that can deliver it.”
And then getting into stage/studio use; in the studio if you snap a string, no big deal, but live, you’ll want something ready to go that sounds on par with your main live guitar, so having a very similar or identical one for a backup isn’t a bad idea. I was spreading myself thin by relying on multiple, very different sounding guitars to do the same job. I’ve got 16 or 17 guitars now, all very different, but I’m not playing live, so fuck it. Once I do, I’ll have a backup of each guitar I use live.