I was trading emails with someone the other day when he said he'd love to buy X but his wife would kill him. Which led me to thinking, in my career this has come up a fair few times. Once when I sold a pair of $$$ speakers to someone, when I went to his house he swore me to secrecy as he'd told his wife they were $ bins. And there's been other occasions when I've had to put an item in a box without branding and mail the paperwork separately.

So I was wondering if any of you have got some good stories like when you've been busted or time for a confession?

i've gotten out of the habit of describing in detail the equipment i use to practice my profession here on gs:

in the protection of the anonymity of so-called social media, too often i've been berated for what an arrogant snob i am or for being unable to achieve the same results with much less and cheaper gear - some envious people don't even realize that i would have to bear the potential negative consequences of risky investments myself!

privately and among friends, i have no problems talking openly about expenses/costs.

Over the past three years I've really put some money into gear and updating/upgrading my equipment. Been getting a lot of large boxes in the mail and the lady in my life has become a bit hyper-sensitive to it.

At first I just proclaimed "I'm only selling old stuff and trading for newer/better gear". But that worked only for a while since the new-to-me gear usually cost more than the gear I sold.

Then I started to show her the improvement each purchase made with listening sessions. I included her in listening back to mixes and showed her what the gear did to the music; comparing with A/B listens. Converters, speakers, room treatment, and hardware EQ (to name a few) were all things she could hear the improved difference in. If something made mixes more intelligible and "better", she was more easily able to get on-board with the purchase. Not to mention I also got some pretty dang good second opinions from a fresh ear on music composition and mixing from someone who is just a fan of music without any audio engineering knowledge just by having her listening back to songs; in all reality an unintended benefit!

I now label her as the "secret weapon" producer.
She's way more on-board with me spending money now lol.