Work is universally regarded in our culture as "a good thing" therefore you have an excuse to focus on it and you can get concrete positive feedback in the form of $$ Add in owing money for a guy that didn't like owing money for anything except for the house purchase. No, no car loans for me!
Then add, both the H and W want more things than one paycheck will buy. Solution, work more.
Ten, twenty years later get rid of all the extra things you bought by giving them away, garage sales, and making trip after trip to the donation store, all the time asking myself "why did work so much just to give all this stuff away?"
