Rumpelteazer, your father sounds like mine, to be honest.
He doesn't mind spending $1000 or more if he wants something (and he *easily* has the money to spare: he has a pension I can only dream of, in another 35 years or so), but regarding (household) appliances, he keeps jacking around with old crap. Hot water is provided by a geyser. (Is it called like that in English?
Something like this).
It's a a 50 year old (or older) piece of crap, installed even before he bought the house in '69. Now he's always jacking around getting it to fire up again, complaining that it shuts off when he's in the shower, that kind of thing.
"Why should it be broken?" (Because it's over 50 years old, with virtually no maintenance in the last 20 or so?)
"Do you know what a new one would cost?!" (So what? You spend hundreds and more on stuff you DON'T need.)
It's not only this thing; it's the same with all appliances. He has a flatscreen-TV (2007, bought only because the old TV failed and became unrepairable), with two settop boxes and thus three remote controls, of which two have been dropped so often that half of them don't work; so they have been replaced with a universal remote. The universal remote actually controls everything, but he insists on using all four of them (including the parts of the two that are half broken).
Now he's always jackassing around with 3-4 remotes, the picture and sound makes you cringe, as the settop boxes are over 10 year old; at least from before the Full HD time, and it all only causes stress and anxiety.
Replacing that pile of half-broken, heavily outdated tech and cable-spaghetti with a new €750 TV, which uses a CI+ CAM Module and only one (1) remote, not to mention the new TV being smaller and using 50-75% less energy?
No way. Just keep messing around with the old stuff until it finally, totally breaks or explodes.
I'm not one to replace stuff without need, just to have something new, but if keeping old tech in use becomes unfeasible because it's just not keeping up anymore or is actively breaking down, then that's the limit for me.
I wonder why older people are (apparently) willing to torture themselves by not replacing old or broken stuff, even if money isn't the problem.