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There’s the adage, “spend your money where you spend your time.”
If you’re going to spend a lot of time in front of a TV, get a nice one. Cook a lot? Get the good knives and pans. Don’t read much? Don’t buy an e-reader or book subscription service. Not big into DIY? Get cheap drill/driver for the rare times you need it.
There’s plenty of exceptions but it’s a nice general rule.
Even if you are into DIY: Buy cheaper once, if something breaks buy something more expensive.
I see this a lot and take some issue with it the wording of it. I think a lot of people say this thinkkng of something like Ryobi or Harbor Freight as the “cheap” guys, when in reality the price scaling of tools puts those makes pretty squarely in the mid to high-end bracket.
In reality, there are some cheap tools that are downright unsafe for use that some people might see after reading that comment and decide to get.
ETA: If it’s sharp, spins, or runs on electricity, get it from a physical store or highly reputable online vendor and make sure it has a warranty
I dunno, I’ve had good luck with Aldi and Lidl “Center Isle” power tool purchases. Thats Workzone and Parkside tools, a far cry from mid to high-end. If I use something enough that it merits a replacement, I buy the Makita version
Those are still from a reputable store. I think the really cheap ones are the Chinese ones that don’t even have a brand name. Slightly above that are the Chinese made ones with a nonsense word for the brand name.
right yeah
Project Farm on YouTube often rates Ryobi, Husky, and Harbor Freight brands as being pretty good.
Submarine construction
Your kid’s first musical instrument. It’s counterproductive and false economy to buy them a piece of shit guitar or tuba or whatever it may be, in the belief that “if they like it and want to continue with it, I’ll buy them a better one in the future”. You might well turn the kid off the instrument for life if their instrument is harder to play/maintain and worse to listen to than it ought to be.
If you want your kid to be enriched by music and to be creative, buy them a decent mid-range instrument. Make it so that the kid can’t wait to pick it up, don’t make those crucial early days of learning the instrument feel like eating watery gruel for months with an expectation of pizza at some point down the line. A shitty instrument will be an additional barrier the kid will need to deal with every time they use it. Get out of their way, buy them something serviceable. If they lose interest regardless, well at least you know they had a fair shot at it and it wasn’t the crappiness of the instrument that caused them to abandon it. And you can always sell or donate the instrument if they really don’t give a shit about it.
The best instrument you can reasonably afford is significantly more likely to hook your kid than a £50 piece of junk would. It doesn’t need to be fancy, it just needs to be well-made, pleasant to play, and easy to tune/maintain/clean/whatever the case may be.
I’ll counter with the following: if you aren’t sure whether your kid will like it, it’s probably a better idea to start with renting. You’ll typically get a fully-serviced instrument with coverage for accidental damage.
Yes, it’s a fully sunk cost, but it’s predictable and you don’t have to deal with the hassle of selling off an instrument if they don’t get really into it. Once you’re confident that they’re going to stick with it and know they can handle and maintain it carefully, then you should look into buying.
Oh man this is so true. My parents enrolled me for piano classes when I was a kid but got me a shitty mini plastic keyboard to practice and I hated it, ended up quitting not long after. Picked up piano again as an adult during covid and bought myself a full sized keyboard with weighted keys and damn the difference was night and day.
The classic is anything that separates you from the ground.
I’d add anything related to plumbing, electricity and roofing.
Basically any core elements of a home. Finishes can be redone, but things like a good water heater or reliable HVAC system are niceties you’ll always thank yourself for
Shopping houses right now. I’m really focusing on the HVAC, roof, and plumbing. Oh and water. I saw one house where it didn’t have gutters on a short eave and the door below was mostly rotted out in the bottom 2 feet from water slashing on to it. It boggles the mind that no one had thought to put a gutter there. Literally a 8 foot section of gutter would save that door and frame.
Good work. Those are the things that will cost you tens of thousands. New floors? Bah, nothing compared to having to replumb or rewire. Water damage too is terrifying, we had our water heater burst and it took weeks to clean up and repair
Condoms
I see a lot of specific examples, but here is a good engineering guideline: do not skimp on physical interfaces. **Anywhere energy is changing form or if it touches your body, don’t skimp on those. **
For example
- tires
- bicycle saddle
- heaters/furnaces
- electrical inverters
- keyboard
- mouse
- engines
- shoes
- eyewear
- clothes (buy used if necessary, but always buy quality clothing)
Quality usually means more money, but sometimes one is able to find a high quality and low-cost version. In my experience though, trying to find the cheap version that works well means trying so many permutations; it would have been more economical to just get the more costly version in the first place.
Gonna start with a few of the usual suspects:
-
Anything that keeps your feet off the ground (buy good shoes)
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Anything that touches your privates (don’t buy cheap condoms yall)
Condoms are for pussies.
Condoms are for dicks*
diaphragms are for pussies
-
Dental care.
The rule is, if it goes between you and the ground buy quality shit.
Other people have said better things, but I’ve found flour to be important in baking. Generic store brands can work mostly, but for more precise and nicer baking I’ve got to go with King Arthur flour
Hey King Arthur flour, sponsor me please, I need it to keep buying all this flour!
King Arthur flour
How does this specific thing keep popping up in every corner of the internet I ever go to?? Is it that good?
It really is better than most. This a company I actually think sort of cares. Their recipes for bread products are also spot on, at least the ones I’ve tried.
Their recipe for Cornish pasties has done me well, although my filling is always “things I have on hand”!
Not really exeptional except it is commercial grade. It’s not the random stuff you get from the local brand. The local brand is whatever. Sometimes it’s really good, other times it’s pretty poor.
The most common difference is in a test called “falling number”. Falling number is a fast easy way to figure out if an enzyme that degrades starch has been activated (alpha-amylase). Intact starch in flour creates a matrix in solution and thickens it. When alpha-amylase is activated it degrades the starch and makes it thinner.
For baking you want a thicker dough that holds together. It’s how you get light and fluffy breads. The thicker dough traps CO2 produced by yeast or an acid/base reaction better.
Any high quality brand will probably do you well. King Arthur is what I can get easily and have used it for decades. Also it’s employee owned, last I knew, which makes me feel a smidge better.
Also their online recipes are pretty nice, and they answer questions!
Great flour, consistent every time, no filler or weird blends like others might have, great recipes, employee owned, etc.
They also have gluten-free flours (both measure for measure and straight up) and good recipes for them. I’m not gluten free but I have a friend that is and the chocolate cake I made them with their flour and recipe was one of the best gluten free cakes there ever had (it’s better than some gluten cakes I’ve had tbh)
Their bakers hotline is extremely awesome
Toilet paper.
Oh god I see your name everywhere and I nearly hack up my breakfast every time I read it. Stop. Please
If you just skip breakfast it won’t be a problem anymore.
This is the first comment in the thread that I 100% agree with. (I can’t believe how many of the other ones I don’t.)
Bed mattress. Sleep is important.
A good mattress: you spend 1/3 of your life sleeping, it needs to be comfortable.
Footwear: the rest of the time your footwear is what separates you from the ground. Invest in practical, good quality, and repairable/hard-wearing footwear.
This is a niche one but quality sharpening stones. A complete blindspot for sharpeners in the western hemisphere.
People assume that the edge is great if it’s sharp. There are even people that will sharpen on a brick, strop on green goop, shave hair, and claim you don’t need fancy sharpening stones.
Truth is, the sharpening stone dictates edge retention as much as the blade’s quality can. Can you get hair shaving sharp on a brick? Yes. Will it stay sharp? No.
This is why the Japanese go crazy for special and expensive stones. The quality of stones are so important that in medieval times, the best stone quarries were classified military secrets.
I recently attended a seminar and the speaker spoke how the 30,000 grit stones DOUBLED his edge retention over his 16,000 grit stone.
What you use to sharpen MATTERS, and that’s why they get so damn expensive.
Ceramic glass stones are amazing. They’re relatively quiet, super fast, and they don’t dish easily.
Personally, I try not to cheap out on anything I want to last. You don’t have to buy the most expensive, but don’t buy the cheapest either. Something in the middle usually does good.
I’ve done well buying second hand too. I recently found a bread machine for 3$ at goodwill. Works perfectly. But I also figured if I decided not to use it anymore or it was crap, then I lost 3$
I’ve heard this line of thinking is how they get you. Example I heard was something like there’s a $10, $20, and $40 toaster at Walmart. The $10 and $20 one are functionally the same, but you don’t know that and don’t want to go with the cheapest one so you pick that.
Don’t know how true it is, but thought it’s interesting and started thinking about it when I’m buying stuff
Yeah I’ve heard that too. I’ve seen it a few times as well.
