I'm fine with paying for good software and I probably have about a half dozen paid apps running right now on my desktop. I completely agree with your point that

I'm fine with paying for good software and I probably have about a half dozen paid apps running right now on my desktop. I completely agree with your point that $45 is probably not worth worrying about (or the difference between $45 and a $25 sale price) in the grand scheme of things if the software is useful to you. One thing I will say though is that there are other costs associated with non-free software beyond just the license cost. You've got to manage license keys. You've got to worry about upgrades. If your company is paying for it you've either got to go through IT for procurement or you've got to submit an expense report to be reimbursed. Sometimes there are obnoxious license servers that you need to deal with (I'm looking at you, IntelliJ!). Installation of paid apps is harder to automate than a simple homebrew or npm command. Of course, all of this may still very well be worth it if the software is useful.