Not all of it. I could have bought electric toothbrushes and a waterpik much sooner, I could have been brushing and flossing more frequently. Also in my case,

Not all of it. I could have bought electric toothbrushes and a waterpik much sooner, I could have been brushing and flossing more frequently. Also in my case, I was told I needed 3 crowns after my fillings popped out a couple times right when I was between jobs and had no insurance, and was told I'd need to spend $2500 each on them, which I didn't have $7500 at the time, so I ended up letting them rot to the point they had to be yanked, which led to me needing to get 2 bridges (which was even more expensive, but at least I had a job to pay for it then) which stripped 4 more teeth of their enamel to attach the bridges, which led to complications in keeping the anchor teeth and gums clean over time, which led to them needing root canals, which led to one of the root canaled teeth cracking and no longer sticking out of my gums enough to serve as an anchor for a bridge, which means I am now saving up the $10k+ to get two implants on that side of my face and get another new bridge made to put on those, and my other bridge I just had to get a root canal for an anchor tooth through my other bridge, and that's only supposed to buy me about another 5 years at most, so I'll need implants for those eventually as well, and I'm sure I'm in for more crap in the future, etc. If I knew this was the path I was going down by not getting crowns I would have tried harder to find more options, either find a dentist that charged less for crowns (I just assumed that's how much crowns cost, but I've seen as little as $300 elsewhere since then), or asked my parents for help in paying for them and paid them over time, etc.