15 ms·

Pay Too Much for everything

161 points by denzil_correa 14y ago

shellox 14y ago
Have you ever considered that not everybody can afford to pay "too much"? A lot of people have an income, which is enough to live, but they can't afford anything special.
mathgladiator 14y ago
I've found this to be very true in many ways when buying 'quality'. Buy 'quality' and not 'crap', and you will always be happier and the OP's statements are all true. I think price is a poor estimator for quality since marketers know that price alone can signal quality, so it stands we need something beyond price. How do we determine if something is quality when price is unreliable.
- heretohelp 14y ago
  Taste and data.
- nmridul 14y ago
  Sometimes the brand is an indicator of quality. At times, even in the same brand the quality varies across the make/model. Ask around and that is the only way.
- treerock 14y ago
  Totally agree. I'll happily spend more if I know I'm getting something that is better quality. But figuring out whether those £150 hiking boots are any better than the £30 ones (to use a recent personal example) is very difficult. It generally takes experience. Lacking that I try to find advice from a trustworthy source. The internet has helped massively in that regard.
saturn 14y ago
> My favorite pair of jeans gets worn 10 times more often than my other jeans. If I did away with the other jeans, I could afford to buy more of those things I really love. This took me embarrassingly long to realise. Instead of buying clothes because they were pretty nice and on sale, buy only what you absolutely love, and pay full price. Instead of having "favourite underwear", get rid of everything that's not your favourite and make sure you only own favourites. Yeah, it costs more at first. But over time you build up a wardrobe of high quality clothes you love. Quality over quantity, indeed.
- lsc 14y ago
  huh. my jeans usually fail through use; they don't usually languish. The thing is? I have some costco brand jeans I bought during the first dot-com that I still wear. they were under $15. Actually, at the same time I bought a bunch of designer jeans. The designer jeans all failed (at least one of them catastrophically... dramatically ripping the crotch wide open as I lifted a server in front of something of a crowd.) within a year of purchase. My experience has been that expensive things are not always better. In fact, expensive clothing is usually designed for rich people, who don't need to lift things or trace cables through crawlspaces, and who will want clothing of the new style next year anyhow. Clothing designed for working people is usually much more durable. And yeah, you can sometimes get increased durability by buying something more expensive within that sector? but the nicest dickies brand work pant is on par with the designer jeans they sell at target, price-wise. So yeah, in general? if you are selecting for durability in clothing? the price signal is actually the opposite of what you want to look at.
  - kaolinite 14y ago
    I have a friend who used to buy jeans from Costco. If he was ever with me when I was buying clothes, he would always be shocked at the money I was spending on jeans (I'm not talking designer, I mean £40 high-street jeans, that kind of thing). He would say that I could buy 2 or 3 pairs for the same price at Costco and there'd be no difference. I challenged him to buy a pair and now that's all he wears. They last longer (his old ones used to rip at the crotch) and feel much nicer to wear. However, you're right, price sadly isn't too good an indicator now. I doubt that spending £100 on jeans will provide much improvement over the kind of jeans I wear but buying slightly more expensive - as opposed to dirt-cheap - is definitely worthwhile.
    - lsc 14y ago
      eh, I think that most of what you are paying for is, well, paying more. I mean, today, the kids are buying $400 jeans that are thick and tough (then they don't wash them, which sounds disgusting, but what do I know?) but, you know, at least they are probably durable. But during the first dot com? the expensive jeans were made of this super thin denim that was then pre-stressed at the factory; So yeah, in '99? if you walked in to a store and bought the very cheapest jeans you could get, you'd get a medium weight denim that was reasonably durable. If you spent USD$50-$80 for the 'calvin klein' low end designer stuff? it was this ridiculously thin denim that had been bleached to hell. But yeah, my point is that if you really do choose your product based on price positioning, rather than on the merits (and price) of the product? you are likely making suboptimal choices. Just because there is a more expensive version and a cheaper version available, that doesn't make the middle of the road choice the most reasonable. A more recent example: I recently got a giant TV for the office for my montoring setup, and I lost the HDMI cable it came with. I went to Frys, and the first HDMI cable I saw was the $150 "monster cable' version. So I look a little further, and I see a $15 cable by some middle of the road cable company. I look further, down on the bottom, and I see a $1.50 HDMI cable with no brand. as far as I can tell, they were the same gold-plated HDMI cable. Of course, I bought the cheapest version and it worked just fine. I mean, I always spend the extra money for ECC ram and for 'enterprise' or 'raid edition' drives in stuff that matters. Yeah, if I get more of what I want for the money, I'll pay more. But I have to see evidence that I'm getting more of what I want. I'm unwilling to pay extra for a label that says I paid extra.
fsniper 14y ago
But there is a "new - well not very new exactly -" economical trend to build products that have an end of life carved on them. So buying expensive stuff does not mean having long lasting products anymore. It was an old time story.
wanderr 14y ago
On the other hand, I've noticed, and others have observed as well, that generally more expensive items are more likely to have poor reviews on Amazon, for example. The most likely explanation is that higher prices lead to higher expectations, which are often hard to meet. Another point I'd like to make is that cheap stuff can be totally awesome, especially if you don't need or want it to last a lifetime. Example: IKEA. My girlfriend changed her mind about the furniture she wanted in her apartment several times over the few years she was there, and was able to update the look to be exactly what she wanted for very little money. Compare that to the armoire I payed an ass load of money for that will surely last a lifetime, but doesn't really fit anywhere in my current home.
- mmcnickle 14y ago
  Though I imagine you could easily sell your armoire for close to what you paid for it (if indeed it hasn't actually gained value). I don't think there is a market for second hand IKEA furniture. You have to weigh up between the money you lose in scrapping the IKEA apartment vs. the dead money tied up in quality furniture "inventory" and the relative difficulty in selling that to free up the funds again.
terhechte 14y ago
The russians have a saying for this: "I'm too poor to buy cheap". Really says everything about it.
- ZoFreX 14y ago
  My stepfather is a carpenter and the maxim he passed down to me is "buy cheap, buy twice". It applies particularly strongly to the tools of your trade, doubly so if those tools are physical things like saws and hammers.
- shiftpgdn 14y ago
  Also known as the Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice: http://wiki.lspace.org/wiki/Sam_Vimes_Theory_of_Economic_Injustice http://wiki.lspace.org/wiki/Sam_Vimes_Theory_of_Economic_Inj...
nazgulnarsil 14y ago
People who are too lazy to ammortize will spend a lot more money in the long run. The perfect example is the hilarious subsidized cell phone market in the US.
webjunkie 14y ago
One has to differentiate. There are things that are worth to have once and for life. But most things I gladly buy cheap - because I know I can dispose them later and not a fortune is lost. What If I spend much money on fashionable things that I like, but dislike in 2 years? I rather swap out most of my cheap stuff over the years rather than worry what will last longest and if I might still like it and so on.
- randomdata 14y ago
  Indeed. Since the article mentioned cell phones: I would say on average, it costs about $200/year to own a smartphone (service not included). $6000† if you maintain that for 30 years. Yet I cannot imagine paying $2,000 for a smartphone that will provide uninterrupted service for 30 years. It is far cheaper to have the single upfront cost, but the technology progresses so rapidly that your device probably won't even work with the communications systems of the day by then. It makes a huge difference on what you are buying. † Realistically more like $15,000+ if you start to include the costs of not having that money, but we'll keep the calculations simple.
praptak 14y ago
As always with the "Do <not-very-popular thing> and get <obvious-benefits>" articles, there is an obvious question: why doesn't everybody do that? I cannot speak for other people but here are my reasons for not always going for the quality over price. First, I obviously cannot always afford the high price. When I bought the car I had checked the failure reports and decided it just wasn't worth paying an additional few months salary to get the failure probability down 2-3 percent a year (checked other parameters too, similar conclusions.) And yeah, I waited till a good deal was available to me. Second, getting a quality item might cost even more of my personal time - finding out which one is actually good and searching for a local vendor isn't exactly free. Third, maybe I don't even want an expensive item that lasts forever. Suppose I want to get into photography but don't really know if I'll keep this hobby. I'd intentionally google "cheap beginner dslr" and stick with the findings. Chances are that by the time it needs replacement I'll be ready for a more fancy gear or bored with the new hobby. Win-win :)
- b0rsuk 14y ago
  1. It's not always true that things that are more expensive are also higher quality. But the reverse is true: things of higher quality are more expensive. Because they're made of better materials, because they were grown naturally, because they were made of natural ingredients, because they were tested... better stuff is usually made with more effort or better material. 2. Because of #1, distinguishing genuine high quality stuff from a simple ripoff takes critical thinking. People don't like thinking too much, don't like analyzing, and critical thinking is unpopular especially in United States of America. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo
latch 14y ago
I don't agree with most of this. The idea that price equals quality has long been used by merchants to extract money from consumers, not extend value. Sure it's true of some products and some companies, but overall I'd argue that at best, more expensive things aren't close to being relatively better - by any meaningful measure. A $300 meal isn't 10x better - in terms of taste (subjective obviously) or nutrition - as a $30 meal. A BMW 3 Series is a better car than a Ford Focus, but looking only at the practical reasons to own a car, it's not even close to having twice the value. In a lot of cases, brand names bring no value other than the brand. And while that can have a placebo effect, it's not more value. Medicine comes to mind as a great example. You are paying more for marketing and packaging than you are for R&D. The recent thread on memristors even highlighted that R&D costs are 1/100th of total cost, with marketing taking the lion's share. Quality items appreciate while cheap items depreciate? No consumer good should be viewed as a financial investment. If something does appreciate in 50 years, it'll be more about luck than anything else.
- rythie 14y ago
  I'd agree that consumer goods shouldn't be seen as financial investment. However, if anything was to increase in value it's likely to be well the known and high quality "classic" model because it takes a place in history and the company survives, not the cheap knock-off that no one will remember about or cares.
- ralfd 14y ago
  > The recent thread on memristors even highlighted that R&D costs are 1/100th of total cost, with marketing taking the lion's share. I read that too, but what they meant was that development of an actual product costs Hewlett-Packard 10 times as much than the research of the underlying technology. And commercialization costs again 10 times more. "Commercialization" is a catch all term, of course marketing, but for the most part this means building factories, tooling and machinery. Ramping up production is difficult and binds tons of capital investment.
- meric 14y ago
  Pizza sells for $6.50 at my local store, but I'm sure pizza stores would still exist if they were priced at $10 instead, except there will be less stores. As you go up in quality, it gets harder and harder to scale because..., how many celebrity chefs can you find in a city? You might find a dozen, but it would probably be very expensive to get enough chefs to staff shops in every suburb. Prices are a function of demand AND supply. It simply isn't possible to supply enough celebrity chefs at $30 a meal. If there was such a shop it will have a long line stretching out around three blocks every night. You won't get 10 times better meal by paying 10 times more; It just means the price equilibrium is 10 times higher. There's nothing to it, I don't think it is intentionally "used by merchants to extract money from consumers". They price their products at a point to maximise profit, and that's all there is to it.
Wilya 14y ago
I definitely disagree. Maybe sometimes, paying twice as much gives you something that lasts ten times longer. Or maybe, you will pay five times as much, and get something that (hopefully) lasts a bit longer. I use a lot of earphones, and they tend to break quite fast. Once or twice, I decided to move away from the usual 15$ models and pay 60$ for better brands, with good reviews, and everything. Did they last longer ? Of course not. They sounded marginally better, but nothing worth the price.. The thing is, price is an indicator of positioning. It's a marketing tool, and it's generally not correlated to quality. Buying the very cheapest is usually not a good idea, because the manufacturer probably did everything it could to actually beat competitors and propose the lowest price. But other than that, that's pretty much all you can know in advance. Knowing what items are made of good quality and will last longer (and therefore are worth paying an extra for) is very hard. So, my reasoning on that is that I prefer to spend less money on something, since on average, it will live just as long.
- meric 14y ago
  Well, the $60 earphone actually comes with a 2 year warranty... whereas the $15 one does not.
  - qxcv 14y ago
    Buy fewer than four pairs of $15 headphones in two years and you're still ahead. At least, you're still ahead financially; value is virtually impossible to quantify when you take into account subjective qualities like sound, appearance and comfort.
    - meric 14y ago
      The $15 earphones last 3-4 months and I'm tired of spending an hour every few months to pick an ear phone, as well of the "music down time" that entails. That's why I started paying more. Hopefully my $60 ear phones last longer. I would rather not have to rely on the warranty.
- karolist 14y ago
  Regarding the headphones, some 7 years ago I've bought Phillips hp805 after reading an article that titled them "king of the budget cans", they've cost something around $30 and are the most comfortable headphones I've ever had on my head and the sound quality is great too. After all those years they work like new, though I do have a habit of being careful with things. I'm afraid of these breaking because I'd have no idea what to replace them with.
jwl 14y ago
Partly true, but I guess most of don't buy new things when the old ones are totally worn out. It is more like we just some new stuff for a change, not necessarily because what we have is broken. So it doesn't automatically save you money.
suprgeek 14y ago
I think what the article is trying to say is "Buy the best quality that you can afford". Unfortunately the Author has completely conflated Quality with Price. Higher price != Better Quality (not always anyway)
- denzil_correa 14y ago
  And to be fair to the author, he mentions the same > This doesn’t always work. Sometimes a cheaper product is actually better. But consider removing price as the default decision criteria.
  - jamiecurle 14y ago
    Indeed, quality lives in many places and has many faces. The price tag is rarely one of either.
  - EzGraphs 14y ago
    The main point - rule of thumb - that can be derived: consider removing price as the default decision criteria Most of the comments here (and parts of the original article) are elaborations on applying this principal. So price is not necessarily correlated with quality, but using price as a default decision criteria results in suboptimal outcomes (stuff that is not really "better" or consumers that are happier or otherwise benefited).
    - denzil_correa 14y ago
      Once again the author asks you to consider removing the price as a decision criteria. He's still exactly talking about the same thing as you are. :-)
- zurn 14y ago
  That wouldn't really mean anything unless using "afford" in the absolute sense (eg. max out your credit next time you're buying shoes).
scott_w 14y ago
This article is based on a number of nonsensical assumptions: 1) That paying more equates to higher quality. It doesn't. Your £30 t-shirt will fall apart every bit as quickly as your £3 multi-pack from Primark. 2) That you want to have something last a lifetime. Just last weekend, my dad was complaining about having no good jig-saws. Then followed up with "of course, I could buy a good one, but I only use them once every 5 years, so they're knackered when I need them anyway". 3) When you want quality, you can't just borrow it off someone else. I'm not against paying more for something e.g. my uncle has expensive joinery kit because his day job is a joiner. I simply dislike the mentality of "I must pay top-dollar for everything", before you've evaluated what you actually want.
UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
The problem with this "buy for life" stuff is that how do you determine what is really a "buy for life" product rather than just an over-priced "brand?" For example, I could go out and buy a $200 pair of sunglasses but depending on where I buy them they can either be poor quality (e.g. fashion brands, sunglass hut, etc) or exceptional (e.g. fishing shops, sailing suppliers, workman-glasses, etc). You would expect reviews to give you an accurate way to tell but people often review a product by the way it makes them FEEL rather than about the product its self.
- radarsat1 14y ago
  Exactly. They just don't make things like they used to. I bought a $160 pair of boots once, thinking they would be great and last me a long time. They seemed solid, but they started leaking and cracking within a year. The next year I bought a $35 pair, which lasted the winter but sort of fell apart, and the next year I did the same again, which lasted three years. The problem with paying more for higher quality is that there's little guarantee these days that price and quality are even correlated.
- HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
  You answered your own question: given a choice, if you can buy from the supplier that sells to industrial/commercial users, the quality will usually be better. e.g., I buy my T-Shirts from Tractor Supply. They are cheaper, much thicker and last longer than the ones I bought from American Apparel. Farmers are harder on clothing than the average urban dweller, I'm guessing. The tools I buy from McMaster-Carr or Fastenal may cost the same or slightly more than the tools (often the same brands) from Home Depot or the local hardware store, but they are much better quality.
  - AjithAntony 14y ago
    The lightweight fabric at American Apparel is a premium feature.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
mattm 14y ago
The highest priced items are that way mostly due to the marketing costs associated with selling high priced items and trying to create the illusion that it is better quality. Lifetime guarantees are pretty much worthless because most people will forget they have one, lose the item or lose the documents related to it. Top pay doesn't attract the best people. Top work attracts the best people because the best people have most likely realised that money doesn't really matter if you're working on something that doesn't provide meaning for you. The sweet spot for quality is to figure out the approximate average price of the product you want to buy and then pay a little above that.
cdvonstinkpot 14y ago
Looks like an interesting article, but I can't bear to read it. Too much side-scrolling on my Blackberry. Why doesn't the text autofit my screen like other pages do? I'll have to read it when I get home.
- rythie 14y ago
  It's quite readable on my iPhone in landscape and even in portrait, perhaps you should have bought a better phone like the article suggests?
logical42 14y ago
Would have preferred re-reading the Wikipedia article, personally (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_preference) as it was better written, and considerably less self-satisfied in tone.
PedroCandeias 14y ago
I don't think the Op is getting as much love as he deserves. Many of the intangible pieces that make up the quality of a product or service go out the door when we’re getting a deal. They’re doing a favor and sometimes when we bargain, people resent us. This is absolute gold when it comes to longer business relationships. I have come through to believe that entirely too many fail simply because someone is resentful over terms. As for the relation between cost and quality, I agree with many here that it isn't clear-cut. But the relation does exist. You just need to be discerning, which is why the Op writes: Because we only buy quality, we are forced to wait until we can afford what we really want. That wait time leads to better decisions, and it forces us to make due with what we have. # Edit: formatting
- pitt1980 14y ago
  it cuts both ways, you don't want to get 'sucker' stapped on your forehead early in a business relationship obviously, good relationships have give a take both ways, a little framing of what you expect early on, can pay alot of dividends over the long run
  - PedroCandeias 14y ago
    True. I guess the ideal is to be seen as someone who is generous but has high expectations and will not hesitate to terminate the relationship and move business elsewhere.
morsch 14y ago
I wish the article was true. It'd be so nice to simply pay a premium and rest assured that it's an equitable approach: you get an improved product, the retailer gets a higher profit, the distributor, the people actually creating the product get a cut. The reality is you can't rely on any single of these to be true, and as soon as you're willing to buy something and especially if you're willing to pay 10, 50 or 100% more than the absolute minimum you're the prime meat of the other half of the worlds who make it their business to ensure that it's not an equitable approach.
beloch 14y ago
The idea in this article is sometimes true, but it completely fails to take into account the relentless march of technology. Some items, such as cell-phones or laptops, will be totally obsolete within 10 years no matter how finely made they are. Other items, such as guitars, will not be obsolete since the technology isn't changing quickly, if at all. There will be new digital guitars with funky synth modes every year, but a gibson dobro will still sound like a gibson dobro in twenty years. Some things fall somewhere in between. Your grandfather's watch is a marvel of mechanical engineering that will keep time adequately for centuries if taken to a watch-shop for maintenance every few years. That maintenance will cost more than buying a new timex would, and the timex will keep far more accurate time. Timex's are disposable. When the timex's battery dies it will probably cheaper to replace it than to replace the battery. However, their function is superior for all practical purposes. Many people currently enjoy the aesthetics of mechanical watches. They're currently enjoying a major surge of collectibility, but that wasn't the case twenty years ago and it may well not be the case twenty years from now. The real trick is to figure out what can last and what should be treated as disposable. e.g. Say you're building a home theater. Amps have changed very little over the last 20 years. Preamps and receivers go obsolete every few years. If you spend $5000 on a Bryston amp it will easily last 20 years (that's how long it'll be under warranty!), but a Bryston preamp will be hopelessly unusable long before that 20 year warranty runs out. There are also big variations in short-term durability too that aren't necessarily correlated with price. e.g. Macbook air's and the new retina pro's are gorgeous pieces of engineering, but they're made to be disposable. If you spill coffee on them they're basically done. You can't remove the battery and take them apart to clean them (proprietary screws) like you can with a much cheaper laptop and Apple won't lift a finger to help you. This is a case where our perceptions of what is durable and high-quality can actually lead us to buy something that won't last as long!
- megablast 14y ago
  Paying too much for something works if you have no idea how to actually judge the quality of the item. I know computers and bikes, and will not pay too much for those thing, because I know the quality and I know the cost. I have no idea about cars, or houses, or shoes, so I have not way of judging the quality of these items.
jackalope 14y ago
Design determines manufacturing costs. Engineering determines durability. Marketing determines price. Coordinating all three is essential to delivering value. It's absurd to suggest that any one (or all) of them offer protection from obsolescence.
denzil_correa 14y ago
> This is so weird to me. No one haggles over $5 on the price of a car, but it seems that everyone needs a tip calculator to determine if they should pay 21.50 or $22.00 for a meal. A $5 on a 2000 is 0.25% and a $0.50 on $20 meal is 2.5%
- hythloday 14y ago
  Is this relevant? If I get £50 off a house purchase and then tip the next waiter I meet £50 on a £50 meal, I'm no better off but the waiter will be ecstatic and the house-seller probably not more morose. The percentages are not terribly relevant to happiness, which is not well-correlated with money saved--see Dickens for more details. :)
  - denzil_correa 14y ago
    My point was you save more for on $0.50 on a meal than a $5 on a car. In terms of pure monetary value, it is relevant. This comment was more in the light of an "alternate" theory as the author doesn't appreciate the fact that people haggle over $0.50 on a tip.
    - TeMPOraL 14y ago
      In terms of pure monetary value it is irrelevant, actually. Yes, $0.50 is much more a saving relative to meal price than car price, but it's still $0.50, aka. insignificant amount of money, usually not worth the time it takes to argue for it.
prawn 14y ago
Reminds me of some gift buying advice I read. Given a specific budget, don't get a big-but-cheap item, but a higher-quality but smaller/simpler item. The latter is more likely to be valued and retained. I think the example given, for a golfer, was a crafted/precious golf tee over a trashy electronic putting game. (Ignoring, of course, the fact that the tee might easily get lost.)
Loic 14y ago
The author is right but the problem at the moment is that more and more, you cannot correlate quality with price. That is, expensive gears can be of low quality. It is harder and harder to even be able to pay more knowing that you get more. Also, the point missing is that you need to take care of your expensive gears. You need to put money into maintenance.
deleted 14y ago
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colomon 14y ago
I'm not sure I'd say this article is wrong, exactly, but it sure seems like all the arguments in it are very shallow. Yeah, I have my great-grandfather's pocketwatch, and it still runs. But it has required repairs that each cost significantly more than buying ten brand new cheap watches would have. It's the least reliable timepiece I own. And I hardly ever use it, because my cellphone is always with me and is considerably more accurate -- and is not the only heirloom I have from my namesake great-grandfather! Its main value to me is pure sentimentality. I'm sure other watches were purchased by my other great-grandfathers; to the best of my knowledge, none of those watches survived to the present day. It might be because they only bought cheap watches. But it might also be that they bought expensive watches and those watches broke or got lost. Looking solely at what survived to today tells you very little about what was purchased yesterday. And I'm sure my great-grandfather didn't buy the most expensive watch possible. If it had come down to the choice of buying a watch which cost $10 more, or saving that money to give me $200 today, I'd take the money!
mmcnickle 14y ago
For me the most difficult thing about buying "quality" is the effort required in researching what the quality product is. It's been mentioned that price isn't always a good indicator, and the mainstream stores generally don't cater for people looking for quality. For example, I'm buying a set of screwdrivers for a DIY job. I know I'll need screwdrivers for the rest of my life, I want to buy quality ones. I go to some big DIY store expecting a good range of screwdrivers. What I get is a selection of mickey-mouse screwdrivers (£5 for a set of 20) and some middle-of-the-road-but-overpriced screwdrivers (£20 for a set of 20). There is no "buy these and never buy another screwdriver again" set for £60-100. You can get these, but it takes considerable effort to track them down.
debacle 14y ago
The problem is that the modern consumer cannot associate cost with quality. I usually buy the cheapest appliance I can find (microwave, coffee machine, lawn mower) because it has the fewest bells and whistles and is likely the only one I can fix myself.
- nosse 14y ago
  If I don't have the time to really look into things, I go with the cheapest too. - You usually have exactly the quality you paid for, so no surprises here. - It's often more ecological. If factory A can produce more stuff with same money than factory B, they must be doing something right. Another way to look at this would be: if you have to make shovels dirt cheap, you can't use barrels of oil/shovel, because you would have to pay for that oil. I really cannot prove this cheap is ecological, but I've noticed that this holds true in plastic Christmas-trees, cucumbers and majority of unprocessed meat products. Chicken production should cause only 1/5 of the problems that beef production. Surprise, surprise chicken also cost's 1/5.
  - greedo 14y ago
    Where I live, ground chuck goes for $4/lb, and chicken breasts go for $7/lb. Not sure what the cost per pound of an entire steer versus an entire chicken, but I don't see the same price variance that you're writing about. Also, the ecological impact might be because Crappy Factory A is manufacturing cheap shovels and dumping their toxic waste in a local river, while Factory B has to charge more because it's following industry standards and using a reputable waste handler. Or Crappy Factory A might be using underage employees, or dumping product to eliminate its competition. Drawing conclusions about manufacturers based on pricing is dangerous.
    - nosse 14y ago
      "Drawing conclusions about manufacturers based on pricing is dangerous." I completely agree. But in my opinion, drawing conclusions about manufacturers based on reputation is as dangerous. And it takes time to get that reputation info. Time I don't have many times. Only reliable way to have good conclusions about manufacturers is to examine their business throughly. That's obviously just impossible in most cases. PS. Chicken breast is expensive here too. I buy whole legs.
drostie 14y ago
One key way in which the article is right on-the-money, so to speak, is to highlight the ridiculous frenzy that we go into to save disproportionately small amounts of money. Our audience here is mostly programmers. Programmers should all know the golden rule of optimization: profile it first. Don't take it on intuition or faith that "this is what was slowing me down" unless you've measured it. The same principle applies in personal finance. Group together your expenses into some key logical categories -- "groceries", "tech", "rent", "retirement", "health", "nights out", and whatever else makes sense to you. Then add them up, do the maths. Know what you're spending and how it compares, and how the categories make up your monthly budget. Frugality is generally quite good, but just like code, it's quite possible to overoptimize it into a time-sink. Also, it's key that you see both the high-cost single-time expenses and the low-cost-but-everyday expenses and you get an idea for how they compare. Depending on how often you visit Starbucks, it might be a very good or very insignificant change to brew your own coffee at home; go on and measure it. The single most surprising thing that I discovered about this process was that, even though I feel like I give money to beggars in the street "often" (i.e. whenever I see them and they ask) and give "a lot" (i.e. much more than is normally typical), the amount that I give actually works out to almost nothing on a monthly basis. Like, I'm poor and right now I have no proper employment (they don't pay you to do a Master's degree) and yet I can still afford to be generous to the people who are down on their luck, and it's just nothing when you compare it to the amount I'd save if I stopped drinking cola. I've got no income, but I'd still easily spend € 50 on food to throw a party for my friends, so long as it happens only about once a month, twice max.
- icebraining 14y ago
  I agree; I started using ledger[1] for that, and 'though it can be sometimes cumbersome, it's very helpful to understand why I have so little money ;) [1]: http://ledger-cli.org/ http://ledger-cli.org/
- Squazic 14y ago
  I think you did a great job of trying to relating this topic to the programming mentality here. Many of the comments here seem to focus on how technology should not be purchased expensively or how this or that is not worth the extra money. The author does not set in stone that you must go for the more expensive item. He does qualify that some things, such as phones, are disposable and should not be approached with the "buy expensive" mentality.
nsxwolf 14y ago
Generally: Cheap jeans last forever. Expensive jeans tear in about a week.
- wahnfrieden 14y ago
  Actually cost has very little relation with cost to quality in denim jeans, besides that there is a production cost for higher quality denim fabric and stitching which doesn't seem to factor much into pricing besides increasing the minimum.
b0rsuk 14y ago
We have a saying: "Poor people can't afford inexpensive stuff."
- wahnfrieden 14y ago
  Poor people end up getting worse deals on things though since they often have fewer resources available to them. If they wanted to pay more for something that will last, they may not have that option if they don't live in or around an affluent neighborhood. It's more expensive to be poor.
martinw2k 14y ago
Well, that was a very long way of saying "you get what you pay for".
jakeonthemove 14y ago
Instead of overpaying, I think it's better to get the best product you can for the money you have. It does require you to learn how to recognize quality and know the prices, but it pays off in the end. For example, I wouldn't buy a Ferrari or even Porsche 911 (both high quality cars, no doubt, but expensive) when a Nissan GTR R35 performs just as well and costs less. All three will last a lifetime with a bit of care (I hate how people just use their tech without any maintenance, then wonder why "the POS" broke down!), so why pay more (aside from the design)?
- nosse 14y ago
  If you just need to move from place to place Peugeot 308 will do as good as any of above. You can get four of them with the price of GTR R35, so if one 308 doesn't last as long, you can get three more with the same price and every time with updated tech. And maintenance is probably cheaper too.
- karolist 14y ago
  Some people have other criteria to buying a car, emotional more often than not. For example, Ferrari's and Porsche's are known to a lot of common folk and associated with rich people, GTR - not so much. Also, different cars have different feel to driving them, different sound isolation, suspensions, seating position and road view, these tiny bits can be evaluated subconsciously even though you're after performance. If I based my purchase only on performance I'd buy BMW S1000RR which performs just as well (albeit comes with less safety) than the other 3 and cost just a fraction!
  - nosse 14y ago
    I thought this too. Motorcycles are probably the most cost effective way to go from 0 - 100km/h below three seconds.
wccrawford 14y ago
A while back, I stopped buying the highest-priced goods and started doing research instead. What I found what the best things weren't the highest-priced. I also found that I could find the best items for me because what I care about isn't necessary what others care about. Using this, I've managed to buy better shoes, toasters, and even a car than I've ever had before, and at less than I would have spent if I hadn't done that research. The car ended up being the cheapest car made by that manufacturer, and I like it better than any other car I've ridden in or driven. (Admittedly, I haven't tried anything over about $50k, but I couldn't afford those anyhow.) I would never have found it if I used price as an indicator of quality, instead of reviews. The key to reviews is to look over the good reviews. Look at the bad reviews instead. Find out what people hate about it. And then ask yourself: Does that feature matter to me? My rice maker doesn't make brown rice well at all. Many people complained about that. However, white rice is the only kind I make, and it does a great job on that. So it didn't make sense to spend twice as much money on a better rice maker. I could have spent more money and gotten an objectively better rice maker. But why bother? So no, I don't agree with paying too much or buying the 'best'. At all.
- theorique 14y ago
  Good point. Sometimes the cheapest is indeed the best ... for a given person, if it meets their needs and doesn't deliver features they don't use.
- denzil_correa 14y ago
  You're actually agreeing with the author without realizing it. Why? Because you decided to buy X because it was valued at a certain price and you could afford it. You didn't buy a "cheap" (in quality) version of the product (since you did your research). Unknowingly you are agreeing with the author. :-)
  - schiffern 14y ago
    Except the author is arguing that you should use "expensive" as a heuristic (instead of "cheap"). wccrawford is arguing that quality is orthogonal to price.
maciejgryka 14y ago
I highly recommend The Paradox of Choice http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-more-less/dp/0060005688 http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-more-less/dp/006000... To quote from the article: "People who constantly try to always get that great deal end up spending all their time chasing those deals and never actually get things done. I’ve seen people do this their entire lives, and it is debilitating." You can say the same about people who spend all their time trying to constantly get "the best" product. Figure out a few things that are important to you and maximise these - whether on quality or price. For the rest, learn to accept "good enough" and get on with your life doing things that matter for you.
crazygringo 14y ago
A lot of people tend to buy middle-priced things. Marketers rely a lot on this fact, actually, to take advantage of your ignorance. I've found it's much better to avoid middle-priced things, most of the time. Usually, the cheapest option will meet your needs just as well. But then you need to identify the things in your life that really contribute to your happiness, and then pay what's necessary for full quality in those. I spend top dollar on fresh meat and vegetables and on my kitchen pans and chef's knives and olive oils for salads. But I have the cheapest vegetable peeler and spatula and paring knives and toaster and olive oil for frying.
berntb 14y ago
I got a really good workgroup printer, paid more than twice as much as for a cheap one. I loved it but had to leave it when I moved -- just too heavy. (And anyway, the Mac support wasn't good a couple of O/S versions later, but it still worked well with Linux.) My takeaway from this has more to do with negotiating moving packages (and Samsung support of old customers, grumble) than anything else.
wickedchicken 14y ago
Feeling insecure about your place in life? Worried you're not happy enough, cool enough, or loved enough? You clearly aren't spending enough money. Don't bother creating things or building interpersonal relationships. Spend more time thinking about acquiring physical goods and making sure you're only getting the best.
alain 14y ago
On the topic of paying less, there's a saying which goes something like this : "the cheapest price you can get for a thing is to not buy it" [1]. Of course this can't be applied for everything but a lot of people, myself included, tend to buy a lot of gadgets they don't need and don't use. This is a simple advice but I think it can go a long way to saving money. [1] if someone has the exact quote, I'll be thankful for it.
typicalrunt 14y ago
I liked the article in general, but this got me: I usually eat at the same few restaurants all the time. They’re maybe 10% more expensive, usually locally owned, and the food doesn’t come out of a frozen pre-made bag before being tossed in the oven. I never tip less than 20%, and I’m not an asshole….at restaurants. I don't understand this thought process. Why not pay 100% tip then? Is the 20% number somehow magical and affords the ability to be elitist? So if I tip 15%, which is the average suggested tip in Western Canada, I'm somehow an asshole???
- mturmon 14y ago
  Tip well enough that your generosity will be noticed by the staff. There are advantages to tipping at the 90-th percentile (not a 90% tip!), especially if you are a frequent customer. You will be remembered. Note, "asshole" has nothing to do with it.
allentucker 14y ago
Author here - There are many good points here. The purpose of my article was to give a different perspective from the default "buy whatever is cheapest" method that I believe most people follow. Obviously it would be an error to buy things that that aren't better for more money, but I believe this error is often better than the opposite error, buying twice. A good example: I'm writing this on a 10 year old laptop running 1900x1200. Thanks for the comments and feedback.
parka 14y ago
The article reminds me of what I learned in a marketing: Value = Benefits / Cost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_%28marketing%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_%28marketing%29 Marketing comes into play. If not, items for sale would be using cost-based pricing. A Mac and a PC would both can accomplish the same task. But one is more expensive than another. Being cheaper doesn't necessarily mean it won't last as long. Tipping is one area that I don't understand about cultures that have them. Generally, I would expect the tip to be included in the price of the food. Why waste my time and have me figure out what amount to tip? Personally, I don't see the perceived value of tipping. In some way, how much you pay is also determined by how you see yourself, or in some cases want others to see you.
ajaimk 14y ago
The key part of that is the line about services and tips. Just being a generous tipper gets you better service, and specially if you are a regular at the same restaurant or bar. 20% by default with an occasional bump up to 25% in tip gets you remembered and the servers get to know you. I've had such a good relationship at some of my regular restaurants to the point where I once had ups deliver a package to the bar for me when I was out of town. Other places, the staff starts comping your drinks. My best one was the manager at a restaurant giving me a blanket 20% discount on anything I buy (I tip at least 25% after they put in that discount). In the long run, you get better service if you pay for it.
mathattack 14y ago
Great modern defense of penny-wise and pound-foolish. The challenge is automation and commodification pushes us towards the lowest common denominator. Look at airlines, being forced into price, not quality.
tchock23 14y ago
I agree with most of the ideas in this article with the small exception of the example he gives for services and hiring "the best firm in the country." I think you're mostly paying for overhead and bloat in those cases, and I would prefer to work with "the guy down the street" if I can (in which case I'd want to find the best "guy down the street," regardless of cost). Other than that, it amazes me how people won't spend for quality in situations where it clearly is in their best interest for the long-term...
prezjordan 14y ago
This is how I feel about my computers. I don't want a "good deal" when it comes to price. I'll spend a lot, and get a lot in return.
arjunnarayan 14y ago
What about the selection bias? You don't see the watches your grandfather bought that didn't make it down to you because they broke. Of course the few carefully selected things that have survived and been handed down are the exceptional pieces!
Havoc 14y ago
I associate old with quality more than price. e.g. My dad has 2 Bosch drills ( http://i.imgur.com/aCkaq.jpg http://i.imgur.com/aCkaq.jpg ). Roughly 20 years old. When you hold them in your hand you just know that it'll last another 40 years. As a result I have a really difficult time taking any of the modern drills seriously.
scott_meade 14y ago
A lot of commentators missed the point: "Sometimes a cheaper product is actually better. But consider removing price as the default decision criteria." It's simple and good advice.

161 points by denzil_correa 14y ago

Have you ever considered that not everybody can afford to pay "too much"? A lot of people have an income, which is enough to live, but they can't afford anything special.

mathgladiator 14y ago

I've found this to be very true in many ways when buying 'quality'. Buy 'quality' and not 'crap', and you will always be happier and the OP's statements are all true. I think price is a poor estimator for quality since marketers know that price alone can signal quality, so it stands we need something beyond price. How do we determine if something is quality when price is unreliable.

heretohelp 14y ago
Taste and data.
nmridul 14y ago
Sometimes the brand is an indicator of quality. At times, even in the same brand the quality varies across the make/model. Ask around and that is the only way.
treerock 14y ago
Totally agree. I'll happily spend more if I know I'm getting something that is better quality. But figuring out whether those £150 hiking boots are any better than the £30 ones (to use a recent personal example) is very difficult. It generally takes experience. Lacking that I try to find advice from a trustworthy source. The internet has helped massively in that regard.

saturn 14y ago

> My favorite pair of jeans gets worn 10 times more often than my other jeans. If I did away with the other jeans, I could afford to buy more of those things I really love. This took me embarrassingly long to realise. Instead of buying clothes because they were pretty nice and on sale, buy only what you absolutely love, and pay full price. Instead of having "favourite underwear", get rid of everything that's not your favourite and make sure you only own favourites. Yeah, it costs more at first. But over time you build up a wardrobe of high quality clothes you love. Quality over quantity, indeed.

lsc 14y ago
huh. my jeans usually fail through use; they don't usually languish. The thing is? I have some costco brand jeans I bought during the first dot-com that I still wear. they were under $15. Actually, at the same time I bought a bunch of designer jeans. The designer jeans all failed (at least one of them catastrophically... dramatically ripping the crotch wide open as I lifted a server in front of something of a crowd.) within a year of purchase. My experience has been that expensive things are not always better. In fact, expensive clothing is usually designed for rich people, who don't need to lift things or trace cables through crawlspaces, and who will want clothing of the new style next year anyhow. Clothing designed for working people is usually much more durable. And yeah, you can sometimes get increased durability by buying something more expensive within that sector? but the nicest dickies brand work pant is on par with the designer jeans they sell at target, price-wise. So yeah, in general? if you are selecting for durability in clothing? the price signal is actually the opposite of what you want to look at.
- kaolinite 14y ago
  I have a friend who used to buy jeans from Costco. If he was ever with me when I was buying clothes, he would always be shocked at the money I was spending on jeans (I'm not talking designer, I mean £40 high-street jeans, that kind of thing). He would say that I could buy 2 or 3 pairs for the same price at Costco and there'd be no difference. I challenged him to buy a pair and now that's all he wears. They last longer (his old ones used to rip at the crotch) and feel much nicer to wear. However, you're right, price sadly isn't too good an indicator now. I doubt that spending £100 on jeans will provide much improvement over the kind of jeans I wear but buying slightly more expensive - as opposed to dirt-cheap - is definitely worthwhile.
  - lsc 14y ago
    eh, I think that most of what you are paying for is, well, paying more. I mean, today, the kids are buying $400 jeans that are thick and tough (then they don't wash them, which sounds disgusting, but what do I know?) but, you know, at least they are probably durable. But during the first dot com? the expensive jeans were made of this super thin denim that was then pre-stressed at the factory; So yeah, in '99? if you walked in to a store and bought the very cheapest jeans you could get, you'd get a medium weight denim that was reasonably durable. If you spent USD$50-$80 for the 'calvin klein' low end designer stuff? it was this ridiculously thin denim that had been bleached to hell. But yeah, my point is that if you really do choose your product based on price positioning, rather than on the merits (and price) of the product? you are likely making suboptimal choices. Just because there is a more expensive version and a cheaper version available, that doesn't make the middle of the road choice the most reasonable. A more recent example: I recently got a giant TV for the office for my montoring setup, and I lost the HDMI cable it came with. I went to Frys, and the first HDMI cable I saw was the $150 "monster cable' version. So I look a little further, and I see a $15 cable by some middle of the road cable company. I look further, down on the bottom, and I see a $1.50 HDMI cable with no brand. as far as I can tell, they were the same gold-plated HDMI cable. Of course, I bought the cheapest version and it worked just fine. I mean, I always spend the extra money for ECC ram and for 'enterprise' or 'raid edition' drives in stuff that matters. Yeah, if I get more of what I want for the money, I'll pay more. But I have to see evidence that I'm getting more of what I want. I'm unwilling to pay extra for a label that says I paid extra.

fsniper 14y ago

But there is a "new - well not very new exactly -" economical trend to build products that have an end of life carved on them. So buying expensive stuff does not mean having long lasting products anymore. It was an old time story.

wanderr 14y ago

On the other hand, I've noticed, and others have observed as well, that generally more expensive items are more likely to have poor reviews on Amazon, for example. The most likely explanation is that higher prices lead to higher expectations, which are often hard to meet. Another point I'd like to make is that cheap stuff can be totally awesome, especially if you don't need or want it to last a lifetime. Example: IKEA. My girlfriend changed her mind about the furniture she wanted in her apartment several times over the few years she was there, and was able to update the look to be exactly what she wanted for very little money. Compare that to the armoire I payed an ass load of money for that will surely last a lifetime, but doesn't really fit anywhere in my current home.

mmcnickle 14y ago
Though I imagine you could easily sell your armoire for close to what you paid for it (if indeed it hasn't actually gained value). I don't think there is a market for second hand IKEA furniture. You have to weigh up between the money you lose in scrapping the IKEA apartment vs. the dead money tied up in quality furniture "inventory" and the relative difficulty in selling that to free up the funds again.

terhechte 14y ago

The russians have a saying for this: "I'm too poor to buy cheap". Really says everything about it.

ZoFreX 14y ago
My stepfather is a carpenter and the maxim he passed down to me is "buy cheap, buy twice". It applies particularly strongly to the tools of your trade, doubly so if those tools are physical things like saws and hammers.
shiftpgdn 14y ago
Also known as the Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice: http://wiki.lspace.org/wiki/Sam_Vimes_Theory_of_Economic_Injustice http://wiki.lspace.org/wiki/Sam_Vimes_Theory_of_Economic_Inj...

nazgulnarsil 14y ago

People who are too lazy to ammortize will spend a lot more money in the long run. The perfect example is the hilarious subsidized cell phone market in the US.

webjunkie 14y ago

One has to differentiate. There are things that are worth to have once and for life. But most things I gladly buy cheap - because I know I can dispose them later and not a fortune is lost. What If I spend much money on fashionable things that I like, but dislike in 2 years? I rather swap out most of my cheap stuff over the years rather than worry what will last longest and if I might still like it and so on.

randomdata 14y ago
Indeed. Since the article mentioned cell phones: I would say on average, it costs about $200/year to own a smartphone (service not included). $6000† if you maintain that for 30 years. Yet I cannot imagine paying $2,000 for a smartphone that will provide uninterrupted service for 30 years. It is far cheaper to have the single upfront cost, but the technology progresses so rapidly that your device probably won't even work with the communications systems of the day by then. It makes a huge difference on what you are buying. † Realistically more like $15,000+ if you start to include the costs of not having that money, but we'll keep the calculations simple.

praptak 14y ago

As always with the "Do <not-very-popular thing> and get <obvious-benefits>" articles, there is an obvious question: why doesn't everybody do that? I cannot speak for other people but here are my reasons for not always going for the quality over price. First, I obviously cannot always afford the high price. When I bought the car I had checked the failure reports and decided it just wasn't worth paying an additional few months salary to get the failure probability down 2-3 percent a year (checked other parameters too, similar conclusions.) And yeah, I waited till a good deal was available to me. Second, getting a quality item might cost even more of my personal time - finding out which one is actually good and searching for a local vendor isn't exactly free. Third, maybe I don't even want an expensive item that lasts forever. Suppose I want to get into photography but don't really know if I'll keep this hobby. I'd intentionally google "cheap beginner dslr" and stick with the findings. Chances are that by the time it needs replacement I'll be ready for a more fancy gear or bored with the new hobby. Win-win :)

b0rsuk 14y ago
1. It's not always true that things that are more expensive are also higher quality. But the reverse is true: things of higher quality are more expensive. Because they're made of better materials, because they were grown naturally, because they were made of natural ingredients, because they were tested... better stuff is usually made with more effort or better material. 2. Because of #1, distinguishing genuine high quality stuff from a simple ripoff takes critical thinking. People don't like thinking too much, don't like analyzing, and critical thinking is unpopular especially in United States of America. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo

latch 14y ago

I don't agree with most of this. The idea that price equals quality has long been used by merchants to extract money from consumers, not extend value. Sure it's true of some products and some companies, but overall I'd argue that at best, more expensive things aren't close to being relatively better - by any meaningful measure. A $300 meal isn't 10x better - in terms of taste (subjective obviously) or nutrition - as a $30 meal. A BMW 3 Series is a better car than a Ford Focus, but looking only at the practical reasons to own a car, it's not even close to having twice the value. In a lot of cases, brand names bring no value other than the brand. And while that can have a placebo effect, it's not more value. Medicine comes to mind as a great example. You are paying more for marketing and packaging than you are for R&D. The recent thread on memristors even highlighted that R&D costs are 1/100th of total cost, with marketing taking the lion's share. Quality items appreciate while cheap items depreciate? No consumer good should be viewed as a financial investment. If something does appreciate in 50 years, it'll be more about luck than anything else.

rythie 14y ago
I'd agree that consumer goods shouldn't be seen as financial investment. However, if anything was to increase in value it's likely to be well the known and high quality "classic" model because it takes a place in history and the company survives, not the cheap knock-off that no one will remember about or cares.
ralfd 14y ago
> The recent thread on memristors even highlighted that R&D costs are 1/100th of total cost, with marketing taking the lion's share. I read that too, but what they meant was that development of an actual product costs Hewlett-Packard 10 times as much than the research of the underlying technology. And commercialization costs again 10 times more. "Commercialization" is a catch all term, of course marketing, but for the most part this means building factories, tooling and machinery. Ramping up production is difficult and binds tons of capital investment.
meric 14y ago
Pizza sells for $6.50 at my local store, but I'm sure pizza stores would still exist if they were priced at $10 instead, except there will be less stores. As you go up in quality, it gets harder and harder to scale because..., how many celebrity chefs can you find in a city? You might find a dozen, but it would probably be very expensive to get enough chefs to staff shops in every suburb. Prices are a function of demand AND supply. It simply isn't possible to supply enough celebrity chefs at $30 a meal. If there was such a shop it will have a long line stretching out around three blocks every night. You won't get 10 times better meal by paying 10 times more; It just means the price equilibrium is 10 times higher. There's nothing to it, I don't think it is intentionally "used by merchants to extract money from consumers". They price their products at a point to maximise profit, and that's all there is to it.

Wilya 14y ago

I definitely disagree. Maybe sometimes, paying twice as much gives you something that lasts ten times longer. Or maybe, you will pay five times as much, and get something that (hopefully) lasts a bit longer. I use a lot of earphones, and they tend to break quite fast. Once or twice, I decided to move away from the usual 15$ models and pay 60$ for better brands, with good reviews, and everything. Did they last longer ? Of course not. They sounded marginally better, but nothing worth the price.. The thing is, price is an indicator of positioning. It's a marketing tool, and it's generally not correlated to quality. Buying the very cheapest is usually not a good idea, because the manufacturer probably did everything it could to actually beat competitors and propose the lowest price. But other than that, that's pretty much all you can know in advance. Knowing what items are made of good quality and will last longer (and therefore are worth paying an extra for) is very hard. So, my reasoning on that is that I prefer to spend less money on something, since on average, it will live just as long.

meric 14y ago
Well, the $60 earphone actually comes with a 2 year warranty... whereas the $15 one does not.
- qxcv 14y ago
  Buy fewer than four pairs of $15 headphones in two years and you're still ahead. At least, you're still ahead financially; value is virtually impossible to quantify when you take into account subjective qualities like sound, appearance and comfort.
  - meric 14y ago
    The $15 earphones last 3-4 months and I'm tired of spending an hour every few months to pick an ear phone, as well of the "music down time" that entails. That's why I started paying more. Hopefully my $60 ear phones last longer. I would rather not have to rely on the warranty.
karolist 14y ago
Regarding the headphones, some 7 years ago I've bought Phillips hp805 after reading an article that titled them "king of the budget cans", they've cost something around $30 and are the most comfortable headphones I've ever had on my head and the sound quality is great too. After all those years they work like new, though I do have a habit of being careful with things. I'm afraid of these breaking because I'd have no idea what to replace them with.

jwl 14y ago

Partly true, but I guess most of don't buy new things when the old ones are totally worn out. It is more like we just some new stuff for a change, not necessarily because what we have is broken. So it doesn't automatically save you money.

suprgeek 14y ago

I think what the article is trying to say is "Buy the best quality that you can afford". Unfortunately the Author has completely conflated Quality with Price. Higher price != Better Quality (not always anyway)

denzil_correa 14y ago
And to be fair to the author, he mentions the same > This doesn’t always work. Sometimes a cheaper product is actually better. But consider removing price as the default decision criteria.
- jamiecurle 14y ago
  Indeed, quality lives in many places and has many faces. The price tag is rarely one of either.
- EzGraphs 14y ago
  The main point - rule of thumb - that can be derived: consider removing price as the default decision criteria Most of the comments here (and parts of the original article) are elaborations on applying this principal. So price is not necessarily correlated with quality, but using price as a default decision criteria results in suboptimal outcomes (stuff that is not really "better" or consumers that are happier or otherwise benefited).
  - denzil_correa 14y ago
    Once again the author asks you to consider removing the price as a decision criteria. He's still exactly talking about the same thing as you are. :-)
zurn 14y ago
That wouldn't really mean anything unless using "afford" in the absolute sense (eg. max out your credit next time you're buying shoes).

scott_w 14y ago

This article is based on a number of nonsensical assumptions: 1) That paying more equates to higher quality. It doesn't. Your £30 t-shirt will fall apart every bit as quickly as your £3 multi-pack from Primark. 2) That you want to have something last a lifetime. Just last weekend, my dad was complaining about having no good jig-saws. Then followed up with "of course, I could buy a good one, but I only use them once every 5 years, so they're knackered when I need them anyway". 3) When you want quality, you can't just borrow it off someone else. I'm not against paying more for something e.g. my uncle has expensive joinery kit because his day job is a joiner. I simply dislike the mentality of "I must pay top-dollar for everything", before you've evaluated what you actually want.

UnoriginalGuy 14y ago

The problem with this "buy for life" stuff is that how do you determine what is really a "buy for life" product rather than just an over-priced "brand?" For example, I could go out and buy a $200 pair of sunglasses but depending on where I buy them they can either be poor quality (e.g. fashion brands, sunglass hut, etc) or exceptional (e.g. fishing shops, sailing suppliers, workman-glasses, etc). You would expect reviews to give you an accurate way to tell but people often review a product by the way it makes them FEEL rather than about the product its self.

radarsat1 14y ago
Exactly. They just don't make things like they used to. I bought a $160 pair of boots once, thinking they would be great and last me a long time. They seemed solid, but they started leaking and cracking within a year. The next year I bought a $35 pair, which lasted the winter but sort of fell apart, and the next year I did the same again, which lasted three years. The problem with paying more for higher quality is that there's little guarantee these days that price and quality are even correlated.
HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
You answered your own question: given a choice, if you can buy from the supplier that sells to industrial/commercial users, the quality will usually be better. e.g., I buy my T-Shirts from Tractor Supply. They are cheaper, much thicker and last longer than the ones I bought from American Apparel. Farmers are harder on clothing than the average urban dweller, I'm guessing. The tools I buy from McMaster-Carr or Fastenal may cost the same or slightly more than the tools (often the same brands) from Home Depot or the local hardware store, but they are much better quality.
- AjithAntony 14y ago
  The lightweight fabric at American Apparel is a premium feature.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago

mattm 14y ago

The highest priced items are that way mostly due to the marketing costs associated with selling high priced items and trying to create the illusion that it is better quality. Lifetime guarantees are pretty much worthless because most people will forget they have one, lose the item or lose the documents related to it. Top pay doesn't attract the best people. Top work attracts the best people because the best people have most likely realised that money doesn't really matter if you're working on something that doesn't provide meaning for you. The sweet spot for quality is to figure out the approximate average price of the product you want to buy and then pay a little above that.

cdvonstinkpot 14y ago

Looks like an interesting article, but I can't bear to read it. Too much side-scrolling on my Blackberry. Why doesn't the text autofit my screen like other pages do? I'll have to read it when I get home.

rythie 14y ago
It's quite readable on my iPhone in landscape and even in portrait, perhaps you should have bought a better phone like the article suggests?

logical42 14y ago

Would have preferred re-reading the Wikipedia article, personally (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_preference) as it was better written, and considerably less self-satisfied in tone.

PedroCandeias 14y ago

I don't think the Op is getting as much love as he deserves. Many of the intangible pieces that make up the quality of a product or service go out the door when we’re getting a deal. They’re doing a favor and sometimes when we bargain, people resent us. This is absolute gold when it comes to longer business relationships. I have come through to believe that entirely too many fail simply because someone is resentful over terms. As for the relation between cost and quality, I agree with many here that it isn't clear-cut. But the relation does exist. You just need to be discerning, which is why the Op writes: Because we only buy quality, we are forced to wait until we can afford what we really want. That wait time leads to better decisions, and it forces us to make due with what we have. # Edit: formatting

pitt1980 14y ago
it cuts both ways, you don't want to get 'sucker' stapped on your forehead early in a business relationship obviously, good relationships have give a take both ways, a little framing of what you expect early on, can pay alot of dividends over the long run
- PedroCandeias 14y ago
  True. I guess the ideal is to be seen as someone who is generous but has high expectations and will not hesitate to terminate the relationship and move business elsewhere.

morsch 14y ago

I wish the article was true. It'd be so nice to simply pay a premium and rest assured that it's an equitable approach: you get an improved product, the retailer gets a higher profit, the distributor, the people actually creating the product get a cut. The reality is you can't rely on any single of these to be true, and as soon as you're willing to buy something and especially if you're willing to pay 10, 50 or 100% more than the absolute minimum you're the prime meat of the other half of the worlds who make it their business to ensure that it's not an equitable approach.

beloch 14y ago

The idea in this article is sometimes true, but it completely fails to take into account the relentless march of technology. Some items, such as cell-phones or laptops, will be totally obsolete within 10 years no matter how finely made they are. Other items, such as guitars, will not be obsolete since the technology isn't changing quickly, if at all. There will be new digital guitars with funky synth modes every year, but a gibson dobro will still sound like a gibson dobro in twenty years. Some things fall somewhere in between. Your grandfather's watch is a marvel of mechanical engineering that will keep time adequately for centuries if taken to a watch-shop for maintenance every few years. That maintenance will cost more than buying a new timex would, and the timex will keep far more accurate time. Timex's are disposable. When the timex's battery dies it will probably cheaper to replace it than to replace the battery. However, their function is superior for all practical purposes. Many people currently enjoy the aesthetics of mechanical watches. They're currently enjoying a major surge of collectibility, but that wasn't the case twenty years ago and it may well not be the case twenty years from now. The real trick is to figure out what can last and what should be treated as disposable. e.g. Say you're building a home theater. Amps have changed very little over the last 20 years. Preamps and receivers go obsolete every few years. If you spend $5000 on a Bryston amp it will easily last 20 years (that's how long it'll be under warranty!), but a Bryston preamp will be hopelessly unusable long before that 20 year warranty runs out. There are also big variations in short-term durability too that aren't necessarily correlated with price. e.g. Macbook air's and the new retina pro's are gorgeous pieces of engineering, but they're made to be disposable. If you spill coffee on them they're basically done. You can't remove the battery and take them apart to clean them (proprietary screws) like you can with a much cheaper laptop and Apple won't lift a finger to help you. This is a case where our perceptions of what is durable and high-quality can actually lead us to buy something that won't last as long!

megablast 14y ago
Paying too much for something works if you have no idea how to actually judge the quality of the item. I know computers and bikes, and will not pay too much for those thing, because I know the quality and I know the cost. I have no idea about cars, or houses, or shoes, so I have not way of judging the quality of these items.

jackalope 14y ago

Design determines manufacturing costs. Engineering determines durability. Marketing determines price. Coordinating all three is essential to delivering value. It's absurd to suggest that any one (or all) of them offer protection from obsolescence.

denzil_correa 14y ago

> This is so weird to me. No one haggles over $5 on the price of a car, but it seems that everyone needs a tip calculator to determine if they should pay 21.50 or $22.00 for a meal. A $5 on a 2000 is 0.25% and a $0.50 on $20 meal is 2.5%

hythloday 14y ago
Is this relevant? If I get £50 off a house purchase and then tip the next waiter I meet £50 on a £50 meal, I'm no better off but the waiter will be ecstatic and the house-seller probably not more morose. The percentages are not terribly relevant to happiness, which is not well-correlated with money saved--see Dickens for more details. :)
- denzil_correa 14y ago
  My point was you save more for on $0.50 on a meal than a $5 on a car. In terms of pure monetary value, it is relevant. This comment was more in the light of an "alternate" theory as the author doesn't appreciate the fact that people haggle over $0.50 on a tip.
  - TeMPOraL 14y ago
    In terms of pure monetary value it is irrelevant, actually. Yes, $0.50 is much more a saving relative to meal price than car price, but it's still $0.50, aka. insignificant amount of money, usually not worth the time it takes to argue for it.

prawn 14y ago

Reminds me of some gift buying advice I read. Given a specific budget, don't get a big-but-cheap item, but a higher-quality but smaller/simpler item. The latter is more likely to be valued and retained. I think the example given, for a golfer, was a crafted/precious golf tee over a trashy electronic putting game. (Ignoring, of course, the fact that the tee might easily get lost.)

Loic 14y ago

The author is right but the problem at the moment is that more and more, you cannot correlate quality with price. That is, expensive gears can be of low quality. It is harder and harder to even be able to pay more knowing that you get more. Also, the point missing is that you need to take care of your expensive gears. You need to put money into maintenance.

deleted 14y ago

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colomon 14y ago

I'm not sure I'd say this article is wrong, exactly, but it sure seems like all the arguments in it are very shallow. Yeah, I have my great-grandfather's pocketwatch, and it still runs. But it has required repairs that each cost significantly more than buying ten brand new cheap watches would have. It's the least reliable timepiece I own. And I hardly ever use it, because my cellphone is always with me and is considerably more accurate -- and is not the only heirloom I have from my namesake great-grandfather! Its main value to me is pure sentimentality. I'm sure other watches were purchased by my other great-grandfathers; to the best of my knowledge, none of those watches survived to the present day. It might be because they only bought cheap watches. But it might also be that they bought expensive watches and those watches broke or got lost. Looking solely at what survived to today tells you very little about what was purchased yesterday. And I'm sure my great-grandfather didn't buy the most expensive watch possible. If it had come down to the choice of buying a watch which cost $10 more, or saving that money to give me $200 today, I'd take the money!

mmcnickle 14y ago

For me the most difficult thing about buying "quality" is the effort required in researching what the quality product is. It's been mentioned that price isn't always a good indicator, and the mainstream stores generally don't cater for people looking for quality. For example, I'm buying a set of screwdrivers for a DIY job. I know I'll need screwdrivers for the rest of my life, I want to buy quality ones. I go to some big DIY store expecting a good range of screwdrivers. What I get is a selection of mickey-mouse screwdrivers (£5 for a set of 20) and some middle-of-the-road-but-overpriced screwdrivers (£20 for a set of 20). There is no "buy these and never buy another screwdriver again" set for £60-100. You can get these, but it takes considerable effort to track them down.

debacle 14y ago

The problem is that the modern consumer cannot associate cost with quality. I usually buy the cheapest appliance I can find (microwave, coffee machine, lawn mower) because it has the fewest bells and whistles and is likely the only one I can fix myself.

nosse 14y ago
If I don't have the time to really look into things, I go with the cheapest too. - You usually have exactly the quality you paid for, so no surprises here. - It's often more ecological. If factory A can produce more stuff with same money than factory B, they must be doing something right. Another way to look at this would be: if you have to make shovels dirt cheap, you can't use barrels of oil/shovel, because you would have to pay for that oil. I really cannot prove this cheap is ecological, but I've noticed that this holds true in plastic Christmas-trees, cucumbers and majority of unprocessed meat products. Chicken production should cause only 1/5 of the problems that beef production. Surprise, surprise chicken also cost's 1/5.
- greedo 14y ago
  Where I live, ground chuck goes for $4/lb, and chicken breasts go for $7/lb. Not sure what the cost per pound of an entire steer versus an entire chicken, but I don't see the same price variance that you're writing about. Also, the ecological impact might be because Crappy Factory A is manufacturing cheap shovels and dumping their toxic waste in a local river, while Factory B has to charge more because it's following industry standards and using a reputable waste handler. Or Crappy Factory A might be using underage employees, or dumping product to eliminate its competition. Drawing conclusions about manufacturers based on pricing is dangerous.
  - nosse 14y ago
    "Drawing conclusions about manufacturers based on pricing is dangerous." I completely agree. But in my opinion, drawing conclusions about manufacturers based on reputation is as dangerous. And it takes time to get that reputation info. Time I don't have many times. Only reliable way to have good conclusions about manufacturers is to examine their business throughly. That's obviously just impossible in most cases. PS. Chicken breast is expensive here too. I buy whole legs.

drostie 14y ago

One key way in which the article is right on-the-money, so to speak, is to highlight the ridiculous frenzy that we go into to save disproportionately small amounts of money. Our audience here is mostly programmers. Programmers should all know the golden rule of optimization: profile it first. Don't take it on intuition or faith that "this is what was slowing me down" unless you've measured it. The same principle applies in personal finance. Group together your expenses into some key logical categories -- "groceries", "tech", "rent", "retirement", "health", "nights out", and whatever else makes sense to you. Then add them up, do the maths. Know what you're spending and how it compares, and how the categories make up your monthly budget. Frugality is generally quite good, but just like code, it's quite possible to overoptimize it into a time-sink. Also, it's key that you see both the high-cost single-time expenses and the low-cost-but-everyday expenses and you get an idea for how they compare. Depending on how often you visit Starbucks, it might be a very good or very insignificant change to brew your own coffee at home; go on and measure it. The single most surprising thing that I discovered about this process was that, even though I feel like I give money to beggars in the street "often" (i.e. whenever I see them and they ask) and give "a lot" (i.e. much more than is normally typical), the amount that I give actually works out to almost nothing on a monthly basis. Like, I'm poor and right now I have no proper employment (they don't pay you to do a Master's degree) and yet I can still afford to be generous to the people who are down on their luck, and it's just nothing when you compare it to the amount I'd save if I stopped drinking cola. I've got no income, but I'd still easily spend € 50 on food to throw a party for my friends, so long as it happens only about once a month, twice max.

icebraining 14y ago
I agree; I started using ledger[1] for that, and 'though it can be sometimes cumbersome, it's very helpful to understand why I have so little money ;) [1]: http://ledger-cli.org/ http://ledger-cli.org/
Squazic 14y ago
I think you did a great job of trying to relating this topic to the programming mentality here. Many of the comments here seem to focus on how technology should not be purchased expensively or how this or that is not worth the extra money. The author does not set in stone that you must go for the more expensive item. He does qualify that some things, such as phones, are disposable and should not be approached with the "buy expensive" mentality.

nsxwolf 14y ago

Generally: Cheap jeans last forever. Expensive jeans tear in about a week.

wahnfrieden 14y ago
Actually cost has very little relation with cost to quality in denim jeans, besides that there is a production cost for higher quality denim fabric and stitching which doesn't seem to factor much into pricing besides increasing the minimum.

b0rsuk 14y ago

We have a saying: "Poor people can't afford inexpensive stuff."

wahnfrieden 14y ago
Poor people end up getting worse deals on things though since they often have fewer resources available to them. If they wanted to pay more for something that will last, they may not have that option if they don't live in or around an affluent neighborhood. It's more expensive to be poor.

martinw2k 14y ago

Well, that was a very long way of saying "you get what you pay for".

jakeonthemove 14y ago

Instead of overpaying, I think it's better to get the best product you can for the money you have. It does require you to learn how to recognize quality and know the prices, but it pays off in the end. For example, I wouldn't buy a Ferrari or even Porsche 911 (both high quality cars, no doubt, but expensive) when a Nissan GTR R35 performs just as well and costs less. All three will last a lifetime with a bit of care (I hate how people just use their tech without any maintenance, then wonder why "the POS" broke down!), so why pay more (aside from the design)?

nosse 14y ago
If you just need to move from place to place Peugeot 308 will do as good as any of above. You can get four of them with the price of GTR R35, so if one 308 doesn't last as long, you can get three more with the same price and every time with updated tech. And maintenance is probably cheaper too.
karolist 14y ago
Some people have other criteria to buying a car, emotional more often than not. For example, Ferrari's and Porsche's are known to a lot of common folk and associated with rich people, GTR - not so much. Also, different cars have different feel to driving them, different sound isolation, suspensions, seating position and road view, these tiny bits can be evaluated subconsciously even though you're after performance. If I based my purchase only on performance I'd buy BMW S1000RR which performs just as well (albeit comes with less safety) than the other 3 and cost just a fraction!
- nosse 14y ago
  I thought this too. Motorcycles are probably the most cost effective way to go from 0 - 100km/h below three seconds.

wccrawford 14y ago

A while back, I stopped buying the highest-priced goods and started doing research instead. What I found what the best things weren't the highest-priced. I also found that I could find the best items for me because what I care about isn't necessary what others care about. Using this, I've managed to buy better shoes, toasters, and even a car than I've ever had before, and at less than I would have spent if I hadn't done that research. The car ended up being the cheapest car made by that manufacturer, and I like it better than any other car I've ridden in or driven. (Admittedly, I haven't tried anything over about $50k, but I couldn't afford those anyhow.) I would never have found it if I used price as an indicator of quality, instead of reviews. The key to reviews is to look over the good reviews. Look at the bad reviews instead. Find out what people hate about it. And then ask yourself: Does that feature matter to me? My rice maker doesn't make brown rice well at all. Many people complained about that. However, white rice is the only kind I make, and it does a great job on that. So it didn't make sense to spend twice as much money on a better rice maker. I could have spent more money and gotten an objectively better rice maker. But why bother? So no, I don't agree with paying too much or buying the 'best'. At all.

theorique 14y ago
Good point. Sometimes the cheapest is indeed the best ... for a given person, if it meets their needs and doesn't deliver features they don't use.
denzil_correa 14y ago
You're actually agreeing with the author without realizing it. Why? Because you decided to buy X because it was valued at a certain price and you could afford it. You didn't buy a "cheap" (in quality) version of the product (since you did your research). Unknowingly you are agreeing with the author. :-)
- schiffern 14y ago
  Except the author is arguing that you should use "expensive" as a heuristic (instead of "cheap"). wccrawford is arguing that quality is orthogonal to price.

maciejgryka 14y ago

I highly recommend The Paradox of Choice http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-more-less/dp/0060005688 http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-more-less/dp/006000... To quote from the article: "People who constantly try to always get that great deal end up spending all their time chasing those deals and never actually get things done. I’ve seen people do this their entire lives, and it is debilitating." You can say the same about people who spend all their time trying to constantly get "the best" product. Figure out a few things that are important to you and maximise these - whether on quality or price. For the rest, learn to accept "good enough" and get on with your life doing things that matter for you.

crazygringo 14y ago

A lot of people tend to buy middle-priced things. Marketers rely a lot on this fact, actually, to take advantage of your ignorance. I've found it's much better to avoid middle-priced things, most of the time. Usually, the cheapest option will meet your needs just as well. But then you need to identify the things in your life that really contribute to your happiness, and then pay what's necessary for full quality in those. I spend top dollar on fresh meat and vegetables and on my kitchen pans and chef's knives and olive oils for salads. But I have the cheapest vegetable peeler and spatula and paring knives and toaster and olive oil for frying.

berntb 14y ago

I got a really good workgroup printer, paid more than twice as much as for a cheap one. I loved it but had to leave it when I moved -- just too heavy. (And anyway, the Mac support wasn't good a couple of O/S versions later, but it still worked well with Linux.) My takeaway from this has more to do with negotiating moving packages (and Samsung support of old customers, grumble) than anything else.

wickedchicken 14y ago

Feeling insecure about your place in life? Worried you're not happy enough, cool enough, or loved enough? You clearly aren't spending enough money. Don't bother creating things or building interpersonal relationships. Spend more time thinking about acquiring physical goods and making sure you're only getting the best.

alain 14y ago

On the topic of paying less, there's a saying which goes something like this : "the cheapest price you can get for a thing is to not buy it" [1]. Of course this can't be applied for everything but a lot of people, myself included, tend to buy a lot of gadgets they don't need and don't use. This is a simple advice but I think it can go a long way to saving money. [1] if someone has the exact quote, I'll be thankful for it.

typicalrunt 14y ago

I liked the article in general, but this got me: I usually eat at the same few restaurants all the time. They’re maybe 10% more expensive, usually locally owned, and the food doesn’t come out of a frozen pre-made bag before being tossed in the oven. I never tip less than 20%, and I’m not an asshole….at restaurants. I don't understand this thought process. Why not pay 100% tip then? Is the 20% number somehow magical and affords the ability to be elitist? So if I tip 15%, which is the average suggested tip in Western Canada, I'm somehow an asshole???

mturmon 14y ago
Tip well enough that your generosity will be noticed by the staff. There are advantages to tipping at the 90-th percentile (not a 90% tip!), especially if you are a frequent customer. You will be remembered. Note, "asshole" has nothing to do with it.

allentucker 14y ago

Author here - There are many good points here. The purpose of my article was to give a different perspective from the default "buy whatever is cheapest" method that I believe most people follow. Obviously it would be an error to buy things that that aren't better for more money, but I believe this error is often better than the opposite error, buying twice. A good example: I'm writing this on a 10 year old laptop running 1900x1200. Thanks for the comments and feedback.

parka 14y ago

The article reminds me of what I learned in a marketing: Value = Benefits / Cost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_%28marketing%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_%28marketing%29 Marketing comes into play. If not, items for sale would be using cost-based pricing. A Mac and a PC would both can accomplish the same task. But one is more expensive than another. Being cheaper doesn't necessarily mean it won't last as long. Tipping is one area that I don't understand about cultures that have them. Generally, I would expect the tip to be included in the price of the food. Why waste my time and have me figure out what amount to tip? Personally, I don't see the perceived value of tipping. In some way, how much you pay is also determined by how you see yourself, or in some cases want others to see you.

ajaimk 14y ago

The key part of that is the line about services and tips. Just being a generous tipper gets you better service, and specially if you are a regular at the same restaurant or bar. 20% by default with an occasional bump up to 25% in tip gets you remembered and the servers get to know you. I've had such a good relationship at some of my regular restaurants to the point where I once had ups deliver a package to the bar for me when I was out of town. Other places, the staff starts comping your drinks. My best one was the manager at a restaurant giving me a blanket 20% discount on anything I buy (I tip at least 25% after they put in that discount). In the long run, you get better service if you pay for it.

mathattack 14y ago

Great modern defense of penny-wise and pound-foolish. The challenge is automation and commodification pushes us towards the lowest common denominator. Look at airlines, being forced into price, not quality.

tchock23 14y ago

I agree with most of the ideas in this article with the small exception of the example he gives for services and hiring "the best firm in the country." I think you're mostly paying for overhead and bloat in those cases, and I would prefer to work with "the guy down the street" if I can (in which case I'd want to find the best "guy down the street," regardless of cost). Other than that, it amazes me how people won't spend for quality in situations where it clearly is in their best interest for the long-term...

prezjordan 14y ago

This is how I feel about my computers. I don't want a "good deal" when it comes to price. I'll spend a lot, and get a lot in return.

arjunnarayan 14y ago

What about the selection bias? You don't see the watches your grandfather bought that didn't make it down to you because they broke. Of course the few carefully selected things that have survived and been handed down are the exceptional pieces!

Havoc 14y ago

I associate old with quality more than price. e.g. My dad has 2 Bosch drills ( http://i.imgur.com/aCkaq.jpg http://i.imgur.com/aCkaq.jpg ). Roughly 20 years old. When you hold them in your hand you just know that it'll last another 40 years. As a result I have a really difficult time taking any of the modern drills seriously.

scott_meade 14y ago

A lot of commentators missed the point: "Sometimes a cheaper product is actually better. But consider removing price as the default decision criteria." It's simple and good advice.