You're certainly right that buying an expensive item without having the money to do it is a bad idea, but think about the infrastructure and amount of time you

You're certainly right that buying an expensive item without having the money to do it is a bad idea, but think about the infrastructure and amount of time you needed to find those cheap items. You had a working computer or phone, an Internet connection, and enough knowledge to know to look at Craigslist. When you found your item, you probably had to arrange shipment, but it was no problem for you because you either had a car that could carry it, had a friend with one, or in the worst case, were able to rent one. Finally, you had several blocks of time that weren't already filled with things you had to do to handle searching Craigslist, maybe searching again, and finally going to pick up and take home your new piece of furniture. I don't know your specific circumstances, and I apologize if the points above don't all apply to you. But it's important to realize that there are a lot of non-obvious resources that people from wealthy backgrounds have that they don't even think about which allow them to save money.