Just to make it clear, I’m answering the actual topic of the thread, which is not “do you make absolutely pragmatic choices, unmarked by class, and live a minimalist lifestyle that would make a propertyless monk feel envious enough to dispense penance to himself for that envy”. The question was, “Do you go for decent stuff rather than something which will supposedly impress others?”
You’re generalizing this to “Only Spend Money Very Wisely” when the question is about social display. These are not the same things. If you want to be that stringent about it, probably none of us writing anything here would qualify because a personal computer is an “unnecessary extravagance”.
You’re missing a middle here. I grew up mostly poor, and I know first-hand how much money gets wasted by buying low-quality goods. For example, I bought a pair of hiking boots nearly 15 years ago that are still just as usable as the day I bought them. (I don’t use them only for hiking. When I lived in the country, I wore them almost daily for years because they were the most practical, multi-use, comfortable footwear I could afford.) Before I had enough money to buy those, I would tear up a pair of cheap boots in a season or two. Amortized over the time I’ve used them, those boots cost me less than the crappiest cheapest fall-apart-in-a-week footwear you can get at K-Mart. I buy quality whenever I can because I spent years having no choice but to pour money down the drain on cheap stuff that didn’t last and wasn’t worth it over the long run, but was cheap enough to buy now.
If I’d had plenty of money when I was young, I might be more casual about buying “good enough” stuff and throwing it away. Instead, I became much more conscious about how things are made, what is worth the extra cost, and when spending extra is just pissing money away on marketing and label cachet. The best stuff isn’t necessarily the most expensive, but it almost never is the cheapest.
True KUWTJ strikes me as more of a affluent middle class suburban phenomenon. Where you actually know all your neighbors, or at least can see them, and everyone is much closer in economic status. Bob’s wife got a Lexus. I want a Mercedes. (or whichever one is better than the other).
Living in NYC (or Hoboken, which for all intents and purposes is an extension of NYC), I think there’s less KUWTJ for most people. Or at least for people who make less than $500k a year. Although there is some - “What do you for a living? What neighborhood do you live in?” So on and so forth.
I make purchases aware of the image what I purchase sends and intentionally avoid buying objects imbued with status (like labels) because the image I want to send is that of someone who does not care what others think. I nevertheless less buy high quality on the whole but only a few would recognize what it is.
Yes I recognize that by avoiding explicit status objects I am being just as concerned about status as any “keep up with the Joneses” person. I am not happy with that fact. I’d like to fool myself but I see right through me.
In my circle the snobbery tends to be an intellectual academic variety. My buddy the brilliant history professor who is sometimes struggling to make ends meet has more status than the banker with a Lexus.
That makes sense for boots you wear every day. It doesn’t make sense for underwear: I doubt the $30 pair of underwear really lasts 10X longer than the $3 pair. It doesn’t make sense for, say, dress shoes, if you only dress up once or twice a year. The mid-range ones will last you a lifetime at that rate–why buy better? It doesn’t make sense for pretty much anything child-related, because they will out grow most everything before a high quality version could wear out. There are absolutely times when buying the highest-quality item is the cheapest option. But there are many more times when it’s a judgement call, and the low or moderate quality item is more than sufficient. If you always buy the highest quality, regardless of intended use pattern or cost, then there’s something emotional going on. That’s not bad–I make emotional consumer choices all the time–but it is true.
Good point, and that’s smart. But as you mentioned, quality and price aren’t always the same. Many people buy expensive without necessarily getting quality. Or they buy things they don’t really need.
There’s a difference between conforming, and buying things you don’t want or need, and can’t afford, because you want to impress people you really don’t care about.
My parents insisted that my very complex orthodontic work be done by the pediatric dentist they forced me to go to (who did fillings and extractions without anesthesia, hit children who didn’t cooperate, and eventually lost his license for molesting a patient) because taking me to an orthodontist would “damage their image in the community”. I was always previously told that the only reason people put braces on their kids’ teeth was so they could show off how much money they had to throw around, and nobody, and I mean NOBODY, was going to think that my mother had a job (which was what they thought would happen). As a result, something that should have taken 18 months took 6 years and had to be done over twice. It also cost more than twice as much, something they didn’t seem to comprehend. All this time, whenever I complained, I was labeled a whiner and they thought it was funny and said things like “Children sometimes need to be hurt.”
And when my sister turned out to have the same problem, they got it done right the first time. BTW, she wasn’t even going to that dentist any more (they wouldn’t switch for me because a neighbor, who didn’t even live there any more, had recommended him) because she didn’t like him. :smack: Yes, I’m resentful, why do you ask? They better hope I never have to pick their nursing home, that’s for sure.
Dress shoes are a great example of that. For the pair of low heel black shoes that you wear at the office daily, buy the best quality you can afford. For the purple satin dress shoes to match the Christmas party outfit that you’ll wear once, buy the cheapest pair that feels comfortable.
The other thing to consider with women’s clothing and shoes is fashion - buying expensive, high-quality clothes and shoes might be a good idea, but chances are they’ll be out of style before they’re anywhere near worn out. The clothes are likely to get recycled to Goodwill at about the same time regardless of how much you paid for them if they go out of style, so in this case, buying less expensive stuff seems to make better sense.
“Old people sometimes need to be hurt.” Try not to have too evil a grin on your face when you say this.
Of course there’s a balance between cost and intended function, but quality matters a lot. Because it matters so much to me I will consider a higher budget for an item than some people, but I do have a budget. I’m not a complete nut about it, but I put at least a modicum of thought into everything I buy.
I’m a huge fan of the new sites, The Wirecutter for electronics, and The Sweethome for household goods because they mesh well with the kind of winnowing I do when I need to buy something new. Their recommendations naturally take price into consideration, but they consider usability, construction quality, and intangibles along with price.
I partially disagree with what you wrote. I wouldn’t consider anything you listed so unimportant that I would buy it thoughtlessly. I don’t like the disposable attitude many people have toward buying things.Take your underwear example: How do they fit? Does the material feel good? Do they look good to you? Is the waistband right? Do they ride up when you walk?
Sometimes the cheap underwear are the winners in all categories. But sometimes, they’re a “bargain” only if you consider the price to be the most important thing about them, and they’ll piss you off in every single other way. I’ll gladly pay $15 a pair if they don’t bunch up and dig into my balls every 30 minutes. That’s $3 for covering my hairy butt, $12 for fitting properly, and most importantly not annoying me every time I wear them.
Granted, I might not pay $30, or $50 a pair, but that’s mostly because I doubt that the function will be much better served by the extra price. However, seventy-five bucks for 5 pairs that fit and feel right is worth far more to me than 25 pairs of cheap ones that all suck.
Things that don’t work well earn negative currency. Not only do they not perform their job properly, but every time they don’t work right, they annoy the shit out of me (which is, admittedly, not that hard). On top of that, they cost me money in the first place. So in my mind, $3 shitty underwear = $3 pissed away, another fucking $X to replace, and add $5 to how much they cost me every time my scrotum gets pinched when I sit down. Moderately expensive underwear starts to look like a bargain really quickly.
Underwear is one of those things that is a continual minor annoyance. You never seem to be able to find the same exact thing you liked the last time when you need to replace the old stuff, so, like probably every man, I have a half-drawer of old stuff in various stages of decomposition, kept because they’re comfortable, but all needing to be replaced because they’ve been worn so much. The other half is a bunch of newer stuff made of nearly equal parts things I can kinda stand to wear, and pairs that aren’t quite right to bloody annoying, with about 3–5 pairs I actually kind of like. All of the latter group quickly becomes the worn-out mouldering pile I keep so that I can actually find something comfortable due to the frequency of use. Nearly every time I go to a clothing store, I audition at least one new maker or style.
I’ve been trying to replace my last favorite (an odd brand bought at Costco, never found again) for nearly 5 years. I’ve bought cheap ($3–5 a pair) to fairly expensive ($18–20 a pair) and not once in that time been fully satisfied. The best I’ve found so far are comfortable, about $9 a pair, but the elastic wears out fast, and I bought them on a trip back to the US, so I can’t buy more. My least favorites were the most expensive ones, so it’s not like I’m a price snob.
If I find underwear I actually like, I swear to all the gods I will replace my entire frakking drawer full of too tight in the crotch, saggy, waistband cuts into my hip, rides up into my balls, bunches up in the back, makes my balls sweat more than my pits, elastic went to shit in less than a year, etc., etc. assorted failures of underclothing.
Skimping on dress shoes is short-sighted. First, almost the entire point of “dress” clothes is social display. Otherwise, you’d wear flip-flops and sweats. Second, fit and quality still matters. I’ve bought 2 pairs of dress shoes in the last 10 years or so; one brown, one black.
Those replaced nearly yearly purchases for cheap shoes that I did, indeed, only wear occasionally, but which decayed poorly with time and minimal wear: cracks across the plastic sole, delaminations as the glue aged, insole cracked and fell apart, stinky no matter what I did, literally fell apart at the seams in something like a dozen uses. And that was before I had to wear suits more often for work. Now, I have to wear a suit easily 10x more often than before, but because I invested in quality footwear, I have not had to replace my shoes. They fit better every time I wear them, and the few signs of age are a patina. You can’t even shine shitty plastic stuff, so it looks like scuffed garbage in a couple of wears.
Children’s clothes may be cheap, but they must be comfortable. I’m not particularly concerned with them wearing out, because like you said, they’ll outgrow them first. But, as I’ve found out from getting a few hand me downs from richer relatives, quality is noticeable. Those clothes often ended up being worn more often by request, which means that he probably felt better wearing them. Not all of the best stuff is expensive, but some of it is, and sometimes it’s worth it if you can afford it. We’re going to have another boy soon, so whatever we bought that lasted will pay dividends.
