Tequila. My usual drink is 1800 neat. Tried to save a few bucks one night by drinking rail tequila instead. Yep: Aristocrat. Blech.
Toilet paper. It’s bad enough I’m forced to take Georgia Pacific sandpaper to my ass at work; damned if I’m doing it at home too.
Peanut butter. Hey, I’ve got a jar, I’ve got oil, and I’ve got peanuts; if I wanted a jar of oily peanuts, I’d make it myself. Skippy’s usually on sale at Kroger, so that’s what I generally get. Nothing less, at any rate.
I’ll never buy expensive:
Tequila. After my experience with the Aristocrap, I got blasted one night on Herradura (not on my dime; open-bar party). Didn’t taste any different from 1800, and it was barely any smoother. At ten bucks a shot, I’ll gladly concede to the law of diminishing returns.
Paper towels. For reasons I will never fathom, my dad will spend $5 on a three-pack of Brawny, but buys his T.P. from the Dollar Tree. Whatever works for you, Pop, but between wiping water off the kitchen counter and wiping off…other stuff, I know where my money’s going. Unless you buy the reusable type and actually reuse them – which, to this day, I have yet to see one single person do – you might as well stick to the generics.
Peanut butter. Oddly enough, once you go far enough up the price chain – from Skippy to Peter Pan to Reese’s, and on past JIF – you start running into “All Natural” peanut butters that, at $6 per jar, are exactly the same container of oily peanuts as the buck-fifty store brand. Somebody high up on the peanut butter corporate ladder must have a strange sense of humor.
Preach it! I use the cheap stuff for wrapping my husband’s sandwiches, but I use the non-stick for everything else. It’s the best invention since Post-it Notes.
When I read Renee’s post the first thing that popped into my mind was “amen, sister,” but “preach it” works just as well! I use Reynolds Release for just about everything that goes into my oven: pierogies, taquitos, chicken, etc. I can usually just slide the food off the baking sheet and onto the plate without having to dirty a spatula or burn my fingers. Like Kalhoun said, I keep the cheap stuff around to wrap things and to cover my turkey at Thanksgiving, but for everyday cooking I’m all about the non-stick.
And what’s really irritating is when you’re in a $5 per hour motel room with cheap drugs and a cheap whore and you can’t tell which one’s been cut more. I hate when that happens. It makes me have to go out and do rude things to nuns again.
Natural peanut butter contains two ingredients: peanuts and salt. Other peanut butters contain partially hydrogenated oil to prevent the peanut oil from separating, and sugar. That changes the texture and flavor considerably.
So, I don’t buy cheap peanut butter.
I don’t buy expensive stereo equipment. I haven’t got a discriminating ear. Cheezy speakers are fine for me.
Hiking boots. Those things should last and last and last. And they have to fit perfectly, or they’re going to hurt soon enough. You really don’t want to cheap out on your feet!
Tents. Quality matters much more than cost on this one, too. You need sturdy construction, and ease of assembly’s a very, very, very good thing.
Pocket knives. Get the good ones–ones that’ll last and work well for you for ages.
Liquor. The mid-price to expensive stuff can be anywhere from good to great. The cheap stuff is often best used for cleaning engine parts. In general, with liquor, you get what you pay for.
Bike maintenance. I’d much rather have a wheel truing or tune-up done well for a little more money, than done poorly for cheap. I’m also willing to wait a little longer to get my bike back from someone who I know is doing a good job.
I’ll never buy expensive:
Umbrellas. Yeah, I know there are some great models out there that won’t die in a high wind. The thing is, I lose umbrellas pretty often, so investing $50.00 in a Gust Buster isn’t a good idea for me. Someone who’s better at not losing things might choose differently, though.
Ball point pens, for reasons other people have already mentioned. Besides, a Bic works fine.
I would have added “gas” to this list, but now that prices are up to about $2.80 a gallon, minimum, around here (and they might have gotten higher in the last couple of days. I don’t know.), I’m stuck buying my gas at high prices.
No Buy Cheap: Booze. I know of one brand of gin that was actually distilled at an industrial solvents company in Philadelphia. I’ll bet you could taste the butyl esters in every sip.
No Buy Expensive: Hats. Because my scalp sweats like a friggn sprinkler head.
tweezers
band-aids
scissors
pet food
liquor
steaks
candles - the horrid smelling waxy ones that are covered in a thin layer of color but white inside
I’ll never buy expensive:
milk - it all comes from cows
paper napkins
checks - why should my electric company get to look at prety palm trees and hammocks? I want them to see skulls and crossbones!
wall art - I’m happy with photos I’ve taken of friends and family.
I’ll never buy cheap
[ul]
[li]glasses and sunglasses - prescription, though - not the non-prescription ones. After a teen loses one or two and has to replace them from their own budget, one learns how to keep track of them. And there is such a thing as good, long-lasting frames. [/li][li]food[/li][li]duct tape - if one hasn’t met the bad stuff, trust me, it’s an abomination. The adhesive stinks to high heaven, the tape itself can never be torn with simply a proper twist like good duct tape can be, and it sticks to two things only, with any kind of persistance: hair and itself. [/li][li]electronics[/li][li]batteries - if the acid starts coming out of the case before the charge is gone from the battery, it’s a bad thing. Especially if the battery has been in use for less than a month.[/li][li]toilet paper[/li][li]footwear - I cannot find cheap shoes that fit. Cheap shoes are an exercise in torture.[/li][li]anime, by which I mean bootleg. I still think it’s too narror a niche to be able to afford to share the marketplace with large numbers of bootlegs.[/li][/ul]
I’ll never buy expensive
[ul]
[li]whiskey - it all tasted like furniture polish to me. [/li][li]lens coatings - I’m too much of a klutz. And the anti-glare coating left me with more noticable reflections on the lens. I saw more clearly through regular lenses. [/li][li]pens (with expensive defined as being anything above $0.75 each. I love me my old Uniball micro water-proof ink pens)[/li][/ul]
Skirts (white should be nearly opaque, not completely transparent)
Ice cream
Shoes
Computers (Sony Vaio, all the way)
Hair Care stuff (either homemade or fancy, its often worth the money)
Expensive:
Hair Dye (the best color I ever found was an off-brand I bought for 3 bucks)
DVD’s ($5 bin or ebay)
Purses
Cereal
Lotion
-Trash Bags - When they break, you realize the extra couple of cents was worth it.
-Mattresses - Your back will let you know when you haven’t paid enough.
-Liquor - Bernie’s Vodka in college broke me of that.
-Maps - There are good road maps and there are lousy ones.
I won’t buy expensive:
-Hotel rooms - If I spend that much time in my room to notice, then I wasted my vacation. Not to say I stay in the Fleatrap Towers. But I certainly won’t stay at the Four Seasons.
-Cars - I hate my morning drive. An expensive car won’t help with that.
-Underwear - Ralph Lauren shorts don’t make my ass look any better than JC Penney.
Ugh! Sony makes the most awful computers and PDAs. I’ve never known a happy Vaio owner; they’re always replacing shit over and over again. I love Sony for all the other electronics, but their computers and PDAs are godawful. Same for HP – I’m a diehard HP calculator user, but I’ve never known a happy owner of an HP laptop. (Can’t speak to their PDAs, though.)
No cheap… Tools
If you ever do manage to break a Craftsman tool, take it back and get a new one. Og knows it looks like I’ve *TRIED * to break my DeWalt cordless tools a few times, but they keep on going. Once you get your hands on a Bosch table saw, you’ll understand where the cost goes - fit, finish, ingenuity and ease of use. Their “gravity” stand is pure genius.
**Spirits **
As others have noted, the cheap booze is suitable for cleaning, rather than enjoying. I indulge infrequently enough that $30-40 for a bottle of hooch isn’t going to break the bank.
**Gasoline ** The cheap stuff just doesn’t exist here. Paid $3.23 a gallon yesterday and thought “Ah, the price went down a bit!”
**Jeans ** Cheap jeans are like a cheap hotel - No ballroom. They usually fit funny as well.
Never buy expensive…
Socks
Toothpaste
Jeans - adjusted for local pricing, $45’s my limit.
I absolutely LOVE my Sony Vaio, and so does everyone else I know who has one (two of us ended up with the exact same model, and three others have Vaios). I have never had any problems that weren’t user error, and the only time anyone had any problems was when a friend of mine accidentally knocked his Vaio off a counter and onto a tile floor. I have no experience with their PDA’s since I do not know anyone who uses one, but other than that my experience with their headphones, cd players, computers, and cameras has been wonderful.
My first computer was an HP, had it two days before I took it back to CompUSA and traded it in for my Vaio. POS computer, dont even get me started on what all happened when I tried to boot it up, let alone use it.
I use Reynolds Release for just about everything that goes into my oven: pierogies, taquitos, chicken, etc. I can usually just slide the food off the baking sheet and onto the plate without having to dirty a spatula or burn my fingers. Like Kalhoun said, I keep the cheap stuff around to wrap things and to cover my turkey at Thanksgiving, but for everyday cooking I’m all about the non-stick.