Breaking Out of the 'Cheap' Cycle:
When money is tight, you're often shoehorned into buying the cheap version of the item. While this solves the problem in the short term, what you're usually doing is just kicking the can down the road six months or a year or two years or whatever until that version you just bought wears out and then you're back to where you started.
On the other hand, if you spent a lot and bought a reliable version up front, that cycle gets much, much longer. It becomes a matter of five years or 10 years or a lifetime before you have to even consider replacing the item, and it does the job well, too.
Yet, when you're on a tight budget, that high-quality, reliable version of an everyday item is just out of reach, or else it just seems like a frivolous purchase, even though the total cost of ownership is lower over the time you're using the product and it'll save you time and headache dealing with a failing item and replacing it down the road.
I've been there, and it's rough. You're trying to keep your spending low, but when you do that, you end up buying cheap items that end up costing you more down the road. Sometimes, you're basically forced into that situation.
I like to put it like this: Sometimes, people can't afford the low cost of ownership items. That seems strange, but the issue is that items that have a low cost of ownership are often items with a big upfront cost, and people often can't afford that upfront cost. An $18 pair of socks might last for years and years and years and it's very likely that such a pair will end up costing you less than buying bags of cheap socks, but it's $18 for a pair of socks.
There is a road out, however. Here are several things you can do to help break out of the cycle of buying cheap versions of the items you rely on so that you can get reliable ones that won't fail constantly.
(Via The Simple Dollar The Simple Dollar)
Read the while article for the advice. And remember, no one cares what you spend on anything except for your financial partner. Don't argue yourself out of a sound financial decision because of what you think "they" will think, whomever "they" are.
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