…to a reasonable degree, at least.
Weddings.
Yes, It IS a big day. It’s not such a big day that you spend your entire life savings, and have no future.
Get a DJ, get a cake, get a hall, get a photographer…forget the doves, forget the ice sculptures, forget the wedding planner, forget the genocidial mimes, forget the big limo, keep it small. Do you really need to invite your great aunt, who you’ve seen 3 times in your life?
You should NOT be spending like $20,000 on a wedding.
The genocidal mimes are non negotiable
I know right…we HAVE to have standards
out of the loop, what are genocidal mimes?
It’s right there on the tin
$20k?
Damn dude, all my friends getting married are spending a minimum of $50k. $15k gets you the venue for the night without anything else included or factored in (food, music, fucking chairs or tables or lights, etc)
Weddings are a predatory business.
I can get a venue for like $200. What are you guys renting??? The Royal Palace???
Venues (and other services) usually jack the prices way up when the word Wedding is involved. Which makes sense since weddings typically don’t have a lot of room for errors.
It varies a LOT regionally.
Look for a venue in Maryland, you know, with DC right there.
I have a friend who’s entire wedding was the same price as a venue in Maryland.
We got married in DC and saved so much money on locations. We booked the Jefferson memorial 6 months in advance for like $50 (saved a couple thousand), and a boathouse on the Potomac for $800 (saved 8-20 grand) because we knew someone - wedding still cost like 33k. We were so cognizant of cost too - no flowers at all, DJ instead of a band, bought our own booze, etc.
I think people don’t realize how much more expensive cities are, and also do a terrible job accounting for all the true costs of things. Food was obviously the bulk of it and other big things like booze, rings… But I kept impeccable records, and what really added up was the little $100 here, $300 there things. Hotel and plane tickets for destitute father-in-law, all the meals at restaurants you’re taste testing to see if you wanna have the rehearsal dinner there, tips, food while the bridal party is getting ready, gifts for bridal party, the officiant, etc etc.
I wouldn’t trade it for the money back because I’m notoriously cheap, so I pinched and saved and was super proud of our wedding’s price to quality ratio, but I’d be lying if I said the final tally wasn’t super painful and didn’t delay our house a bit. It worked out in the end, though. Thanks interest rates!
Yeah, people definitely don’t understand that you can cut so much and bargain hunt the whole thing and still spend 15-20k. That’s a"cheap" wedding. The average in my area is 33k. That’s not because people are just spending frivolously and don’t budget, that’s because every single aspect of a wedding is expensive. Hell, tipping out the bar staff and photographer alone is expensive.
Skip it if you want, but even as a very frugal person, I’m very happy we had a huge party with lots of food and an open bar. It’s worth it to spend money on life rites. Life rites are like half the point of being human!
If you don’t care about celebrating with friends and family, don’t spend the money, but for us sharing the day with the people we love and merging our families was important.
We got out cheap at about $25… we had a smaller (100 person) wedding, went budget on the food, had a DJ, cake, etc. (basically just what the OP said), and we were still hand crafting stuff to reduce the cost. Shit is fucking expensive.
$25 is cheap, imagine one that costs a whole fifty dollars /s
A friend of mine donned his nicest clothes and went down to the courthouse with his fiance and a couple of witnesses. I mentioned this to my sister, and she mentioned that in retrospect, she wished she’d done something similar when she got married.
Did the same, then went out for a nice meal, weddings are a complete waste of money.
Spent less than 1k, no real honeymoon…but we bought our first house with the money we saved. 0 regrets.
This. This right here.
Couple goals.
I laugh when I hear some couple spent $20k on their wedding but can’t buy a house. Dude, that could have been your down payment wtf.
I mean…yes and no. A down payment for a single family home in today’s market is many orders of magnitude more expensive than $20k. But I agree that weddings are too expensive. Just have a small party and use that money elsewhere.
My brother’s father-in-law had offered to pay up to $15,000 for his daughter’s wedding. He gave them the option of taking it all in cash and then getting a courthouse wedding so they could have a nest egg to grow, or spend it all on the wedding of his fiancée’s dreams, or anywhere in between.
She opted to spend it all on the wedding. 😒 My gawd did that piss me off.
I’m in agreement except for the wedding planner. Whether they help with the planning from day one or are just the day-of coordinator, a good wedding planner is worth their weight in gold. I’d rather plug an old mp3 player into a portable speaker and skip the DJ before I recommend skipping out on the planner.
Oh, by DJ, yeah, thats all he’d be doing is controlling the winamp playlist basically.
And a wedding planner I don’t see as being needed.
Step 1) rent local venue.
Step 2) ask cousin to be DJ.
Step 3) pick up cake from dairy queen.
Step 4) Flowers??? I’m sure the florist can figure something out.
Thats about it.
eh, as a photographer that works weddings, any wedding without a planner is hell for me. i might actually just say no if that’s the case.
if you hire people to work it you should have a person who can be their go to while you are getting married.
if you go for an event like you describe people will be unhappy at the lack of food and leave after not long. if that’s what you want, good for you. go for it. if you want people to stick around and have a good time, you need to feed them. that’s expensive, even if you somehow make it all yourself with food from the farmers market, it’s still going to be over a thousand dollars for most people. again, unless you only invite like five people, but most people care about more than 5 people. throwing a big party of any kind isn’t cheap unless you throw a terrible party.
you don’t have to have a traditional wedding at all though. my sister got married during COVID in her backyard on video call. it was lovely. a big beautiful wedding with lots of people is also lovely and uniquely fun. just don’t let you relatives pressure you into things you don’t want. there’s where it always goes wrong.
Don’t take a loan either.
We spent less than 10k on our wedding and only invited close family. Did most of it ourselves. It was the best day ever!
Our wedding was under 5k, excluding dress and suit. Immediate family and close friends only, less than 40 people. Major expenses were the photographer, food and booze. We rented a cheap, small place in the countryside, we planned and did everything else ourselves, having a kanban board in the kitchen for a year was fun! My wife even did the cakes herself because she’s an amazing amateur pastry chef. No DJ, but I spent months on and off curating a playlist with a good flow and steadily increasing intensity.
It was the perfect wedding. Huge amount of work but 100% worth it.
Go, and preach this gospel to SE asian families, I beg you.
Getting away with a wedding for under 80k sometimes is considered “cheap” by those standards. And you absolutely must invite your third cousin once removed and your nextdoor neighbor who you hate. You see him every day afterall!
We had our wedding at our house in the backyard, no DJ, a discounted cake from my wife’s work (a bakery), catering from a BBQ place. Still ended up costing just about 2k, after food, flowers, and rented tables and chairs.
Here’s my pro tip.
You want a unique picturesque wedding on a budget?
National Parks in the US. If you keep your guest list under 50 people, you can get married anywhere in the park, provided you don’t block access, put up decorations, or damage the park, and it’s free! If you have more than 50 people, you need a permit, and those are raffled off per day, and almost no one uses them.
I got married on the bluffs overlooking Little Hunter’s Beach in Acadia National Park. The drive, food, and lodging for my wedding there cost less than the first payment for the venue of my “local” ceremony in my home city, which we ended up canceling anyway.
If you do get a permit, are you allowed to put up decorations?
I think that depends on the location. Parks may have their own specific rules.
Absolutely! Making it memorable and fun does not mean making it expensive. Cut whatever you can’t afford, do not take out a loan to cover anything. Then cut anything that isn’t meaningful to you and your partner.
A wedding planner is helpful if you don’t have a trusted and naturally organized friend who volunteers to handle details for you.
I’d also recommend taking a local honeymoon.
My wife and I spent $350 altogether for the paperwork and an officiant. We eloped beneath a tree in a park with her family present, and afterward I returned my dress shirt to Walmart for a refund. I will never regret how low-class that was.
We’ve been married now for ten years.
We bought a house, had the wedding in backyard for $10K, we put it all on credit cards for the sign up bonuses and had a 2 week honeymoon to Europe staying in 5 star hotels and first class flights all for $1,300 in signup fees.
Use that money for a honeymoon instead.
Mine cost $150. $70 for the license and $80 for the JP to do their thing.
I’m sure JP stands for something reasonable, and that makes sense, but my mind struggles against itself, and all I can imagine is it stands for “Japanese” and also my brain things “Jurassic Park”.
So even though I’m 100% confident that this DIDN’T happen, I’m just imagining your wedding, with people sitting down, waiting for the bride to walk the isle…meanwhile, over by the other side of the room are bunch of Japanese cosplayers all recreating scenes from Jurassic Park. Complete with inflatable dinosaurs and .wav files of dinosaur sounds.
All the while your guest list is like “WTF is even happening over there???”
I’m sorry. I don’t know what ACTUALLY happened at your wedding, but it would have been a HUGE upgrade if you had dinosaur fights, and Japanese cosplayers.
If you’re not a contractor, power tools. Buy the harbor freight version first when you need it. If you end up using it enough to break it, then you get a quality one.
I have never broken a 10 mm wrench, but I have lost a few. So I bought a ten pack on Amazon.
nice, you’re good for 6 months
So long as he doesn’t try to use them!
It’s always the 10!
I keep one in my center console, my keychain, and random cheapies mixed in around loose tools, on top of whatever is part of the sets. Periodically we’ll still have a hard time finding one when its needed and have to replenish.
Are they hanging out with the lost socks?
Sorry, but this only applies to drills and sanding machines. Maybe a bench grinder also you can cheap out on. Hand tools are fine to cheap out on also.
Circular saw, table saws, miter saws, angle grinders, etc…
Any spinning blade, if you cheap out, don’t be surprised if you get life-alteringly injured when you “use it enough to break it”. I was just helping some friends renovate where they had a dirt cheap miter saw and it was just about the most dangerous experience of my life.
If you are doing any big renovations, at least get makita, Milwaukee, or dewalt. You can get a TON of cheaper stuff second hand. Quality at a lower price. I got a professional older model hilti hammer drill at a tiny fraction of the price.
It really depends anymore…it can be a tough call.
I grew up using only quality tools, because cheap tools were truly shit until perhaps the 90’s, at the earliest.
HF tools used to be utter shit, but their “branded” tools are good these days. The wrenches and sockets are as good a Craftsman used to be, and equal to the store brands from Home Depot and Lowes. And overpriced Matco/Snap On can kiss my ass. I have some of their tools, they’re nice, but not worth the price.
Their branded cordless tools are good too. One thing they do differently is put the battery controller in the tool, while Milwaukee puts one in the battery. So don’t do anything foolish with the battery.
I don’t think they’re as durable as Milwaukee, the plastic seems harder, so more prone to cracking. And the warranty isn’t very long.
But with the massive cost difference, it’s a good place to start.
But exactly, that is the difference between a drill and spinning sharp metal at high speeds.
If a drill breaks, it isn’t going to send shards of metal-cutting fiber disc 20 meters per second at your face.
If a saw sucks ass like the one I used a few days ago, you can’t safely cut through wood and you end up doing dangerous things like putting your body weight on the top of the miter saw to get it down all the way, gripping the piece closer to the blade to try to get it to cut better with less tear out or to not slip, etc… which can easily lead to a finger being cut off. It is MUCH more expensive in the US especially to have to deal with a dismembered finger than the cost difference between a chinese amazon $100 miter saw and $200 entry level 10 inch dewalt.
There are a ton of people who can’t afford that. That is fine. Then spend $100 on good quality assorted hand saws. a $40 japanese pull saw, $30 for a Spear & Jackson hand saw, $40 for a pair of bacco chisels, and an angle cut box and you can do a lot more than that $100 miter saw much more safely at the cost of it being at half the speed.
If a saw sucks ass like the one I used a few days ago, you can’t safely cut through wood and you end up doing dangerous things like putting your body weight on the top of the miter saw to get it down all the way, gripping the piece closer to the blade to try to get it to cut better with less tear out or to not slip, etc…
There is a big difference between cheaping out on blades/never replacing them and cheaping out on the saw itself. I agree I wouldn’t get the absolute cheapest miter saw, but a relatively cheap one with good blades that are replaced often shouldn’t be significantly more dangerous than a more expensive one.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Prioritize quality on the sharp things. Works the same way with kitchen knives, not that you have to buy something expensive, but you should always keep it sharp. A sharp knife is dangerous, but a dull knife is dangerous and less predictable.
Seconded. This has been my strategy for accumulating personal tools.
Proper/professional grade stuff I have:
- Circle saw
- Drill
- Screwdrivers of various sizes, especially PH2
- 13mm ratchet spanner
The rest is of a lot more dubious quality.
That is something I would disagree with. Especially when it comes to battery powered tools which seems to be everything nowadays.
If you go with one of the big brands you are almost guaranteed to get a spare part later. If you only use your drill once a year, the battery might be dead in a few years if you don’t take care of it. Of course your battery might cost the same as a no name drill, but that is still a fair point IMO.
Now that you have a drill maybe you need a saw later. If you went with a big brand they typically have a large range of devices that work with the same batteries. So you can reuse your battery from the drill and also don’t need another charger for that single device. This is also not limited to tools only. Maybe you need a light or a battery powered radio for something totally unrelated.
This is very situational. I’m not a contractor, but I spend a significant portion of my time doing hobbies that require power tools. I don’t need a drill that will last for an entire day at a jobsite. Ryobi works fine for me. On the other hand, I wish I had never spent $600 on a cheap planer; I knew I’d want a better one eventually, and sure enough, I found a need to upgrade after a few years. Now I’ve spent $3600 on planers. I could have just gone with the $3k one and saved myself $600.
If I’m going to use it once, I borrow it. If I’m going to use it every few months, I buy a cheap one. If I’m going to use it every week, then it’s worth it to me to buy something I can keep for at least a decade or two.
Pretty good for anything that can kill you if it fails. Even beyond power tools.
So, for example, yes to drill. No to compressors, jacks, etc.
For jacks I always assume that it can break at any moment. That is why I put the spare tire under the car when I have the car lifted. If the jack breaks, the car will fall on the tire and not on my face.
Jack stands too. But not harbor freight ones
That’s pretty good advice, thanks.
I forget which brand it was, but I once bought a drill…charged the battery overnight, went to use it…and it died within 3 seconds. Literally 3 seconds. Thing cost like $100 a couple of years ago. Now I got a DeWalt, and it’s fine.
Unpopular opinion but wine.
From my experience majority of people can’t distinguish between 5€ wine and 500€ wine. And even if they do, they say it tastes “a bit better”, not worth the 495€ difference. Pick one that tastes good to you and don’t be ashamed if it’s cheap.
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I drink between $5 and $500 bottles, and while I will agree there is a distinct difference at the higher end, it doesn’t mean the $500 bottle will be better than a $20 bottle to the person drinking it. I humor the people that care about the price, but distinct notes of so-so music doesn’t spin my wheels.
Yeah, no it’s all a question of the person’s relationship with wine, as with other things. If you are perfectly fine with a cheap wine then yeah, plenty of them are delicious. But a connoisseur can and will appreciate what a $500 wine offers them, and it’s not qualities you can find in any $5 bottle.
Like with many things, if you appreciate the higher-end selections among them, then you’re getting something you can’t at the low end. The question is, even with those qualities, is it really worth $500? And that’s just a matter of economics.
When my son was born I got a $100 bottle of Glenlivet 18 year French Oak Finish. That’s a rather sophisticated single malt; by no means is it the best because I know people who have bourbon or scotch that costs like 5x that. However, you will not anywhere or anytime find a cheap scotch that even comes close to that Glenlivet. It was some of the smoothest and most delicious single malt I’ve ever had. Lasted me nearly a year.
Sigh. Due to a medical condition I don’t consume alcohol anymore, and haven’t for a long time. But goddamn do I miss good scotch, bourbon, beer… sigh.
Oh god, right there with you on scotch, all whiskeys (and whiskys) in fact. But wine can be hit or miss, even at the high dollars. Years ago I found an amazing cabernet with a full body and heavy chocolate notes for $2.12, and dank it for a year. But I agree that as you get up to $20-100, the likelihood of something terrible is less, and over $90 very rare.
I’ll have a glass of something with Glen in the title in your honor tonight.
If you’re reading this and curious about wine, a couple of things.
1 - Drink what you like. If you want red wine with fish, fine. The people who care, care more about rules than enjoyment.
2 - Drink what you like. I opened a $500 red for my dad’s birthday, it was so-so to my palate. I love $12 NW pinot noirs. Don’t fixate on a price.
3 - When you find something you like, take the bottle to a wine store and ask for a description of the notes of that wine. Ask them to suggest similar wines, and learn to pick out the notes that matter to you. People who don’t know wine talk price, but your sommelier really wants to hear “I’d like something full-bodied, no acid, heavy tannins, smooth finish with some fruit notes.”
4 - Your waiter is rarely a sommelier and just wants a region and type of wine. West Coast pinot noir generally makes a table happy.
Awesome.
I agree about the wine; I was just going on like the broadest scenarios because of course when it comes down to it, there’s nothing objective about it. And I agree with the pairing if I see someone bring up the issue of this wine with that protein I take pity on someone who is so stuck to these absurd notions they don’t know what enjoyment actually is.
Hah, it turned out it was 15 year Glenfiddich 25 years ago. So Cheers!
👍🥂
Also very cheap wine seems to give worse hangovers. I’m guessing due to lower quality ingredients, less filtration, and less aging.
I somewhat disagree, 5€ is too low to get a decent wine imo. Buy a wine for 10-15€ and there is no longer any difference from the 500€ one.
The last point however is the key, and I agree wholeheartedly. If you can find one for 5€ then that is good enough
I’m not much of wine drinker myself, but I once did a chef menu with the wine pairing. Every two dishes, they’d bring out a new glass of wine. It was kind blowing how the would taste one way with the first dish and a completely different way with the second dish. I’m not sure I can tell the difference between a $12 bottle and $40 bottle, but in that one meal i understood two things: first, if you know what your doing, wine and food pairings can be magical and, second, I don’t know what I’m doing.
I highly disagree. I always walk in and say. “Vitner! Your finest box of wine, on the double”
I’m far from a wine connoisseur and my favorite is an $8 rosé wine you can find at your local grocery store.
Brand?
I’d also check out the Willamette Valley pinot noir for a cheap light red.
There have been so many studies showing that everyone from average joes to top-tier judges can’t tell the difference between cheap and expensive wines.
Wine is a huge scam.
Sommeliers are just salespeople making shit up.
It’s bullshit, you don’t detect notes of 15 different things all mixed together.
The French Fiasco (or whatever it was called) in the mid-70’s is proof.
It’s actually not really that hard, any cook worth their salt can make a good shot at reverse-engineering a sauce from tasting it. It just takes a lot of practice at tasting things.
Seems something like [Proportion of People OK w/the Wine] - [Price] might be:
50% - $5
75% - $10
90% - $20
95% - $30
99% - $50I made all of this up. Who actually drinks wine? Did I come close to your made-up numbers?
Also assume some of the highest-rated wines at each price point for consumers who appreciate that style in general.
Depending on the country, and where you shop. You should spend more if you can tell the difference, but not more than that.
On the expensive end you are paying for the famous canteen+region, and if you go to a wine shop you could find something from a less known vineyard that is as good for less.
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There are so many great tasting cheap wines! My favorite is about $16-18 or so but I’m perfectly happy with $4-8 wine too. I will agree though that there are some extremely interesting and complex flavors to be found in the high end stuff that I find very compelling, and can understand the appeal of, but I ain’t paying for it.
Video games. Unless it’s a game I play with friends I typically wait for it to drop in price significantly.
Also, if you’re not going to play it this week, think twice! And, if you’re not going to play it this month, think a third time!
Yup. My strategy has long been:
- Put game in wishlist.
- Wait for it to drop to under 20$ (or close)
- Profit. Well maybe not profit, but save money.
Also good to wait until all the bugs are worked out. Been playing Cyberpunk recently and it performs really well!
Waits and waits but Nintendo won’t budge.
Nintendo’s stuff is free on day 1, or a few years after release if it’s their Wii U stuff. I think the first Wii took a year before the Twilight Hack happened.
Let’s hope they fuck up again on the Switch 2!
Apparentlyv Mr Clean MagicErasers are just melamine sponges which are actually mucho cheapo
Yeah, great for cleaning, and I got a pack of 100 for like $4
Mr Clean is like $4 for 2 if you’re lucky
I buy the giant blocks of 100 generic melamine sponges from Amazon.
However, having a couple of the Mr clean versions around is prudent. They are slightly different. They deform more easily and disintegrate faster but they get deeper into crevices. It’s super rare that I find something that generic ones won’t do a great job on but it’s good to have a couple of the name brand ones for that time when they don’t cut it.
Over the counter medications. Store brand ibuprofen, allergy meds, cold medicine, etc. Sometimes as much as 1/7th the price, just make sure the active ingredients match amounts and you’re set.
Most of the time, yes. Though certain cough medicines have been apparently using benzene in them, which is insane. (Cheaper to produce)
You can look for carbomers in the inactive ingredients list, but they don’t have to put that info in if they don’t want, which is insane to me. We need regulations that ban carcinogens like benzene being used for the manufacturing of drugs.
The problem with store brand medications is they often will have the same active ingredient, but then will have a cheaper or less-effective catalyst used. This generally causes them to be less effective. At least this is what I was taught years ago. I’ve definitely noticed a difference in cold/sinus meds. Generic does not compare to brand name Sudafed.
Decongestants are a weird one. Pseudoephedrine is available but is behind the pharmacy counter where most people don’t realize they can get it. Pretty much every other nasal decongestant has been replaced by phenylephrine which is extremely ineffective. Both the generic cold/sinus meds and sudafed PE will be most likely be phenylephrine, and you might as well not waste your money at that point. Actual pseudoephedrine (sudafed or a generic if they make it) will help.
Reminder, I am not a doctor, pharmacist, or healthcare worker. I’m just a rando on the internet who has heard a lot about this.
Meth heads ruined pseudoephedrine. The last thing I want to do when there’s a compressor filling my sinuses with 300psi of pain is wait in the pharmacy line, show 3 forms of ID, and get questioned about why I need medicine.
Look at me. If I were to start crying from the pressure in my head, the tears would shoot forward 20ft…
That’s very true and I’d argue more an issue of our regulation (or lack thereof) of both drugs and medication.
College books.
Yar har libgen be free
pets.
When people ask which breed my cats are, I respond with the truth: Purebred neighborhood conglomerate. They’re both healthy, happy, and awesome.
Just make sure you don’t cheap out in their medical care - sterilization and any necessary vaccinations.
God’s perfect killing machine is the pinnacle of cat “breeds”. It’s heartbreaking seeing people do to cats what we’ve done to dogs with selective breeding for purely cosmetic traits.
There was a book I read called “Domesticated” that permanently changed my view on pets. The book had chapters broken out by animal and also had before/after pictures of certain animals from a century ago vs what we have now, after the influencer puppymills and such got their hands on them/inbred them to shit.
We have hideously deformed some animals that used to look much, much different a century ago, and those animals now pay a steep price in pain and life expectancy.
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/617uIoOR97L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg
Neighborhood kitty is still cute kitty!!! But they gotta be healthy kitty.
If you are looking for a companion, definitely. If you are looking for an animal bred for a specific purpose, find a reputable breeder.
Former chef: Knives. My most expensive knife is $80 with a lifetime warrantee. Most are $10-$20. Instead, learn how to use and take care of a knife.
Yup. I learnt that the price tag doesn’t make much of a difference. Sharpening tools do.
I’ve been sharpening my knives for a year or so now, but last week i bought this piece of plastic with the angles for different knives on them and it leveled up my sharpening game significantly
You’ve been sharpening your knives for a year? Is there anything left of them?
Got a picture?
I tried to post a picture but it was too big I can try again later. Its hard to get a good image of the edge though
Good advice but I wouldnt really call that ‘cheaping out’. You can buy kitchen knives for 2$ which you definitely shouldnt do
Disagree. My favourite paring knife came from a discount bin at a dollar store in a pack of five. You can find decent knives at a dump if to you look hard enough, depending on your definition of cheap.
If the handle falls apart then the average person cant do shit about it even if blade quality is the same as a nice one.
I have hope for the average person.
Oh yeah? Well half of all people are even dumber than that, so there.
I can pay a little more for a nice forged knife, folded steel, but anything you buy at walmart or amazon is the same quality regardless of price.
Handles make a huge difference but they rarely impact price.
I refuse to get a forged knife, I demand the real thing.
Great Grampa was supposed to be buried with that joke.
In my experience the vast majority of cheap knives can’t hold an edge at all. The super budget stainless used is just too soft. At the same time I can find many in the $70-100 range that do considerably better in that regard - I sharpen them 3-4 times less frequently.
I prefer to spend a little more on the 1-2 that get the most use.
Knife handles are important. If you buy a cheap knife where the handle snaps while you’re using it, you’re going to get cut.
I think you should get expensive knives as a convenience, or you are pushing the limits of the steel. I cook a lot, and do lots and lots of chopping to cook food for the family. There have been times I’ve fine diced 10lbs of onions in one go, on top of cabbage, tomatoes, peppers etc.
With that much chopping, anything that can’t shave like a razor is dull. That’s why I use a really nice knife, thinned, sharpened and tuned it to my preferences.
TLDR most people are fine to use any generic knife (if you lack self respect) but if those aren’t cutting it for you, get something better. No pun intended
I work in a restaurant and 10 lbs of onions lasts 36 hours. We buy the shittiest chef knife Ed Don has to offer and it’s fine. I like nice knives on a hobby level, but they’re not necessary on a personal or professional level.
Cell phones and plans. Any phone is good enough for regular use these days. And any carrier uses the towers of all the other carriers, it’s not like the old days where there was CDMA vs GSM.
The most expensive and cheapest phones are not worth it. Anything in between is good enough. For me at least prepaid phone plans are better than contract plans.
Can find great deals for 2yo second hand high tier phones
There is at least ONE exception in the US: Firstnet. They primarily use AT&T’s towers, but they have some additional resources that other carriers don’t have - they have additional towers and entire network bands that other carriers don’t have access to. This allows us to still have coverage in natural disasters or network congestion times. In addition, if there’s a natural disaster that knocks out coverage, they have satellite-based trucks that stage DURING the disaster, then come online as soon as it’s over.
A few years ago, I had to ride out hurricane Ida in New Orleans (long story). The western eyewall passed directly over the house we were in, and the primary trunk lines coming into the city got destroyed by a cable tower that collapsed into the Mississippi. The next morning I had cell phone coverage when none of the other carriers had come back online yet. We didn’t even have power, but my phone worked perfectly.
You have to be a first responder to join - you have to be added by your department’s communications coordinator.
if with cell phones you mean the non-smart, dumb phones then I can agree. however if you buy the cheapest of smartphones, what you’ll get is even more datamining than usual, which you may be even unable go remove because it’s bootloader cannot be unlocked.
but I would say don’t cheap out on tech generally, because you’ll get extremely weak security and nonexistent respect towards you as a customer.smartphones is a dirty business. don’t support the bad actors with your many, and then long term with your data
I mean beside the fairphone and pixel with calyxos and graphenos or the librem 5 (and THATs a niche user that’ll like that one) the rest all seem equally malicious towords us users.
that’s true, but at least try to buy one that’s not extremely locked down, or unnecessarily convoluted to unlock. that instantly rules out all samsungs, for both of these reasons and for destroying phones when sent for repair to an official service
Nah, cheap phones often have their bootloader unlocked/unlockable. Really happy with my POCO M5 running modified AOSP. Also, unlike every expensive phone nowadays, it has 3.5mm jack, SD card slot, and exceptional battery life for hiking/trekking (it survives 5-6 days as just a camera+map phone with all power saving on, in comparison people with flagships typically only last 2-3 days with the same usage and power-saving techniques).
I have a very low value lenovo tablet that my provider was giving away essentially for free (for worthless loyalty points I think). its BL cannot be unlocked, it has a special bootloader that does not implement the standard unlock commands.
Other than that, I have to admit I don’t often deal with cheap phones, because my experience was that not even LOS supports a lot them. Maybe that’s changed though.
Yes, that can happen sometimes, but I find that there are plenty of cheap options with unlocked bootloaders if you look for them.
Bell and Rogers actually don’t share their towers in Canada.
I believe what you say about networks using each other’s towers is incorrect for a large portion of the world. Where do you live?
Redpocket is really cheap if you guys want some prepaid plans
The first round of tools for any hobby or DIY project.
If you don’t know what you want from a screwdriver, snips, circular saw etc. then there is no point in buying the super primo bells & whistles expensive stuff.
Once you’ve used a tool and learned what you don’t like about it, or what you actually use it for, or how often you actually use it… Then you can make the informed decision to just buy another cheap one, or splash out on something that’s actually fun to use.Buy the 2nd last tool you will ever need.
There are rare occasions where “buy once cry once” apply. But it’s rare
My attitude has become to buy high-end tools because even if I don’t use them again, I got the best possible experience when I did to decide whether it was worth it, and chances are I can resell it (keeping the box and all accessories) for barely enough discount to have rented some piece of shit that I couldn’t choose to keep if I wanted to.
And bad tools make bad products. A tablesaw that can’t cut a straight line and starts to wobble after 10 uses doesn’t make you want to keep doing that. When I’ve replaced a bad tool with a good one, I like the feeling I get when it just works properly.
I’ve bought enough cheap-shit tools over the years to change my attitude entirely on this. I’ve gotten lucky sometimes, but usually you pay for what you get.
Power tools are sometimes the exception to the rule of buying cheap tools. Saws are probably the biggest exception. My cheap corded ryobi saw is awful because it’s so flimsy, and the deck bends. The makita saw I replaced it with is 100x easier to use, more accurate, and safer.
Buying cheap tools applies to hand tools, air tools, hydraulic stuff, etc.
Yeah I got a cheap Harbor Freight jigsaw and I hate it. Cut line indicator is useless, blade slips out of the roller guide so the cut doesnt stay square or straight, the keyless clamp is so inflexible I’d rather just have the classic screw-tight mechanism…
I put it away and used a circular saw, coping saw, and japanese pull saw to finish the project rather than keep fighting with it.
I like this approach, it reduces waste significantly.
I call it the Harbor Freight rule - If I need to buy a tool for the first time, I buy the cheapass Harbor Freight version. If I then use the cheapass version enough to kill it (or make me wish I was dead instead), then I spring for the expensive version.
“Buy once cry once” seems to apply very well to wire cutters. (Link is to a YouTube video about how terrible most wire cutters actually are)
Wrapping paper and bows/ribbons. THey’re just gonna get torn up anyway, no reason to spent a ton of money to make it fancy
My grandfather used to wrap our presents in the comics pages from newspapers when I was a kid. I loved it.
Same for me. It was easy for him to spot which gifts were from him when bringing them to our house and putting them together with the other gifts too, so that was another win in his book :)
I had some older relatives who would use the Sunday comics as wrapping paper, and I’d open the gifts carefully so I could read the comics when I was done.
I just use brown kraft paper and some basic ribbon in a color appropriate for the occasion. I think maybe $15 in materials has given me a solid decade of gift wrapping and I haven’t even gone through half of it yet. Costs basically nothing on a per gift basis, and I get way more compliments on my wrap jobs than I did before I switched to using brown paper.
I had a friend wrapping gifts in the free maps you could grab at the post office and library. Those always looked cool.
Gotta love the wrapping paper so thin you can see the gift under it
Power tools. If you are not a professional and need to buy a tool (if you can’t borrow one), buy the cheap one.
I used a $30 Ryobi drill for over a decade and it was fine.
This is solid advice. If you buy a cheap one and use it so much it breaks, you’ll know you use it enough to warrant a nicer one.
Ironically, it didn’t break, but when I was on the road and needed a power drill to fix something, I didn’t feel bad about dropping $500 on a new Milwaukee from Ace hardware.
But don’t cheap out on drill bits, nor should you try and use the same drill bit for like a decade without sharpening it.
Think of drill bits like a good, sharp knife. Knives cut far better and far easier when they sharp, exactly the same with drill bits. If you trying to cut something you would normally pick the right type of knife to do the job, exactly the same with drill bits.
If you driving screws or other fasteners with your drill consider better quality driver bits if you have a lot of them to drive, such as building a deck. Good quality driver bits cam out far far less and will take more torque so be faster/go in better. Using cheap driver bits is probably worse than using cheap drill bits.
Is there a sharpener you recommend? Drill Doctor?
Never tried sharpening them myself, always used a service as standard jobber bits are less than a pound to get done for you. I normally save up a bunch of stuff including saw blades and get them done at once to save on shipping at hit the low volume discounts.
However, its only worth doing on quality components, I wouldn’t pay a pound or waste my own time to get a cheap ass drill bit sharpened, I would just replace it.
My saw blades start at like £70 so paying £12 to get it sharpened is good value, but a £30 blade is not really worth it, not least for which it won’t cut anywhere near as much material before getting blunt between sharpens. Same logic for drill bills, some of my SDS ones are over £30 each, my augur bits can be over £50 each, so those are worth looking after, not going to bother for a set of 10 bits for £20.
I wouldn’t even call Ryobi the cheap one, they are good quality and cost more than many others. Harbor Freight is what I’d call cheap - my rule of thumb is that very simple hand tools from HF are OK but anything complex is probably not
We needed a router for one job. My boss got a router from Harbor Freight. Burned through the brushes halfway through (same day). Swapped brushes. Finished the job.
His alternate plan (if we burned through the second set): return it as dysfunctional. As it would be same day, replacement would be natural.
I think he ended up taking it back for a refund after the job was done.
I bought a cylinder head pressure gauge from HF and took it home, didn’t work at all. When I looked at it closely I could see that it was completely missing the core valve that is supposed to be in the bottom. It was just a hole instead of a valve. Took it back for a refund next day.
Clothes and housewares. Buying secondhand is vastly cheaper, better for the environment, and can get you surprisingly high quality sometimes.
Over the counter medications. If the active ingredient is the same, delivered in the same way and in the same dosage, the effects will be the same.
Games. There’s no good reason to not wait for a price drop and/or sale unless it’s some multiplayer thing and you want to play with friends. In the modern day, you’ll even usually get an improved product after more time has passed for patches and updates.
In case someone needs to hear this:
DO NOT PREORDER GAMES FROM AAA-DEVELOPERS/STUDIOS
I agree with all of those. Some of my favorite clothing I’ve gotten thrifting. I’ve been able to find never worn brand name clothing for way cheaper. Heck. I recently got a pair of Eddie Bauer shorts, never used (still had the baggie with spare buttons attached to the waistband), for $5.
Second thrift stores, especially for any small appliance that a couple might get 2 of from their wedding. You can often find a brand new crockpot or juicer or coffee maker. 👍
Also anything potentially breakable. Crockery, glassware etc. Best to have something that’s already been stress tested in someone else’s home.
On board with the thrift shops! I got a $250 brand new wok for $10 and it’s the best one I’ve ever used.
Fun Fact, Zertec is just Citrizine Hydrochloride but 10x the price of generics.
I love second hand shopping for everything, even smartphones and laptops. Just yesterday I bought several pairs of shoes for the kids, some nice sweaters, toys and two wine glasses second hand and I paid 18€ in total, no lie.
Society was brainwashed into buying new shit, while drowning in second hand shit that just looks slightly different. Insanity!
Wine - it is full of marketing gimmick and usually the mid range is best. The same is with whisky, rums and other alcohol.
On the other hand, at least here, is better to pay premium for craft beer.
Depends on the country you’re in.
For wine it is universal, but yes I can’t get decent cider without paying premium, I think that in UK it is different.
I’m in the UK and there’s definitely better cider if you’re willing to pay £5+ for a single bottle but there used to be a really cheap South African cider that was way better than the big UK brands. IDK what happened but you only seem to be able to get it online at a way higher cost now.
I think there are some really good Bourbons in the USA, but idk how they compare to expensive whiskeys.
More expensive bourbon tends to be more interesting but not necessarily more pleasant to drink. In my case it quickly becomes too fancy for my taste buds around 2-3x the price of the cheapest one. Whiskey is a bit more complicated.
If you like the taste, why pay more?
