Love the edition with this one! I admire you and your determination to be successful but not arrogant or posh. Reminds me of a friend of my dads, untold millions but you’d never know it looking at him. Because of those principles, he’s got the money he has.
I agree with buying the better brand appliance and other stuff. We’ve learned that ourselves, though with cheaper things thankfully. A printer is a prime example of that. You can buy the 75 or 100$ printer that goes on clearance deals for a limited time only!!!! (Or so the poster would have you believe) but in the end, that cheap ass printer will last you 6 months maybe. Then you are out looking for another cheap ass printer. It’s a vicious cycle that we ended up saying screw that, let’s buy the multipurpose 500$ printer instead and see how that goes. Had the printer 3 years and runs perfect! We’ve taken small lessons like that and applied them to other areas of life. We won’t buy food at the cheapest grocery stores, instead we opt to buy them from farms directly by visiting them even though they cost more it’s far more important to keep local farmers and businesses alive. Our money is their paycheck after all!
I would add that another good thing to try and do is if something breaks or doesn’t work as well as it used to, it can’t hurt to try and fix it. That mid-range TV that’s kind of working but not as good? Could just need a bulb replaced for 50$ instead of buying a brand new TV. Killer savings right there!
Thanks for these series, I’m glad to read them but also see some things we do in our lives that make sense but that you do them as well.
My wife and I agreed early on in our marriage on one major thing-buy what you need at the moment, but save up for the best. The need will get you through the moment and by the time it destroys itself, it should give enough time to cover the saving for the best item. We did that with a video camera early on. In 2003, we bought a $100 camera. Two years later, we bought one of the first HD cameras with an internal hard drive that would sell now for $300 brand new, but we bought it for $1,800. Our hope was to have HD video of our children growing up. We do :) Many were recording in standard definition at that time, but I'm happy to be able to show my kids really good video of their childhood throughout their childhood. This applied in many areas of our life.
That's definitely a good point and perhaps what I may have alluded to just not in the correct way. We've all bought that cheap 100$ printer/item to get us what we needed it to do but when it breaks, I think it's important to not keep buying the cheap things but opt for the one that's a good quality.
I'm glad that you and your wife have done this! It's important for sure and doesn't lose importance as time goes on it seems.
Would you believe that mine is over ten years old. I use it more to make a photo copy than to print anything. It still does the trick.