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Buy well, buy once

fellow.ventures

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Re: Buy well, buy once

#231

Post by bombcar »

Thorrez wrote: post #134
0xr0kk3r wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"rather than getting the $70 replacement part" Appliance repair usually starts at a $100 house-call fee and goes up from there. It is cheaper to buy a new dishwasher than get it repaired.

When I moved into my apartment, the racks in the dishwasher were badly rusted. I told the management. They replaced the entire dishwasher. They said they couldn't get a replacement rack.

You often can get the part, but it’s expensive and with shipping and hassle you might as well but a new dishwasher.

Especially as a landlord, spend $200-400 to replace the racks or buy a new for $500 and pretty much guarantee no calls on that item for five years.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#232

Post by bombcar »

briHass wrote: post #215
throw0101b wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They replaced the entire dishwasher. They said they couldn't get a replacement rack. What are the margins on replacement racks? Someone would have to pay for warehousing, stock tracking, employees for packing/shipping, then add shipping costs. Why would anyone offer them?

This problem is multiplied by the fact that most consumer goods have subtle differences in design between brands and even model lines within the brand. If there were only 2 or 3 different, standardized dishwasher racks for all models, stocking those few would be cost effective. As someone that owns a number of small-engine powered devices, I'm always amazed at how easy/cheap it is to find parts. Most small engines ar…

Small engine devices also often utilize belts so you can replace the whole engine with various different ones and only have to line up and size the proper belt.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#233

Post by devilbunny »

Ryoung27 wrote: post #199
bombcar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I count all those as parts of the above! (Counting owned items can get entirely silly).

I don't own anything at all, but my wife sure does have a lot of stuff I use often that she never uses, and happen to be in a men's large.

G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate fame once said something on his radio show along the lines of "well, as a convicted felon, I'm not allowed to own firearms. However, Mrs. Liddy has a large collection that she occasionally allows me to use under her supervision."

Re: Buy well, buy once

#234

Post by ghaff »

emodendroket wrote: post #96
patrec wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One also has to admire Whitstable man's marketing genius if he's able to live of his $100 "wallets" (which mostly amount to two badly sewn together pieces of leather). This article feels a bit too on the nose though. But he probably knows his audience.

They're really more like card holders, but I looked up that term and found they've now been rebranded as "minimalist wallets." Hey, even minimalism can be commoditized and sold. All that is solid melts into air after all.

A lot fewer people regularly use business cards and a lot more people rarely use cash or need to carry a lot of cards with them given they can store info on their phone. I carry one made by Saddleback and it's perfect for me.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#235

Post by ghaff »

Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #110
nebula8804 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving it away has now haunted me. Father passed away two years ago and a bunch of computing equipment he bought for me had been donated years before he had passed when it was worth very little. Now in this post covid era all of those things are 'vintage' and super expensive. I have tracked down some of the original equipment through the people I originally gave it to but it has not really been possible to get those…

I'm going through my own journey with this at the moment, the thing I keep telling myself is that "this item will have a better life somewhere else" and "my house isn't a landfill". It's tough though. Plus selling stuff is a full-time job really and it's annoying AF if it's not your day job. So I guess the question is - are you going to ever sell it? If not, then it doesn't really matter if it's expensive, it's just…

I've gotten rid of a lot of stuff I've accumulated over the years--including most computer-related hardware and software I don't use. One thing I find hard is that you know you have stuff that someone would be delighted to get for cheap/free. But it really isn't worth my time to try to make that connection. And a lot of it is niche enough that I doubt I'd find takers at a yard sale out in the country.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#236

Post by ajnin »

Strange article. It is about an unrepairable pair of shoes that need to be recycled but its title is "Buy well, buy once". Not really the case, then ?

Then he mentions that he has only 192 "worldly possessions". I'd like to see the actual list, because if it is accurate he mustn't have many forks or boxes of food in his cupboards. So he probably lives in a big city, eats out very often, takes public transportation, and basically relies on external services for things he does not have. Which is a kind of lifestyle that has a lot of externalities and does not really have a minimalist impact on society as a whole, so it feels less appealing to me.

I'm rather in the opposite camp, if I have some fixing to do in my house, rather than call a plumber for example I'll buy the tools, learn by watching youtube videos of experts, and do it myself. Not because of a philosophical view of the world but because I like to learn skills and be self-reliant. My possessions also last a long time because I'm often able to repair them.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#237

Post by nerdchum »

CPLX wrote: post #223
nerdchum wrote: post #214

I think a lot of times this philosophy is just rich people justifying paying a lot for high status items. a pair of Crocs is 50 bucks and that's one of the highest quality pairs of shoes you'll buy for the price. you could buy 10 pairs of Crocs for a $500 pair of Alden's so even if the crocs only lasted a year, it would take a decade to recoup the investment on the Alden's. but the crocs don't have the same status th…

Pretty on the nose. I think even more accurate is that quality/longevity and price are almost completely decoupled. Spending more doesn’t guarantee higher quality it mostly gets you exceptional graphic design and deftly nested packaging that makes you feel good when you open it. But it’s not like all the cheap stuff is better. A Rolex is an incredible engineering marvel and is in fact very high quality and durable. S…

Yeah completely agree that price is decoupled from quality nowadays and it's pretty random.

Price seems to be based a lot more on marketing and brand saturation than quality. And quality brands get bought up all the time and the new company will coast on the brand while outsourcing manufacturing to the lowest bidder.

And you can't trust reviews with affiliate marketing around.

So pretty much the only thing to do to identify quality is to experiment or share info with people you trust.

I've wasted a ton of money on shitty products on the way to identifying quality products.

I'm not even railing against status. I bought a pair of Alan Edmonds specifically for job interviews to signal status but I wear LL Bean shoes and Crocs the rest of the time.

Also, there's other factors besides just durability and status. There's aesthetics, variable utility, ease of replacement, warranty availability, price, etc.

I hate shopping so I think alot about this haha

Re: Buy well, buy once

#238

Post by benmanns »

nerdchum wrote: post #214

I think a lot of times this philosophy is just rich people justifying paying a lot for high status items. a pair of Crocs is 50 bucks and that's one of the highest quality pairs of shoes you'll buy for the price. you could buy 10 pairs of Crocs for a $500 pair of Alden's so even if the crocs only lasted a year, it would take a decade to recoup the investment on the Alden's. but the crocs don't have the same status th…

$50/$500 is a 10%/year yield, which is hard come by in any guaranteed investment. The Crocs will likely have no retained value, while the $500 shoes may be worth something after 10 years.

However, that ignores the cost of maintaining a nice pair of shoes (both money and time) as one needs to clean, polish, and resole every so often.

You might want shoes in two or three colors/styles, which would make the Crocs last 2-3x longer, same for the other shoes, but are you really going to want the same expensive shoes in 30 years?

I think the higher end stuff that retains value and requires less maintenance might be a better example, like if someone is good at buying watches they could get a Rolex that appreciates in value and ends up costing them nothing vs a series of cheaper watches. Or compare to a $500 Apple Watch you replace every couple years. I don’t wear watches, though, and I’m not good at buying or selling them.

Really, I think there are some expensive, durable goods that last longer and are cheaper you might think, but still more expensive once you take into account the maintenance and time value of money. But nice stuff is nice to have, and it’s helpful that you don’t have to replace it so often.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#239

Post by sanderjd »

nerdchum wrote: post #214

I think a lot of times this philosophy is just rich people justifying paying a lot for high status items. a pair of Crocs is 50 bucks and that's one of the highest quality pairs of shoes you'll buy for the price. you could buy 10 pairs of Crocs for a $500 pair of Alden's so even if the crocs only lasted a year, it would take a decade to recoup the investment on the Alden's. but the crocs don't have the same status th…

The way I would put the Crocs thing is that they are not versatile. Maybe you could live a whole life with a pair of Crocs and a pair of well made leather shoes. But in that situation a minimalism extremist might ask: what are the Crocs for? You can wear the leather shoes around the house but you can't wear the Crocs to a wedding.

But I think your point is generally true, though I'm not convinced it is very responsive to this specific article. I didn't get much preachiness from this article, but maybe it was there, or maybe you are familiar with this person's other writing, I dunno.

My take is that "minimalism" is indeed often a status game as you say, but that it also has good insights for the rest of us who aren't interested in those games, but do feel this sense of having too much junk cluttering up our lives.

I'm far from a "true" minimalist, but reading stuff like this over the years has totally impacted my thinking. When thinking about buying things now, I do think about whether I could spend a little more for something I'll be able to use a lot more. Or even ignoring price differences either way, I just evaluate things from this perspective of durability. And I think that's good.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#240

Post by DubiousPusher »

nerdchum wrote: post #237
CPLX wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty on the nose. I think even more accurate is that quality/longevity and price are almost completely decoupled. Spending more doesn’t guarantee higher quality it mostly gets you exceptional graphic design and deftly nested packaging that makes you feel good when you open it. But it’s not like all the cheap stuff is better. A Rolex is an incredible engineering marvel and is in fact very high quality and durable. S…

Yeah completely agree that price is decoupled from quality nowadays and it's pretty random. Price seems to be based a lot more on marketing and brand saturation than quality. And quality brands get bought up all the time and the new company will coast on the brand while outsourcing manufacturing to the lowest bidder. And you can't trust reviews with affiliate marketing around. So pretty much the only thing to do to i…

In the world of fashion perhaps. In the world of tools, absolutely not.
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