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Buy well, buy once

fellow.ventures

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Re: Buy well, buy once

#311

Post by dhosek »

cookie_monsta wrote: post #304
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ways ago I started sliding towards DRM free digital books. They take up much less hoarding space.

I like the way a bookshelf looks on a wall. I like that friends can browse and discuss and borrow. I like looking at book titles and thinking about when I bought them or how I felt when I read them. An e-reader is amazing for travel, but doesn't give you any of the above.

Pretty much that. My bookshelves are not merely a collection of books, but they’re also an expression of myself. Many of the books I have, I can tell you where, when and why I bought them. Even books that I’ve let go for the sake of space still carry that memory with them. Not to mention that many of the books I own are not available as ebooks and likely never will be (a lot of my collection veers towards the esoteric and specialized).

Re: Buy well, buy once

#312

Post by Noumenon72 »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #10

This article, and people posting in this thread are saying that they own 100 or 200 things. I can't believe this at all. My utility room, which basically just has stuff like cleaning products and rags/cloths etc, has more than 200 items in it. It's all useful, we're talking things like bleach, deodorant, shampoo, handwash, etc. My house probably has 50 or more pieces of art on the walls and then another 50 pieces of…

> This article, and people posting in this thread are saying that they own 100 or 200 things.

> I can't believe this at all.

> Either you guys are all just-moved-out kids, single and living in a single room, or we're defining "thing" differently.

I feel like the assumption in this is that people who are single and living in a single room are not "people", and shouldn't be posting about how much they own? My utility room contains a washer, a dryer, one bottle of Tide, and a paper bag for dryer lint. I'm not posting "people say they have 2000 square feet in their home, I can't believe this. Either you guys live in houses, or we're defining 'feet' differently".

Re: Buy well, buy once

#313

Post by anonymouskimmer »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #305
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then he mentions that he has only 192 "worldly possessions". I'd like to see the actual list, Author didn't even seem to read the LA Times link he linked. I've personally got close to 5000 staples in a drawer. And I'm sure the author has some similar huge amount of an object. He's undoubtedly not counting his shoelaces as separate objects, where it seems likely the authors of the research on items in a household ar…

That seems like a pretty bad statistic. No source online, possibly just an oft-repeated estimate from "professional organizer Regina Lark". There are only 100 paperclips in a box of paperclips, so that's not a major source of items. This statistic requires 150 items for every square foot in a 2000-square-foot house. Not even things like my laundry basket or spice rack manage that.

> or spice rack

I see you aren't counting the individual granules.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#314

Post by pers0n »

roncesvalles wrote: post #152
dublinben wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m fond of the conspiracy theory that the rise of minimalism is actually propaganda to placate Millennials who can’t afford the same level of material comfort as their parents and other earlier generations enjoyed.

To me, minimalism seems like a natural reaction to the transient lifestyles that people live now. A generation or two ago, many would grow up and settle down in the same town or county with 4 years of college being the most time that one spent outside their hometown. If you have a permanent home, it's easier to invest in filling it with stuff. Today I hesitate to buy anything that I can't pack in a suitcase or wouldn…

Most of the gung-ho minimalists are upper middle class or rich, they may have only a sofa and coffee table and a lamp in their $6000 a month apartment but those 3 items cost over $10,000.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#315

Post by asddubs »

sanderjd wrote: post #261
asddubs wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seems like a useless piece of advice to give to someone with that level of awareness about it.

This will probably rub you even wronger, but your defensive response here makes me think the advice was more useful than you think.

Except I'm not the same person the advice was given to

Re: Buy well, buy once

#316

Post by cookie_monsta »

CPLX wrote: post #310
cookie_monsta wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> BMW is consistently in the top 5 rankings for reliability. And Toyota consistently ranks higher. https://www.drive.com.au/news/most-reliable-and-least-reliab...

Yes so a Corolla is a lower quality car with comparable or slightly higher reliability stats. Unless you think the word quality is just fully synonymous with reliability (in which case a paper airplane beats an F-18) then my point stands.

I don't know that 72% to 65% is comparable or slightly higher. That seems like a gap to me. And the fact that BMW ranked 10th last year isn't great.

Quality is famously subjective, that's why you'll never see it ranked in a way that everyone can agree on the way you can with reliability which is actually measurable.

But reliability is one of the markers that most people would use to judge quality. And we generally expect aircraft to go where we want them to without catastrophic failure, so I would think that an F18 is more reliable than a paper plane.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#317

Post by Our_Benefactors »

msla wrote: post #299
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…

> A Rolex is an incredible engineering marvel and is in fact very high quality and durable. But it's fundamentally worse at being a timepiece than a digital watch synchronized to an NTP time server.

This is a completely different device than a mechanical watch. Nobody cross shops GPS watches with a Rolex. Maybe a grand Seiko.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#318

Post by hakfoo »

bob1029 wrote: post #221
itsoktocry wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My grandfather still has his Hickey Freeman suits and sports coats tailored and repaired by a local menswear shop. Do you think people are getting new suits because they are "worn out", or perhaps because they're no longer in style? > Their technics AV components still work with their high quality speakers. I'll bet modern engineered speakers will beat those high quality speakers, at a fraction of the price. That's…

> I'll bet modern engineered speakers will beat those high quality speakers, at a fraction of the price. You'd be surprised how shitty most "modern" speakers are. Size is still king. Doesn't matter how fast your fancy microcontrollers are. The big-ass cabinets from the 80s and 90s still sound incredible when you put them next to the typical experience you'd find on the shelves of Target or Best Buy.

The one argument I can see for modern speakers is materials: theoretically we can have better materials science-- better foams and rubbers for the gaskets and such, better insulating batting.

However, it is frustrating that I can't get modern speakers anything like my parents' three-ways with a 12 or 15 inch woofer without finding some esoteric offering.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#319

Post by ocdtrekkie »

cookie_monsta wrote: post #304
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ways ago I started sliding towards DRM free digital books. They take up much less hoarding space.

I like the way a bookshelf looks on a wall. I like that friends can browse and discuss and borrow. I like looking at book titles and thinking about when I bought them or how I felt when I read them. An e-reader is amazing for travel, but doesn't give you any of the above.

Sure, but you should be intentional about the books you want a paper copy of. "I will read this again regularly", "I want to page through this for reference often", "I want to display my love for this book" are all good reasons to own a physical copy. But if you have 1,500 books, how many fall into that category? Maybe a hundred?

Re: Buy well, buy once

#320

Post by nerdchum »

mathgeek wrote: post #265
benmanns wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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…

> The Crocs will likely have no retained value, while the $500 shoes may be worth something after 10 years. This is the core of the “secret” to wearing high quality shoes at a low cost. Buy good used shoes and get them resoled as necessary. E.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/comments/1jhp8o/a...

I did that for a while. Resoling is $150 or more which is more than a normal pair of shoes costs.
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