I’m a big fan if islay whisky, and while there’s a lot of good stuff in the top shelf, the middle shelf should also have a lot of nice ones.

Greatly depends on the type of alcohol. Since aging usually makes things more expensive and generally it greatly reduces the bitterness and alcohol “sting” as well as increasing the flavor from barrel woods and other additives, things that are aged often take a big jump in quality along with the big jump in price.

But outside of aging, you’re definitely on the money. The stuff that’s 25-50 is usually the best bang for your buck. The more expensive stuff is usually inflated by marketing like good advertising to make it popular or gimmicks like fancy bottles.

For headphones, DEFINITELY not true in my experience. There’s cheap and gimmicky (like Skullcandy), there’s perceived “luxury” brands like Beats (which aren’t actually worth their money) but then there’s brands that actually offer significantly better quality and longevity for the price, like Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic, Audio-Technica and Sony to name a few.

Why are you talking about Beats like they’re real headphones?

One exception: I wouldn’t buy a noname filter claiming to e.g. be a hepa filter or haning high MERV rating - I wouldn’t trust a brand that might not be around long enough to be penalized for false advertising

If you like the taste, why pay more?

Depends on the country you’re in.

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.

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.

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.

I have never broken a 10 mm wrench, but I have lost a few. So I bought a ten pack on Amazon.

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.

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.

Pretty good for anything that can’t kill you if it fails. Even beyond power tools.

So, for example, yes to drill. No to compressors, jacks, etc.

To go along with your motto, cheap breaks replace with expensive if you still need the tool.

We tried cheap ones, but our kids get irritated skin from them. Pampers works for us. That being said, I’d go for the cheapest brand that works for the little ones.

I remember the expensive ones, Pampers, being way worse, the pee is so absorbed the kid doesn’t feel it but is still in it and get irritated skin, and poo leaked way more easily.

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

Yup. I learnt that the price tag doesn’t make much of a difference. Sharpening tools do.

Good advice but I wouldnt really call that ‘cheaping out’. You can buy kitchen knives for 2$ which you definitely shouldnt do

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.

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 had a friend wrapping gifts in the free maps you could grab at the post office and library. Those always looked cool.

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.

My grandfather used to wrap our presents in the comics pages from newspapers when I was a kid. I loved it.

Gotta love the wrapping paper so thin you can see the gift under it

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.

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

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.

(i) Peaches. Any firm yellow variety of the species Prunus persica L., excluding nectarine varieties, which are pitted, peeled, and diced, not less than 30 percent and not more than 50 percent.

(ii) Pears. Any variety, of the species Pyrus communis L. or Pyrus sinensis L., which are peeled, cored, and diced, not less than 25 percent and not more than 45 percent.

(iii) Pineapples. Any variety, of the species Ananas comosus L., which are peeled, cored, and cut into sectors or into dice, not less than 6 percent and not more than 16 percent.

(iv) Grapes. Any seedless variety, of the species Vitis vinifera L., or Vitis labrusca L., not less than 6 percent and not more than 20 percent.

(v) Cherries. Approximate halves or whole pitted cherries of the species Prunus cerasus L., not less than 2 percent and not more than 6 percent, of the following types:

(a ) Cherries of any light, sweet variety;

(b ) Cherries artificially colored red; or

(c ) Cherries artificially colored red and flavored, natural or artificial.

Provided, That each 127.5 grams (4 1/2 ounces avoirdupois) of the finished canned fruit cocktail and each fraction thereof greater than 56.7 grams (2 ounces avoirdupois) contain not less than 2 sectors or 3 dice of pineapple and not less than 1 approximate half of the optional cherry ingredient.

(3) Packing media. (i) The optional packing media referred to in paragraph (a)(1) of this section, as defined in § 145.3 are:

(a ) Water.

(b ) Fruit juice(s) and water.

(c ) Fruit juice(s).

From https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=145.135

Uhhh actually you wanna stick with ziplock brand on those:

https://www.globalfoodconsumers.org/news/toxic-pfas-in-sandwich-baggies/

Notably, previous instances have occurred where regulators permitted high levels of PFAS in packaging, only to later discover adverse health effects on consumers. Brands such as Boulder, Complete Home, Great Value, If You Care, Lunchskins, Meijer, Target, and Walgreens were among those found to contain PFAS, while Ziploc emerged as the only brand without detectable levels of the chemicals.