…to a reasonable degree, at least.
Liquor in general. Don’t buy the cheapest shit on the shelf, go for the 25-50 range and you’ll be set. Unless it’s something you’re passionate about and enjoy exploring there’s no need to spring for the expensive booze. Liqueres and assorted (non liquor) cocktail ingredients on the otherhand… go for the genuine article. 99% of the time you’ll still be in that 25-50 range so I hardly see a point in being cheap with them
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.
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.
Cloths, headphones, handbags. Anything that’s just buying the brand.
I don’t get why I should want these high end brands when the only thing I can afford from them is plastered with their logo.
I’ve seen the Gucci tracksuit, the Jordans, the Beats, everything and I’m not impressed. Even though luxury things are luxury I don’t even agree with the luxuriousness of many of these products. For example, if I’m going to wear a Gucci tracksuit covered in the Gucci logo and using Gucci colors then it’s gotta look good first and foremost. If I’m going to hold a Hermes bag that’s not comfortable, or durable, or robust but is just supposed to look cool, then it’s gotta actually look cool! Not like something Shien could design.
And yes I am aware of the concept of buying a store of value: diamonds, expensive watches, actually rare and valued handbags. But most of the famous luxuries I see in public are not that. They’re literally a poor man’s status symbol IMO.
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.
You forgot Bose their ANC is insanely good. Sennheiser aren’t impressive to match their high price at least not the model I tried speakers are good but fitment and feel they put all the money into drivers and sound rather than comfort wait for gen 2 or 3. I tried the newest Sony 1000xm5 earbuds and headphones and they didn’t hold a candle to jabra, crapple, Bose. Only kind I tried and didn’t like was the JBL (mid brand), and Samsung buds.
And still, Koss rocks hard with their same for twenty years headphones
Lol, Koss! I think I have a pair from 1978 floating around
Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic, Audio-Technica and Sony aren’t famous luxury brands in the same way that Beats are.
huh… in hindsight I didn’t think about my position about headphones all the way through, I was just mad about the existance of beats.
sry
I bought some $50 open back headphones a while back and they a just worlds better than anything I’d had before. Is there a step up from there that’d similarly rock my world?
My mic is pretty similar. $100 got me an SM58 and it’s wonderful. You have to basically eat it and I can peak it if I’m loud. But it sounds so much nicer than most things. I know there’s a few steps up from there. But I don’t sing so think I’m fine.
Why are you talking about Beats like they’re real headphones?
They are categorized as headphones
Air filters. For car, HVAC, etc. Branded or OEM stuff is usually overpriced.
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
Yeah, agreed. If I needed a filter for allergens I wouldn’t trust noname brand too
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.
If you like the taste, why pay more?
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’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 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
For most people, tools. Most tools will be able to complete the essential tasks. Most people will get by with cheap or used tools.
I have a motto “cheap gets the job done, expensive does it faster”. If you are a hobbyist working on your own time there, feel no pressure to get a “real” tool. Additionally if you are a hobbyist short on personal time, you might want something better.
To go along with your motto, cheap breaks replace with expensive if you still need the tool.
Buy the 2nd last tool you will ever need.
When you are replacing it, then you upgrade to the last tool you’ll ever need
Possibly an unpopular opinion among parents, but: Diapers. I’ve noticed no negative effect on my kids when going offbrand.
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.
Shit, I never thought that might be why, but we’ve dealt with a lot of skin irritation, and our kid prefers keeping a dirty diaper over getting changed. My day is ruined.
Yeah, that’s the only real difference I’ve noticed: The fit. On my oldest kid, libro fit best. The rest were offbrand. I think it’s mostly down to each individual kid and not so much the brand.
Ditto. They also smelled worse too. We found that the Target brand diapers when Target has their gift card deals was the time to stock up on their whipes and diapers.
Former chef: Knives. My most expensive knife is $80 with a lifetime warrantee. Most are $10-$20. Instead, learn how to use and take care of a knife.
I think you should get expensive knives as a convenience, or you are pushing the limits of the steel. I cook a lot, and do lots and lots of chopping to cook food for the family. There have been times I’ve fine diced 10lbs of onions in one go, on top of cabbage, tomatoes, peppers etc.
With that much chopping, anything that can’t shave like a razor is dull. That’s why I use a really nice knife, thinned, sharpened and tuned it to my preferences.
TLDR most people are fine to use any generic knife (if you lack self respect) but if those aren’t cutting it for you, get something better. No pun intended
I work in a restaurant and 10 lbs of onions lasts 36 hours. We buy the shittiest chef knife Ed Don has to offer and it’s fine. I like nice knives on a hobby level, but they’re not necessary on a personal or professional level.
Yup. I learnt that the price tag doesn’t make much of a difference. Sharpening tools do.
I’ve been sharpening my knives for a year or so now, but last week i bought this piece of plastic with the angles for different knives on them and it leveled up my sharpening game significantly
Got a picture?
You’ve been sharpening your knives for a year? Is there anything left of them?
Good advice but I wouldnt really call that ‘cheaping out’. You can buy kitchen knives for 2$ 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.
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.
Generic medicines
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
I had a friend wrapping gifts in the free maps you could grab at the post office and library. Those always looked cool.
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.
Gotta love the wrapping paper so thin you can see the gift under it
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.
Alkaline and rechargeable NiMH batteries. The price per hours of use favors the cheap brands. A top brand might last longer but you are paying a premium for it. Rechargeable NiMH batteries with a good price to battery life ratio are from IKEA.
Power tools. If you are not a professional and need to buy a tool (if you can’t borrow one), but the cheap one.
I used a $30 Ryobi drill for over a decade and it was fine.
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.
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.
Canned fruit salad, the ratio of ingredients is for some fuckdamn reason federally mandated so there’s little difference between brands.
(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
This is amazing.
And not more than one square inch of peach peel per pound of salad!
Sandwich baggies. They’re dispose anyway, no need to go for the name brand when there’s usually a cromulent generic at the store.
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.
TIL
You should just stop spending money in general if you can. So many responses are like “buy literal garbage like disposable decorations at the dollar store,” do not do that. Stop spending money on garbage. Every dollar you spend is damage to the environment and more power for the wealthy, just stop it. Stop spending.
Don’t buy entertainment, use archive dot org. Read more. When you like something culture you consumed, give it to somebody else so they don’t try to buy it. Pass entertainment around to your friends.
When you have to spend on things like haircuts, repairs, etc, keep the money in your social network. If you don’t cook, learn. If you aren’t a part of your local grocery distro, join it.Avoid giving corpos money whenever you can and you’ll save lots of money.
