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The most sinister is an almost inescapable one, where companies intentionally build things (larger appliances are a huge offender) to fail within 3 to 5 years.
It's the "a poor man can't afford cheap shoes" thing.
They love to "sell" this concept that making items cheaper means consumers can more frequently replace as their styles change. Fuck you, give me a white fridge that never breaks, I don't care if I have to pay double up front.
I realized this was a significant part of my expenses about a decade ago now, and started researching and budgeting for higher-quality products that don't get as much advertisement as their cheaper counterparts. It's been great! What started as a larger expense on the front end has already broken about even on potential replacements that I didn't end up needing, plus I get high-quality items to use the whole way through as well!
It's definitely a good thing to pay attention to just how much you spend on replacing things that broke down unexpectedly quickly. The higher-quality items often exist, but a lot of times you need to seek out the niche communities that focus on those products to help find them and parse through the available options. I'm sure a lot of people just aren't able to front the charge to make the change, though.
Buying expensive things and imagining that they last longer just because of their price tag is also a good way to lose money faster.
Correct. That's why I talked about finding niche communities to help find and parse through options. For example, I didn't just buy an expensive vacuum, I found a few vacuum enthusiast forums and looked through several threads discussing the best products for my budget price.
I’ve spent the majority of my life connected in some way or another to the internet, starting as a kid on niche bbs in the 90s, and it never ceases to amaze me that there are vacuum enthusiast forums.
Everybody's got a thing, and they're usually happy to talk about it to someone who's genuinely interested. Definitely helpful if you're looking into that exact thing.
Yeah 100% and I’m glad that people have a place to talk enthusiastically about their thing!