Every now and then I get accused by local friends of mine of being "stingy" and I really hate it when this happens. I am mindful with my money for sure, but I'm not pinching pennies over here. I am one of those people that has some level of financial security for a number of reasons and one of those reasons is that I don't spend money unnecessarily on things I do not need.
I am a minimalist by necessity and this all came about when I moved away from Krabi, Thailand; a city that I have lived in for nearly 15 years in a row. Looking back, that was the longest stretch of time that I have ever lived in any city any time in my life. As you would expect, I ended up accumulating a lot of stuff and much of those belongings were things that I simply ended up throwing out or giving away if I could. It was from that point forward that I decided that I was not going to live a life of buying superfluous crap ever again.
For one thing, it isn't very practical to have a bunch of belongings when you aren't sure what country, let alone what city, you are going to live in a year from now. I am in that situation right now as I am not certain where I am going to live in a month or two. I think it will be either Vietnam or Thailand, but I am not 100% sure about either of those options. When you live your life in a constant state of limbo like this, having a bunch of belongings to lug around with you is a recipe for disaster.
This is one way that I save money and it has been a wonderful change to my life for the better. However, there is another side of me that I get flak from my friends about on a regular basis and it has with me being unwilling to pay for things that I think are overpriced.
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For example: Years ago a lot of people were moving over to Macintosh computers. I was pretty tech savvy back in those days and when I looked at the actual components that were present in a $1500 MacBook, I did the math on those components if you were to build our own laptop and the total came to around half that amount. I do not think that $1500 for a really powerful computer is expensive, I'm typing on one right now actually, but the notion of paying $1500 for an $800 computer with a glowing apple on the back of it is ludicrous to me.
I feel the same way about a lot of much more common things that are right here in my neighborhood. There are these pubs that are right on the beach here in town and the beers are 50k VND there. Within sight and just across the street from this same pub is another pub where the exact same beer is 25k VND, yet my friends always want to go to the one on the beach even though half of the people who attend will later complain about sand being all up in their shoes and flip flops. We NEVER get in the water and therefore I don't see the point.
I make enough money to pay $2 for a beer but I can see absolutely no point in doing so when there is a $1 beer available at the same location. The fact that it is merely $2 is irrelevant to me... the fact of the matter is that it is 100% more expensive than it should be and therefore I don't want to pay for it.
For things that I am definitely going to use and there is no alternative such as my PlayStation and my computer, I definitely WILL pay top dollar for them because they are useful, I know I am going to use them a lot, and like I said, there is not alternative product.
Phones are another matter altogether and I am just alarmed at how many people spend so much of their overall income on these things. Again, I don't think that mobile phones are expensive, I think they are overpriced. The manufacturers are able to get away with this because the global population has been duped into thinking that the $1000 phone are necessary. I recently purchased the 2nd cheapest Samsung that the mobile phone shop had in stock and do you know what my phone can't do that my friend's $1500 latest iPhone can do? Not a lot as it turns out. Sure his pictures are nicer but other than that the stuff his phone can do is a bunch of what I consider to be crap that I don't want to do. If it served a purpose, I would gladly shell out the money but since I only use my phone for normal things, me buying a $1000 phone would be completely insane.
I recently found out that there is a pre-built Apple computer that retails at $52,000 and people are actually buying it. I am not a fan of Apple products and have only owned a few of them in my life, one by accident. I have never understood the justification for these products costing double what their non-Apple counterparts cost. With the exception of that insane $52,000 computer, I don't think that Apple products are expensive, I think they are dramatically overpriced.
Coffee is another example that it seems the entire world, especially in big cities, gets the wool pulled over their eyes on a daily basis. When visiting a friend in NYC it was absolutely alarming to me how much people were paying for Starbucks coffee - sometime near $10 a cup when at the corner stores they have coffee that you can basically pour as much of it as you want for $1. Yeah yeah, I understand that there is probably a difference in quality between Starbucks over the bodega on the corner but is it 10x as good?
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It isn't expensive. I have $10. It is merely overpriced.
I look at almost everything in my life this way. When I see a shirt that I like I always check the price. I can see no reason why any shirt in South East Asia should ever cost more than say, $10. They are all made here after all and we don't have ludicrous markups on fashion here like the west does. I will not buy a shirt, regardless of how much I like it, if it is out of this price range.
Once again... $10 is not expensive for this shirt... It is merely overpriced.
My friends can call me stingy all that they want but I personally feel that there are far too many people in the world who are getting duped by overpriced merchandise across the board. This is a real reverse culture shock for me anytime I revisit the USA - which isn't often. Virtually everything is overpriced there unless you are in a Mexican restaurant.
So what say you? Do you regularly purchase something that is overpriced? I have only one thing in my life where that is the case and it is my snus that has to be imported from Sweden. It might be illegally imported for all I know and therefore, this definitely overpriced indulgence of mine is the only deviation I make from my rule. I am happy to say that there are no others.
I think Apple's products will be more expensive... or overpriced rather if no one bit off a part of that apple from their logo. LOL!
But yeah, I agree with you, some products are merely grossly overpriced!
I can relate to this 😁😁 especially on the phone and computer part. My phone is just around $220 and I use it mainly for communication on the other hand my computer is my biggest investment. Needs vs want :DD
computers are something that most people simply need to have. It's such a huge part of our lives and in my case and many others', it is my entire ability to make money. Therefore the cost is justified methinks.
They all sound like very reasonable arguments/points of view to me! I do most of my clothes shopping, here in Australia, in op shops (second hand shops). Not only because I think it's better for the environment but I can get pretty much anything I want, in good condition, for $1-$10 instead of $30-$100 for the exact same item brand new. Crazy!
I miss those shops and on the few instances that I return to USA I look forward to going to those 2nd hand shops. One man's trash is another man's treasure indeed!
Today I will say that in the current situation in the whole world we should not waste money at all because in the coming days it will be of great use to us due to inflation. And your work is running from simple laptop, so of course we don't need to say Apple's device because their prize is very high. I also thought of going for an Apple device but when I went to the market the price was too high. If I go to buy something and I think its price is high, then I go to another shop and see if I can't find something worth it, then I buy it there. If a person has to leave one country and go to another country to make his life, then it is not a big deal.
My wife does a really good job at keeping me in check. I have never really considered myself a spender anyway, but with my wife that is even more the case. We also try not to accumulate a ton of junk. It's just more stuff to clean around and dust and maintain. If I am going to spend money on something it needs to serve a practical purpose. I just bought a couple of power tools the other day, but I hemmed and hawed about it for quite some time before I finally pulled the trigger. I'm talking a good year I have been weighing the benefits of it. I agree with you on phones, they are so overpriced. We know they make them for a quarter of what they sell them for. It's like 75% profit. I own Apple stock, so while I am a fan of the company, I don't really own many of the devices. I do have a mac mini at home, it wasn't until they moved to OSX and built their OS on Unix/Linux that I really started to appreciate them more. Finally (sorry this is getting long), I bought a pair of Nike's the other day for the first time. They were $100 which was still like $50 off from the original price. I think they are way overpriced, but my wife pointed out that we buy cheap shoes and they fall apart, so why not try better shoes and see if they hold up better. Sometimes you do get what you pay for!
I agree with you about the shoes and I have a particular brand that I have a lot of faith in and will always buy them. I never have a lot of shoes though because my luggage space is precious and shoes are one of the biggest occupiers of space in there.
Speaking of the Mac OS: There was a time when one popular Linux distro converted to having the close/minimize/maximize buttons on the left-hand side like Apple does. This was the default setting in the UI and the audience hated it. It was still Linux though so of course you were only a few knowledgeable clicks away from reverting it, which most people did.
When I think about how much "junk" I used to accumulate it is pretty alarming to me. How many people out there just buy stuff for the sake of having a collection of some sort? I think most people.
I'd honestly probably fall into that latter category. I don't have nearly as much stuff as I used to, cut my record collection has always been something I have struggled with. Pumping money into something I can easily access via streaming just seems silly yet I keep doing it! That is funny about that Linux distro. I wish I had more of a development background so I could understand the coding better.
Do you actually fire up the records every now and then? I had a decent record collection when I was in my early 20's but a flood made the decision for me about my collection.
Yeah, I do. I continue to buy some here and there too. I don't listen to them as much as I would like. My setup is in the basement for wife reasons and I just don't get down there too much. I was able to save my records from our basement flood. Not the sleeves but the records are good.
I don't think the saving habit should be something to criticize, in fact I think those who spend money meaninglessly are to blame.
When I buy, I look carefully at the prices; I agree with you that it would really be madness to spend 1500 dollars on a computer that is worth 800 also because if I want to make a compromise with 1000 dollars I will assemble the computer myself and it will be immensely better than the one with the apple.
The same goes for coffee; I have a passion for coffee and cappuccinos and I owned a bar... I wonder why spend 10 dollars on a coffee when with a dollar you can have as much as you want elsewhere... now I only drink coffee at home and not to save money, simply what I do is much better than what I find in the bars of my city.
I believe that we should learn to evaluate what we buy, learn to spend for what is necessary and above all learn to save because the first true wealth, in my opinion, is precisely savings.
Beautiful post, congratulations!
wise words here... and I totally agree.
Totally right. I was sourcing some clothing for a football team a few years back and was dealing directly with Nike. Shirts that were retailing for $30 were offered to me for under $5 from their warehouse and just goes to show the mark up which is totally unnecessary. Sell the shirts at $10 and people will buy more of them and there is more profit in the volume.
There is a brand called Kalenji I think and one day I was at some sort of discount sports store when I encountered their shirts. While I was there I was at that time wearing a $60 Adidas "dry-fit" shirt and found some Kalenji's that honestly, except for the logo were exactly the same thing. These shirts were around $3 each and if you looked closely at them you would think they were made by the same machine and with the same materials. It really wouldn't surprise me if they in fact were made at the same factory and the only difference is the finishing station where the logo and tag is sewed onto them.
Dear @gooddream,
Our previous proposal expired end of December and the Hivebuzz project is not funded anymore. May we ask you to review and support our new proposal (https://peakd.com/me/proposals/248)?
Thank you for your help!