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Comment by csunbird | Hacker News Reader

My parents actually taught me an important life lesson, by buying expensive and quality stuff instead of cheap ones to save money.

When I asked them why we were buying only expensive stuff, they said: "We are not rich enough to buy cheap stuff."

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The trick is identifying expensive and quality stuff. Nowadays there's lots of stuff that is expensive and crap.

A big problem of this was positioning of customer reviews over things like Consumer Reports or other publications that have to maintain a long-running reputation (the random reviewer who gives 5 stars doesn't). Reviews became what people trusted, then those were manipulated or paid for, but nothing has filled the trustworthy vacuum because of that just yet.

(Consumer Reports is still there of course, just not as popular of a source as reviews for some reason)

Just as a plug / FYI for Consumer Reports - it's worth checking your local public library to see if they've got a subscription to C.R. that you can use for free.

Nowadays, with everything being online, you might even be able to use the Consumer Reports website for free, through your local public library.

> Consumer Reports that have to maintain a long-running reputation

Tell me more about the "long-running" reputation of Consumer Reports. I will then tell you why Suzuki Samurai is no longer sold in the US.

>Tell me more about the "long-running" reputation of Consumer Reports.

Compared to random people leaving reviews, they do have to be more careful.

Exactly. I can say that we were a low-middle class family, so whenever we wanted to buy something, we would just go and buy the best one that will last for a while, even if it meant that it is twice as expensive. Nowadays, it is really getting hard to find something that fits this criteria.

It's still possible, but it'll take you 6 hours of research, wading through garbage links on Google Search and instead of twice as expensive, it'll be 5x as expensive.

I find the cheapest thing and go up a few percentage points (5-10%) and buy that instead... you have to remember a corner or two were cut on the way to the cheapest thing. Buying the most expensive stuff is often not worth it.

Pretty similar to my strategy. I buy 4 star items because compared to 5 star items, they're typically 80+% of the quality at 50% of the price.

"We are not rich enough to buy cheap stuff." - I'll promote this too, whenever I can, as long as I'll have expensive stuff to sell. As for friends and family, it's just "lean to quality" (not necessarily the expensive type).

I think that was the point my parents were trying to make, since, usually, cheap means bad quality stuff in my native language :)

German has the two words "günstig" and "billig". Both can mean inexpensive but "billig" also has the negative connotation of something being of bad quality.

There is a lot to this. I have a unfortunately close relation to someone who would just continually buy new undershirts and other clothes instead of washing what they had already. Closet full of still tagged clothing. An adult, married with children. They made enough money to waste it.

Do they donate the clothes in the end or just throw them into the trash?

Honestly I have no idea, sorry. I would love to think they were donated but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be. All guessing.

nobody wants donated clothes anymore.

Can COVID survive a washing machine? It should be fine, as long as you wash them in my opinion.

If you wash them and then leave them to dry for a few days, that should be safe. The virus dies when exposed to fresh air; how quickly, that depends on temperature (a few days in winter, a few hours in summer), but err on the side of safety and give it a week. The high temperature of the washing machine, the soap, and drying for a few days, all of them combined should kill the virus almost certainly.

Also, you don't need to literally kill all virus particles. Reducing their number already reduces the probability of getting sick. A certain amount is needed to attack you successfully; a lonely virus particle is mostly harmless. Also, the virus cannot enter your body by being in the clothes your wear, only if you touch the clothes and then your mouth/nose/eyes.

tl;dr - yes, if you wash the clothes and leave them dry for a few days, it is safe

I'm not talking about cleanliness. I'm talking about the fact that most items fall apart and new items are so cheap that used items are getting less and less desirable. There's been articles on here about the way the used clothing industry has imploded over the last decade. There might still be some thrift shop usage, but the longer tail that allowed retailers to offload the majority of donations is disappearing.

I usually use this logic nowadays whenever someone asks me about buying a 300$ laptop, UNLESS the use case is, in fact, literally email, static html, and word processing (which I've only seen once).

Spending that extra 150-200 can make a huge difference in longevity.

I always tell people to buy a used business class (latitude, probook, etc). Electronics that last 2 or 3 years and are in a repairable form factor will last way longer then the cheap consumer stuff. You can get parts for them for close to a decade.

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