"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.