For instance, I bought a $6,000 Drexel Heritage couch on sale for $3,000 20 years ago and am now reupholstering with high quality fabric bought from the manufacturer off the internet at half price. A retired professional upholsterer working from his garage will provide the labor for $450. Thus I’m getting a beautiful, very comfortable, redone couch for about $1300 and no tax. I’ll hang on to the couch the rest of my life and never pay current retail for a couch again.

I once bought three Drexel Heritage end and coffee tables on sale for $1,000. Ten years later when I realized they were hideous, they sold for $1,000.

With a couple of exceptions, I don’t much enjoy travel and come home feeling that I didn’t have much fun for the money spent. Time in my comfortably furnished home is happiness for me.

the 1TB (yes, 1 terabyte) hard drive in my laptop cost all of $80 on sale.

now I can download all my Tivo shows! (since i’m over-the-air only – shows run almost 7GB/hour)

I dunno. I’m using a five year old laptop computer (needs to be replaced, for other reasons, but I’m waiting till July when my job will give me $500 toward it). It’s got 120 gigs. On it I have several computer games (including big ones), my music collection, photo albums, work data, and all the other junk that accumulates over 5 years. It’s still got disk space left. The model I’m looking at to replace it is customizable, and the least I can put in it is 500 gigs. There’s no way I’m springing for 1000 when I don’t use 120 now. I might, however, spring for the faster disk speed (since I’m not yet wholly convinced on the reliability of SSD, which is also an upgrade option).

And if all else fails, I have a 500 gig external I use for backups. So unless you do a lot of artsy stuff, have a huge music collection, or process a lot of data (I know one guy with 2 terrabytes, to store confocal microscopy images from work) whatever comes on a standard laptop is going to be more than enough for you–let alone whatever comes on a desktop these days.

“Buy well, and you only have to buy once.”

Meaning that, if you buy an item of excellent quality/durability– though you might pay significantly more for it– then chances are that you would never be forced to repurchase said item…unless your sneaky little grandson took a kleptomatic shine to it. *cough cough*

Propably more important than anything else though is get a bike that fits you. I’m always amazed at how many people I see struggling to get around on bikes that are just too big or too small for them. A great bike that doesn’t fit you isn’t going to do you any good.

Yes, people need to back things up however, there’s something to be said about keeping all the apples in one basket until your ready to do your canning.

Also, you can add ram up the whazoo but if you have a gunked up system it won’t make much difference. Maintenance needs to be on the list (for more then PC’s). At least have a free anti virus like AVG. At least every 6 months run a disk cleanup, defrag a few times & then run a scan disk to check the integrity of the system files (on a evening you don’t need to use the PC).
If you have the Mac, verify the disk permissions – I’ve avoided several reloads with these steps & people who say their machine runs like new after I’ve been by.

And I second #9 – my neighborhood was a great desirable, nice place to live & is now getting rougher & rougher. Everyone who could leave has – forclosures litter the place. I wish I could go somewhere better for my family but I can’t sell my house…

And I second #5 – I grew up with family antiques. Moved out bought cheap furnioture thinking I was being thrifty. When a new chair broke as I sat in it, I knew it was time to seek out antiques & items made before planned obsolescence. I will only allow furniture that can be beaten thoughly and still stand. Anything I buy I try to make sure I’ll be OK with owning it forever. I do make the occasinoal mistake but that comes w/ being human.

I have no idea what the precise rate of energy saving depreciation is, but it does exist. Either way, using a NEW model will save over the old model. Just don’t go and pay $2000 for it or those savings are almost negated. Unless of course, you are trying to do the right thing for the environment, and I wouldn’t hound ya for that ;).

The only tricky thing is to estimate how that demand will grow over your expected use of the device. For example, my digital photos is the major thing I store on my computer, and they current add up to about 75GB, but that amount is currently growing by 20GB/year, and will grow even quicker if I buy a new higher-res camera.

I also need some space for the OS and programs, let’s say 25GB.

Thus you end up with 75+25+20*x which is 200GB if I guesstimate that a laptop is used for 5 years. Since storage-needs tend to grow, and the price-differential is small, I’d thus not want a laptop with less than 350GB storage.

“On the bright side, the practices that consumers have adopted in response to the economic crisis ultimately could — as a raft of new research suggests — make them happier. New studies of consumption and happiness show, for instance, that people are happier when they spend money on experiences instead of material objects, when they relish what they plan to buy long before they buy it, and when they stop trying to outdo the Joneses.”

- https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/business/08consume.html?pagewanted=all

- Use LibreOffice (https://www.libreoffice.org/), not OpenOffice. Long story short, Oracle messed up and all the active developers forked the project and moved on to LibreOffice.

- It is much more cost and performance efficient to get a SSD hdd for ~$100, and buy an external USB for mass storage (music, photos, etc). An external hdd for media is more useful in households with multiple computers as well.

My take on experiences/stuff.

I find that some people get so wrapped up in their stuff that they don’t have enough money left for trips. If that’s how they roll, fine. Personally, my home is comfortable. I don’t have the finest furniture, nor the cheapest junk. I tend to buy used but some was bought new and we’re going into the 10th year of having it. It still works for us.

If I have a choice between upgrading furniture and going on a trip I’ll live with what I have. That might not be someone elses “cup of tea”.

and at that, that car really only cost me $14k brand new – that was back in 2001 when there was a $7500 tax credit (read: if you owe nothing they give you $7500 bucks) on a $20,500 new car.

tiny? yes. affordable, economical, and reliable? compare my 2001 insight to ANYTHING on the road and it will win on those three metrics. luxury? no. size? no. but honestly, why pay for size when 99% of the cars i see driving on the road have one person and a laptop in them, burning 10 gallons of gas each week just to get to work and back, and eventually needing repairs at least as soon but often sooner than my car?

oh, and finally, the insight has an all aluminum body – no rust. my wife’s old dodge neon was similarly priced when new in 2000 and was rusted out and not worth repairing by 2007. my insight can’t rust out and is still worth a large chunk of change for resale or trade-in and therefore is worth paying for minor repairs still today, a decade later.

not to mention that dirty hippy in me that’s glad to burn barely50% of the fossil fuels i’d have otherwise wasted in a desperate attempt to get places quickly.

i say, pay for what helps you sleep at night. in the end everything has costs: some are more upfront than others. high mileage cars put the costs up front. low mileage cars spread it over over time;in some case over a period longer than your lifespan.