Episode 89: Buy it for Life

Transcript

I'm starting to get really aggravated by the state of, God, what's the right term?
Household finances slash the way the economy works slash, I don't know, a bunch of stuff.
I'm going to do a separate episode on that.
Probably not right away, probably some time down the road, because I have some specific things that I'd like to talk about there.
That's not really what this is about, but it's part of this because this sort of, that in some ways fuels this.
I've kind of 180'd on this throughout the course of my adulthood.
There was a time in my, I guess, 20s where I was working, you know, I'd started like a real career jobby job.
And for the first time, I had some personal money, right?
Like I personally had money to spend on stuff.
Stuff.
Which meant that certain things that as a kid or a teenager or a college student, where in a lot of cases I was leaning on my parents or had very little income that was really just for like, you know, kind of going out money.
Like nothing that could sustain an actual livelihood.
In those times, certain things were just out.
And it's almost hard to imagine a world like this, but, you know, before subscriptions to a million online services was the norm, there was a time when there were just a few services out there that you could have subscriptions to.
And I bring that up because there was a certain time where, for instance, when I was a kid, young teenager, I think, there were a few online games, Ultima Online being one of them, that you could subscribe to, right?
They had a monthly charge.
It wasn't really even called a subscription at the time.
It was just a monthly charge to play the game, right?
Might have been, I think it was like 10 bucks.
And I had worked out a deal with my parents where I was allowed to carry one game subscription at a time.
So if I wanted to be playing Ultima Online, that would be my one $10 a month subscription.
It means that if there was any other, you know, say MMOs, which were very popular to do this sort of thing, that I wanted to play.
If I wanted to play another one, I would unsubscribe from the first one.
So I had like this kind of like, hey, you've got $10 a month to subscribe to something like that you want to play.
Anyway, this isn't really about subscriptions.
I kind of got off on a tangent here.
My overall point here is that by the time I got to my 20s and I was making some money, suddenly there was a new world, right?
Where now it was my money and there was enough of it.
And I had few enough constraints, but enough money where it was like, oh, I can, now I can subscribe to a couple of things.
Like if I wanted to play two games, I could.
Or if I wanted to buy this thing over here, I can.
Or if I want to spend 50 bucks or 100 bucks on this somewhat frivolous thing, but something that I like.
I can do that without having to like beg, borrow, plead, and steal to piece enough money together to do that, right?
I just had it in my income.
And so that became a thing, right?
And at the same time, Amazon's delivery and stuff was really ramping up as well into, you know, particularly into my 30s and stuff.
So it was just, it became easier and easier to just like buy stuff and get it shipped to your door.
And in that movement, within there somewhere, it's an offshoot of consumerism where I don't mean it in the case that like, I've never been a big shopper, right?
I don't, I don't, I don't just go out and like think to myself, oh, you know, I think I'll go out today and like buy some stuff.
Like, what are you going to buy?
I don't know.
I'm just going to look around and buy some of that stuff that I see.
Like, I'm just not that guy.
And I think of that sort of thing or I align that sort of pattern more with consumerism, like feeling the need to purchase things.
Because when I think of consumerism, like as a negative trait, that's the sort of pattern that I think of.
But this is sort of an offshoot of that, which for me, it became this mindset of, well, you know, I have this thing, but if I don't like it, I'll just buy another.
Or if I, if it breaks, I'll just buy another.
Or if there's a, if there's a new, better one that comes out, I'll just buy another.
And I think that is, you know, effectively just as consumerism-y as the pattern that I, you know, was talking about with sort of the more of the shopper's pattern.
And for a long time, that served me pretty well in some regards, right?
Like, worrying a little less about your possessions, knowing that you can have kind of ready access to just getting another one.
During that period of time, things like, and this is kind of where the intro, where I was talking about, like, I'm starting to get very frustrated by things like personal finances and economics.
For a long period of time, inflation just wasn't, for this kind of stuff, wasn't as bad.
There, there, things were getting cheaper, not more expensive.
Now, the quality of those things was, in most cases, also going down.
But stuff was just becoming less expensive.
It was less, less and less expensive through the course of my life to, say, buy computers or buy electronic sorts of devices and things or whatever.
And then, you know, I started doing a lot of work in the web world.
And for a long time, web service-y kind of stuff was either super cheap or free.
Compared to my income, the world seemed to be getting less expensive.
And so, it was very easy to get into this mindset of, well, I'll get this thing that I kind of need.
And if I don't like it, I'll either return it, or I'll just buy another one later, or I'll use it until it breaks, and then I'll get another one or whatever.
Now, in my, I run a text file for this podcast that's just a list of ideas that I want to talk about.
And one of them that I had on there from a while ago, I just had this note that says, trend away from consumer slash throwaway society.
And the reason I had written this down at the time, and I'm going to phrase this a little bit differently in a second, but the reason I had written this down at the time was that I had started, I think, I thought I had started noticing a trend.
Of, you know, let's get away from this, let's just buy cheap pieces of, you know, plastic crap all the time, and then buy more of them, and buy more of them, and let's move more towards quality.
And I wasn't, I didn't do an episode on it because I wasn't sure, right?
I wasn't sure if this was a real trend or just a personal kind of thing.
Because one of the things opposite of what I've been kind of saying, one of the things I've always kind of done through my life is when I go to buy something significant, I make sure that I buy the best one that I can.
For instance, if I'm like something like a tool, right?
If I'm going to go and buy like a table saw or something, I don't go for the $100 one from the no-name brand.
Even if I only think I'm ever going to use that table saw one time, I will buy like, you know, I'm not going to spend $10,000 on a professional grade, you know, construction workers one or something.
But I will buy like a good mid-rangey DeWalt for several hundred dollars rather than buy the no-name brand for $100.
And what I've always found over life is that has served me very well.
It's a similar thought pattern that goes into why and how I purchase Apple devices.
For a long time of my life, I would just buy the bargain, the lowest grade Windows computer I ever could.
And it caused me nothing but problems for years.
I didn't always notice it, but I moved over to like using Macs.
And when I buy like a new MacBook Pro, I don't buy the low-end one.
I buy one that's generally toward the top of the range.
And it usually lasts me three, four times as long as some piece of junk that I would have bought in years past, plus less aggravation.
And that has served me very well.
But I wasn't sure if there was really a trend toward this or not.
But more and more now, I am seeing things.
And I had termed it, you know, moving away from a consumer throwaway society.
The term I'm seeing for this is buy it for life.
Now, there's different extremes to this from what I've seen.
And, you know, there are people who believe that this extends to things that I really still kind of see as disposable things, you know, like buying a pair of jeans.
To me, I know I'm going to ruin those jeans.
So, I've never bought like a $200 pair of jeans in my life.
I don't care how durable they are.
I'm just going to buy some Levi's for $40 or whatever, and they're probably going to fall apart.
But I'll get a couple years out of them, and that's good enough for me.
But I think that there seems to be a general movement toward this idea of buying things for life.
And I like this.
Because when I think about the possessions in my life that have mattered the most and also given me the most,
well, for fear of sounding kind of like business-y about this,
the biggest ROI over their lifespan,
they are things that you kind of buy once and keep for a long time or possibly forever.
I'll give you a few examples of the ones over my life that have mattered.
A lot of music equipment that I have.
Sitting next to me over here is a guitar amplifier that I bought, I think, 12 years ago.
And I still love it.
I'm staring at this recording setup.
The speakers that I have in front of me are from 20 years ago, and they work great.
Like, they're great studio monitors.
The microphone I'm recording on right now, it's a high-quality vocal microphone.
And I think, I believe I bought this when I was 22.
A lot of the tools I have, like, I have air, you know, pneumatic impact guns and things that are almost 20 years old now.
I don't use them every day, you know?
If I'd used them every day, they probably would wear out.
And that's, you know, they're not, it's not some amazing product.
I think it's just a craftsman or whatever.
But at the time, it was like the best craftsman I could get.
And it served me for a long time.
I don't work as an auto mechanic every day, but I do use it, you know, several times a year over the course of 20, 25 years.
I know it's always there for me.
It's always going to work.
And by the time you get to the 20-year mark, I'm pretty willing to check off that box of like, hey, this was a buy-it-for-life item.
But I like this idea.
And, you know, the reason it ties in, I think, I really don't want to go on a tangent here.
I believe I'm starting to see a pattern where we are, by all accounts, a consumer-driven economy.
If people aren't spending money, then our economy can't function.
We're not a service economy so much.
We're definitely not a manufacturing economy.
We're not an industrial economy.
We're not an agricultural economy.
We are a consumer-based economy.
The more people spend, the better our financial systems operate.
But I feel like there is a case that I can string together.
And again, I'm not going to do this right now because it feels very, like, tangenty.
But I think that there is a case that we have now built systems that are in place that the more people purchase of kind of cheaper, run-of-the-mill, buy-em-over-and-over-again items,
the more we purchase them, the more expensive they will actually get over time.
I think there was a time when, like, you know, if a company could sell more of something, that meant that the price would go down because they make more overall, right?
But I don't think it's true anymore.
I think we've put a lot of abstracted layers in between our dollar and the cost of that product.
And I feel like the more we buy stuff, the more it actually ends up costing to buy it the next time and the next time and the next time.
And so I – and obviously, there are disposable things in the world, right?
Like, you can't buy it for life Q-tips or something.
But for other stuff, you know, take a minute and think about when you're purchasing something.
Is this something that – is this something that you want to use for a long time?
If so, take a minute and, like, really do the research and really find the best one you can and maybe spend that extra 10%, 20% for the thing that's going to last more and last longer
and give you more value for a longer period of time because we're being separated from our money constantly.
And this is one area that if you take a beat and don't buy the cheap one, you'll probably be better over time.
One note that I want to make at the end of this because there is a – other side of the coin from my perspective on this.
There's sort of this idea.
And I don't know if this is like a guy thing or if it's just a me thing or if it's just people like me thing.
I don't know.
But I've always had this kind of myth in my head of I've always wanted to be that guy that could put his whole life in a backpack.
And go wherever he wanted.
And not be weighed down by stuff.
And, like, I had this myth, this, like, mythological goal of, like, wow, that would be – that – if I could just snap my fingers and have my life the way I want it to be, that would be it.
But then that's very contradictory to the things I actually value.
For instance, I've talked about this in this podcast.
I really value the ability to work out and be physically fit.
I have a home gym.
I have a cable machine and a rack and, like, a hack squat machine and, like, all these machines that I use every single week of my life to achieve a goal that's important to me.
I cannot fit a hack squat machine, a hack squat machine, a rack, a cable machine, a bunch of dumbbells into a backpack and disappear.
These are completely contradictory ideas.
And I don't think that having the equipment I do in a gym that I use every single week to achieve goals that I believe are important, I don't think that represents consumerism.
I don't buy a lot of new ones.
I don't sit around looking at gear reviews.
I have a set few pieces of equipment.
Every few years, I might swap one out or add a new one because I have noticed a gap in the capabilities that the gym can do.
But outside of that, they are things that I have bought once, and I've essentially used them forever.
You know, I don't care how many barbells are out there.
If you've got a barbell that works, that can hold weight, you're good.
You don't need six of them.
You need one.
But I still can't fit that barbell in a backpack.
So, I think my point here is there's this myth in my head that I wish I could drop all the consumer habits and own, like, two pairs of pants, two shirts, a great pair of shoes, and, like, a frigging Walkman or something, and, like, that's my life.
But it's not.
The reality is that that's, for most people, an unattainable goal, because you have other things, not even goal.
It's not really a goal.
It's just this, like, high-minded myth of a man's life.
If you can achieve that and you want that, good on you.
For me, I can't.
And so, given that I can't do that, I am finding it increasingly important that when I do purchase things that are important or that I'm really excited about or that I want to use for a long time, that I make sure I get the best one and the one that's going to last the longest and the one that is as close to buying it for life as I can find.