Getting Your Money’s Worth: Around the House
May 19, 2011, By Tom McNulty 1 comment
I’ve always believed in buying quality, not because I always have a lot of dough but because I like doing things right the first time. When you think of a purchase as an investment, the few extra dollars you spend to get a better one are usually worth it.
Let’s pull a commodity item out of the air as an example: say, a lawn rake. A good one has a 24”-wide raking swath, a long and comfortable handle, solid workmanship, and allows you to rake all the leaves in your yard in 20 minutes. It costs maybe $20.
A crappy $10 rake has a 12”-wide swath, teeth that break, a head that occasionally comes off, and a short, skinny handle that gives you blisters. It’s half the price, but it takes 40 minutes—twice as long—to do the job. And it may be completely unusable after a few rakings, so you have to make another trip to the store to buy another one.
Cheap things are cheap for a reason. Of course, there’s a point of diminishing returns. You could buy a $40 rake, but it most likely won’t do twice as good a job or take half the time as the $20 model. In these cases, cars offer better examples—you’ll pay a lot more for a BMW than a Honda, even though they may be on par in quality and get you where you’re going for about the same fuel costs.
Now, here’s how I might apply these thoughts to five items that fall into my area of expertise: housecleaning and “around the house.”
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