Buy It For Life is the concept that when you choose to spend your money on items, you should do so on high quality, durable, and practical products that once bought will last a very long time, ideally, for life. I think every good approach to personal finance and money management in the home simply must consider what you spend your money on when you must buy something. Thus, let us start spending money wisely when we must part with our money to acquire material goods.
Let’s discuss another approach for a moment, frugality. Being frugal is a popular approach when considering time, money, convenience, and other resource allocations – but – I often see those who live frugally buying something that may be cheaper today, without realizing that over the long term they are actually spending more money with replacement costs or lost of function and durability. I know there is a difference between frugal vs cheap, but in my experience many people don’t actually make that distinction when they self describe themselves as being frugal. Now, I know, blessed readers of this blog – many of your are indeed financially savvy and know the different, but consider your less than savvy friends habits and you’ll see what I mean.
For example, let’s consider a famous quote from Terry Pratchett’s Men at Arms
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
A frugal person may be frugal out of necessity, as is Vimes in the above scenario; or may choose to buy the cheaper version of a product in the belief that it is saving them money. Buy It For Life seeks to prevent those mistakes by asking you to consider the long term value of an item when purchasing it, and to seek out the best deal for an item that you will never have to buy again, or at least gain a significant return of value during the lifespan of the item.
I will be sharing some Buy It For Life items that I either find or have purchased myself.