Agreed and agreed. But an addendum regarding mattresses: No matter what the salespeople tell you, most mattresses with pocketed coil springs are pretty much the same apart from hardness, especially with a compensating mattress topper. Just get one that feels right to you, definitely don’t think that more expensive=better, mattress-wise.
More money advice: Most things come in two tiers worth purchasing: “nice” and “wow”.
“Nice” are the things experts deem good enough, or clothes-wise ones that you can see yourself actually wearing across multiple years, both durability- and appearance-wise. Affordable, and you like them. A useable placeholder, if you will.
“Wow” are the things that you’ve been steadily dreaming of for years, or ones that catch your eye even if you weren’t looking. “Buy it for life” stuff. Solid whole wood furniture, that teapot or coffee maker you’ve been dreaming of. A designer winter coat that only costs 20 times your old one. 🫣 On these you look at the price tag after; you want it, you get it, and if it breaks, you repair it. If it’s affordable, or if you find more than one of these every 1-3 years, consider yourself very lucky.
Nothing below “nice” is worth getting, and very few things between “nice” and “wow” are worth getting.
Yep, learned this the hard way.
- I ordered a 10€ “Skmei” watch from Aliexpress and it died in a year. My cousin buys ~30€ casio watches and they last at least 5 years of abuse.
- Cheap Redmi phones have half the processing power of a top end midranger and will not decently survive years of planned obsolescence. I only have a Redmi (4x from their decent times) because I got it for free from my dad. It’s a decent phone, but performance is terrible so they aren’t worth paying for from the longevity standpoint, but if you need a temporary phone they are decent.
