The Sam Vimes “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness, often called simply the boots theory, is an economic theory that people in poverty have to buy cheap and subpar products that need to be replaced repeatedly, proving more expensive in the long run than more expensive items.
Sunglasses. Would go thru 4 or 5 pairs of cheap plastic lense sunglasses every year. The lenses would always get all scratched. Bit the bullet and bought a pair of Costas 3 years ago. Lenses still look brand new.
I’m the opposite, I bought a couple of £3 pairs with the view of not caring if I lost or damaged them, still going strong years later!
Yeah, ever since polarized plastic became cheaper than coloured plastic, you basically can’t go wrong anymore.
Merino wool socks: I bought a bunch 10-15 years ago and they’re just now starting to die. Need to save up and buy more again.
I’m a Darn Tough sock devotee. Same deal as you. I didn’t want to spend the money for a long time, then I finally shelled out for 8 pairs. This was many years ago, and still wear them daily. I’ve since added a couple more pairs.
Realistic fake wedding rings.
The finish wears off leaving you with base metal. I realised I’d gone through so many of them I could have just bought an actual gold band, so I did.
Why do you need so many fake wedding rings?
@GoosLife I used to get them for travel. Basically it deters people from hitting on you.
Side effect I noticed when I bought the gold one and started wearing it all the time was it also seemed to put new work colleagues at ease more quickly.
Aha, okay, that makes sense. So now you got a working repellant device and a cool gold ring? Sounds like a win-win to me.
Also, from the other side of the table, I really do know that feeling of seeing the ring and being a little more at ease, even though it doesn’t make any tangible difference. Like, I wasn’t going to hit on you regardless, but now I know that you know I’ve seen the ring, so you won’t assume I am going to hit on you, if that makes sense. Not that I’ve ever been involved in such a misunderstanding in real life, but it’s still nice to remove the question, I guess.
The finish wore off.
Thank you, senator Collins
At sea? Chance in a million.
God I love that skit.
@HonorIsDead what skit?
… … The capitalization of ‘Boots’ in the title made me think this was some variation based on the UK health stores.
I have a bag full of cheap-ass wired earbuds that sound tinny and awful, half are broken in at least one ear. But most I got for free somewhere or for less than 5 bucks off of some site. At one point or other I’d received a proper headset and wireless earbuds as gifts, and those have lasted 8 and 4 years so far respectively, with fairly consistent use.
My main trick used to be getting Senheisers extra thin/light model, because they were basically guaranteed to break inside the warranted period (mostly due to cable breaks from my pockets), and then they’d replace it basically for free, or a few bucks to upgrade to the next model.
And then the bastards made a set good enough that it lasted me 6 years.
I need a treadmill under my desk as I can’t sit for more than a few minutes at a time but I have to work at least 8 hours a day.
Treadmills are very expensive, but I’ve so far spent the same amount on cheap Chinese garbage that breaks down on average after 1 year even with proper maintenance. Had I bought a proper one from the start, I would have had access to parts for self repair. The Chinese ones weld shit together making it impossible to change the front roller and motor belt.
Is it literally about sitting or more that you can’t be still? My dad has tried a bunch of walking treadmills etc while coding and nothing really worked well (hard to walk while you code, messed with his wrists) until he got this chair that basically just had pedals on it. Easier to cycle than to walk and his issues went away.
Also they’re very small!
In most cases, and what drove the trend, is that sitting 8 hours a day is terrible for you. The human body isn’t built for that and it has strong impacts, long term, on metabolism, heart health, and many things that follow on from that.
It’s both, unfortunately. I have to keep switching it up, but also not apply too much pressure on my spine for too long. Walking feels the best, but I can’t do that for too long either.
But I managed to make the walking work. I just had to set a timer to get up and walk after 6 minutes of sitting, walk slowly for 10, and finish with a 3 minute walk at my natural walking pace, then back to sitting.
To be able to quickly switch, I got a wide desk so I can place a chair next to my treadmill, I use 1 screen at each location and mirror the displays. At the treadmill I placed a smaller desk on top of my desk, so that I get a proper 90 degree angle on my elbows, and use a trackball mouse since it is more stable.
I quickly got used to it, and especially programming worked well for me. Drawing and gaming is more difficult, though.
Because I switch so often, whenever I do sit, it is painless. If I ignore the timer, however, my feet go numb, and my back starts to hurt, followed by sciatica the next day.
Did this with headphones until 2017. Bought a Bose QC35 ii headset and haven’t looked back. The ear cushions began falling apart, but they were easy enough to replace. Still kicking and use them almost daily.
No name computer parts, esp. RAM
Absolutely willing to get cheapo stuff like monitors and screens, mice, keyboards, etc that are no name – but invest in good guts, cuz otherwise you get weird segfaults and shit
Used cars, esp. Dodge models, was also a bad call. Got a Tacoma and never looked back
Never cheap out on digital storage. There’s so much crappy storage media out there, but it will randomly stop storing your data and then you’re screwed.
Not if you use ZFS. But then you’ll need an extra drive for parity data
ZFS won’t save you the expense of having to replace crappy storage.
Without ZFS, when a drive starts making mistakes, it starts to corrupt some of your data, so it has to be replaced ASAP.
With ZFS RAIDz1, each transaction is double-checked and errors are corrected, so you don’t need to replace any drives until one of your drives is almost completely unusable.
As the WHEN I have cheaped out, it has always been when money is tight.
This is called, “it costs more to be poor than to be rich.”
I mean, everyday? With most purchases? Can’t afford quality most of the time.
The idea isn’t that it’s something you choose to do “to yourself”, it’s that income inequality makes it the reality of being poor.
So much money wasted on cheap used cars that I had to keep running… Buying a new car with a loan ended up costing me less than continuing that trend…
This is usually not true. Consumer reports came to the conclusion that on average, older cars are cheaper than new ones to drive.
Buy used car for 1500$, spend 4000$ to keep it running, broken beyond repair stuff the end of the year, rinse and repeat.
Get new car, 3k/year in payments, 600$/year for insurance, always works when you get in.
Buy one slightly used with a good interest rate and it’s even more true (in general, the market’s been fucked up since COVID)
The worst used car i bought cost 2k to fix and 2k to buy. It lasted 5 years. I can do anecdotes too. I trust consumer reports actual data over my own experience and yours.
As for insurance, older cars are going to be cheaper because you should be liability only. Which you CANNOT do with a new car loan.
OP asked “When have your done this to yourself”, I gave my example and explained how that happened. Never did I say it applies in all cases, don’t put words in my mouth.
I already included insurance in my calculation by the way.
Buy used car for 1500$, spend 4000$ to keep it running, broken beyond repair stuff the end of the year,
BRUH… how about a third-party pre-purchase inspection? You really need to do this thing called “due diligence” before dropping money on such a big-ticket item, and that involves having an expert eye that is not in cahoots with the seller look it over for red flags.
The only time I ever got dinged like you have, is when I was poor and needed a vehicle two weeks previously, and couldn’t wait for or even afford the cost of said inspection. Sucker fell apart within two years. But that was all on my own head, for failing to do my due diligence.
Every other time I’ve gotten an inspection done, they’ve found issues that warned me away from lemons. Those that passed decently well have gone on to be rather reliable vehicles that cost me much less than anything less than a decade old.
Older vehicles may not be sexy, and unless it’s a restored classic it’s unlikely to get the girl. But so long as you have a good mechanic that can warn you away from lemons, you aren’t (statistically speaking) going to get hit like you have.
When you pay 1500$ for a car you don’t have the money for a pre-purchase inspection BRUH.
I also never said it applies to everyone, I said that was my experience as that’s what OP asked.
I have no clue where he’s buying his cars, or what shysters are conning him into buying junk without due diligence (get a third-party pre-purchase inspection done, folks!), but my experience matches your assertion.
I have a 2002 Mazda 626 and a 2003 F-150 7700, and together they’ve costed me less than $3k in repair and maintenance costs in the last half a decade.
Now granted, the F-150 needs AC work (a complete replacement… I live in a desert region with ridiculous summer temps) and the 626 could really use a complete engine rebuild (leaking oil like a sieve, compression no longer optimal, etc.), but even with both of those included I’m still well ahead of what even a single new vehicle would have cost me.
Anything less than a decade old just doesn’t make any financial sense unless you’re relying on it as a fundamental cog of a business and you can amortize it against taxes payable.
Work minimum wage as a student and only be able to afford cars close to 1k$, drive about 30k miles a year and tell me how that goes as far as maintenance is concerned 🤷
This was my family growing up. I was ten years old and went through six used cars. I remember how embarrassing it was to sit in a dead car on the highway or street.
I mean maybe I’m just lucky, but this hasn’t at all been true for me. 17 years and I just got my third used car last March. All three together cost $8k (probably 12k with prices today).
For sure I’ve had to do a bunch of repairs but even with 2 transmissions, a head, a few clutches/TC, and 3 sets of transaxeles. That’s like 30k so maybe break even if you buy one car and drive it for that long and don’t have any major repairs along the way. In my experience, friends will lease a car and pay that in a few years, or buy a new car and have maybe five years trouble free, then have to do a major repair and/or sell and pay another 20k in debt.
The extra stress and maintenance isn’t free by any means, but is it worth and extra 5k per year? Not for me, and I think that’s best case. Dealerships are really good at draining money from most people.
This depends on your idea of “used”," new", and your means when it comes to car repair.
A used car with 5k miles is a fundamentally different buying equation from one with 150k miles.
A 5k mile car makes sense if you’re getting far enough below sticker to cover the higher interest rate and lack of warranty, because you still have 145k miles before things start going wrong.
A 150k mile car makes sense if you’re saving enough to cover the higher interest and the fact that you’re probably going to have to budget a couple hundred a month for maintenance, because things will go wrong pretty immediately. Unless it’s a Toyota, in which case who the fuck even knows?
This is what my parents did.
I’ve owned two cars in 25 years of adulthood. As a teen my parents went through six.
11 cars in 11 years before I bought a new one that I drove for 8 years trouble free.
Dollar store headphones. I’ve had some last a few weeks to a month, but for around $10 I could just go to Walmart and get some wired Sony headphones that’ll last for months.
Months? A good pair of headphones should last a decade or more if you take care of them. Get a pair with detachable/replaceable cables, the wire they use in those is super thin and pretty much always the first thing to fail.
I’ve definitely thought about it before and a pair of headphones with detachable cable is something that I’ve seen thinking of getting some day.
The only reason the Sony headphones I like to buy last months is because of things like them getting caught and ripped from my phone, near constant use (I’ve gotten a lot better but am still using them a lot), and me being a little rough with my headphones.
Consider wireless!
I guess the battery dieing in a few years is better than snagging a built-in cord on a door handle but I still see it as another point of failure.
A good pair of headphones should last a decade or more
Sony MDR-XD400. Lasted ≈18 years before the cord gave out near the plug and started shorting out. Replaced the ear pads twice during that time but OEM availability is shrinking to only shitty third-party reproductions, so I moved to a wireless Sony MDR-100ABN. Needed to add a USB Bluetooth adapter to my iron, but so far (about 5 years now) it’s working decently well.
Its a weird day when walmart trash is the higher quality version.
not exactly a replacement, but I feel printer and their inks fall to this category.
instead of me buying the laser one.
Brought to you by:
The Brotherhood of Brothers Printer
But seriously, get a brother. Only time getting the fancy model was worth it, and 5 years on its still getting software updates
Headphones for work. I bought far too many bottom of the barrel and clearance item headphones that all inevitably broke in an outdoor working environment. Finally bought earmuffs that had Bluetooth built in, designed to withstand more use.
The 3M hearing protection that also acts as a full headset is pretty nice. Don’t have it myself as I currently do office work and can’t justify it for home use, but if I ever had to do long hours in a noisy environment again, I would certainly reach for it.
