Originally Posted by
rm -rf
The famous Discworld quote on
cheap vs expensive boots:
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... 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 a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots {many pairs that fell apart} in the same time and would still have wet feet."
~~~
Of course, tires don't last 10 years!
I've done that calculation on home project tools, and I didn't always know in advance if the choice was correct. Some of the expensive Makita ones were extremely worth the extra cost. Other Harbor Freight cheap tools worked great for my uses.
Here's a modern example. Look at what poor mom pays for individual servings of Tide at the laundromat vs. what rich mom pays for the same serving from her giant container of Tide from Costco. Poor mom likely knows the big Tide is a better deal, but she doesn't have the money to tie up in laundry detergent, or a Costco membership. Even if she did, she's not lugging a giant Tide to the laundromat.