Ask Lemmy

Tbh about everything. Most of retail is just an industrial scale of the addage "a fool and his money will soon be parted".

Buy second hand, its fine. You probally can figure it out yourself, try to diy. Look at what people are actually doing not the brand of tool they are doing it with. Its a saw, you saw with it, you can get away with sawing a lot of stuff with the same cheap saw.

Soaps are just collections of chemicals, powerwash for example is just dish soap plus water and isopropal alcohol.

You can probably cook it at home. It will probably be better and better for you, because a pound of lard or cup or sugar looks like the red flag it is when you go to cook with it.

Your bed might be better on the floor, then on a frame.

You are probably better off walking or biking then driving.

You probably don't need to watch more shows anyways so why get fleeced to subscriptions. You probably don't need to play games as much so you can pass on that game. You probally don't need to go out for a drink. You probally don't need to go out for a meal. Etc etc

Honestly, I'm a hypocritical ass saying some of this, but its true. The urge to go spend spend spend, isn't a fluke its just successful sociol engineering to separate us fools from our money.

T-shirts. Get a 5 pack each of white, black, and another color you like. There, you're set for like a year for $30.

Not sure if this counts as cheaping out, but wait a year or so before buying computer games, when the price drops by 50% or more. Some never seem to price drop and others get really cheap right before the sequel comes out.

New cars. After a car has been owned by one owner, for however short a period of time, it dramatically reduces its price. At least in the UK.

Toilet paper, trash bags, paper towels. If you go the absolute cheapest, they're arguably defective, but the second cheapest is usually ok.

My default is to buy the grocery store's house brand unless I can tell the difference.

A 26 ounce can of Morton's iodized salt at my local grocery store costs $2.19. The Food Lion brand costs $0.79. Explain to me why I would pay more than twice the price for name brand salt?

Especially in goods where I know the complete chemical formula of the product like salt and sugar, until I encounter a serious problem with quality or unethical sourcing I'm not going to pay for the brand name.

People are gonna pillory me for this, but flashlights.

First off, you want something that runs off two AAAs, regardless of price. If you can't walk into any gas station, or any grocery store, or what have you, and buy batteries for your flashlight when it dies, it's not gonna matter how bright it was before it died. You also don't want anything brighter than ~200 lumens at the very most, unless you actually need one brighter, for some reason; they drain batteries way faster. You want something thin enough that you're able to clip it inside your pocket and forget it's there. You also want one that has an end switch that toggles between two modes: "full power" and "turned off." If you have one that toggles between low and high settings, you will only use the high setting. If you have one that toggles between low and high settings, and strobe and SoS, you will only use the high setting. Every additional step in between "all the way off" and "all the way on" is just friction you don't need, that will do nothing but piss you off every time you use the damned thing.

The features that make big, fancy flashlights expensive, are anti-features.