What items are worth the premium to pay for the name brand/high end stuff? What are not?

With walking as my primary form of transportation, shoes are absolutely important. Their relative longevity is skewed because I walk so much, so their life in my closet my still be shorter than in others, but it will still be a vast improvement over a Payless shoe.

Good kitchen utensils and appliances is a purchase can be made once and be a better investment over time than cheaper ones that you end up having to replace more frequently or are not as efficient. I just upgraded to a Kitchenaid set of knives over what I got from Walmart's Chopping Block basic set and I can't believe I went 5 years on this set. Never never again!

This one is female centric, but a good bra is worth its weight in gold. Especially as a bigger busted girl, I've gone through cheap bras in a matter of months with minimal wear. A good bra at $60+ a pop is not uncommon, but definitely more than a bra on sale for $10-12.

 

Echo that shoe statement. I spend way too much time on my feet, and my knees and hips know the difference a proper pair of shoes can make.

 

Open-ended, Borla, but I'll bite. Name brand doesn't always equal high end. Designers are vampires. Since New Balance shoes & Levi's are no longer always made in (America) I don't trust them as much as I used to. Food on sale, I eat. The ties & dress shirts you mentioned I can't comment on, but agree that in terms of appearance costing more usually equals lasting longer. I hope I live long enough to cost the world. Cushy toilet paper is worth its price.

 

since we are talking shoes i've been obsessed with minimalist running shoes. i've tried nike frees, new balance minimus, and some puma model i dont even know. have yet to try the vibram five fingers though.

the frees feel great for running and walking but the sole seemed to wear out quickly. the pumas never seemed to fit my foot correctly cause i'm flat footed. however, the nb minimus shoes seem to do everything i want them to do. walking, weight lifting, running, sprinting, they feel perfect no matter what task i throw at them.

in regards to OP, guitars always seem to play and sound better with the more money i spend as well as amps. the other thing i dont skimp on is jeans. the cheap ones never look or fit right at all. i also buy expensive knives. from cooking to everyday tasks like cutting cardboard and other things the expensive knives just seem to do it better.

 

I aim for 'cry once - buy once'. That means I know I will be going for 'the best', but a Name, whilst it is an indicator, will have to survive my direct hands-on or my indirect forum research from sources who satisfy me that they are qualified. What makes this easy/possible is that 'buy once' = for life. My first guitar, I intended from the beginning to be my one and only guitar. When that got stolen, the same criterion determined my replacement. My outcome is to get the 'thing' home, open it, and truly say 'I'll never need another one of those'.

A further criterion is servicability. Something that I can take apart and mend, or reinforce by sewing will always score extra points when grabbing my attention.

However, once I have chosen a product, then I'm very happy to find it cheaply. eBay is full of people who want to keep up with style. They bought quality, but for them, it became dated.

Spend more and feel it's worth it [or get it on eBay]: Older Sabatier cooking knives ... before the last 40 years' spate of stainless steel and less brittle metal. ANY kitchen implement has to be the best, and will get my full research. Skagen watches, which are well made, IMO beautiful, but get replaced by people who want a 'latest' model. Violin/viola strings .... heck Pirastro Passione's play themselves.

What I buy at a discount price: Kitchen toweling, Mopping cloths ... consumables which I know have stoopid mark-ups by brand-names with a large advertising budget. They do, however, have to come up to my 'hands-on' criteria.

 

Work boots - pay the $. If you're in a situation where you do a lot of climbing, are on rough terrain, and on your feet all day, good boots were priceless in my construction days on site.

Home Audio/Video - pay the $. There is no comparison for an off the shelf Blose cube system compared to a detail-oriented, timbre matched, acoustically treated home theater environment. If you just want to hear music, go right ahead. If you want to listen to it, or experience yourself in a movie, then you don't balk at the idea of spending more on AV equipment than some people spend on their cars.

Toilet paper - pay the $.

Q-Tips - only the real deal. I can barely clean my ears with those cheapie, plastic-tubes alternatives.

Breakfast cereal - buy generic! Those big bags taste just as good as the boxes.

 

Thanks for the tip on the shoes!
I can also second that, in general, the quality of musical instruments correlate consistently with how much you spend on them. I wonder if any economists have examined why some types of products work this way and others don't (i.e. spend more = get more vs. spend more = probably no difference).

 

Guns, jackets, shoes (especially running shoes). The old adage "you get what you pay for" generally applies. However, I've found Nike shoes are not worth the premium which they demand.

 

I've wondered about bottled water for a while now. I don't buy bottled water, but what do you guys think that do?
Are there any differences in like, say, "Perrier" than "Ozarka" or tap water?

 

Tools... for longevity, quality and warranty, I always buy the best....
Jeans... I find that my cheap jeans last longer and fit better...
Electronics... I spent the money on a new TV and its outperformed my cheap TV so far...

 

i think there's a misconception that all bottled water is the same as tap water. from what i've read it actually varies widely from basically recycled municipal tap, to pure artesian, to reverse osmosis.

also it matters what type of plastic the companies use because some plastics leech horrible chemicals into the products they are containing.

i guess the short answer is that its complicated lol

 

Thanks, sam and snowy. That's just plain scary that it's not regulated as much, considering it's sold to the same public.

 

= everything, all the time. Does high-end = butt-up?

 

Another vote for toilet paper... Eden was using single-ply generic stuff, and then I introduced him to Cottonelle Ultra. Much, much nicer.

Clothes-wise, I'll just buy whatever (no Wal-Mart stuff, though.) Shoes, I'll buy at Payless, with one exception: running shoes. I love Asics, and I'm willing to spend more for them (and they seem to take a long time to wear out, so I'm not paying for them very often.)

Definite agreement on this one. I recently bought a cheap bra for about ten bucks... it was comfy enough, but it only lasted three weeks I will gladly drop $40-$80 on a REALLY GOOD bra.

 

We tend to buy a lot of store-brand food products, especially from Wegman's and Costco. I'll also go generic for most pharmaceutical products—medications, saline solution, etc.—but I stick to name brand toothpaste.

The shoes I wear most often—the ones that require the most longevity—are brand name (Vibram soles rock), though I get much of my clothing from Target. More than anything else, I have loyalty to a few specific cycling product companies, for both clothing and gear.

 

Life's too short for cheap beer.