Cry Baby, Cry!
“Buy once, cry once.” This adage means it’s better to invest now in a high-quality, durable, long-lasting product than to buy something less expensive and be disappointed with how it performs, leading to replacement or repair. On its face value, this philosophy seems reasonable. Why not get long-term value in your purchase? But I see a few arguments that give pause to this philosophy, at least as a driver for every purchase.
The economic argument. For someone to apply this philosophy to every purchase, they would need a big bank account. I suspect that only a small fraction of the population could “buy once, cry once” every time they shopped.
The technological obsolescence argument. Many of our purchases are of items that change rapidly: computers, smartphones, televisions, and cameras, to name a few. Today’s best choice is often tomorrow’s also-ran. To truly apply the philosophy, you’d have to stick with whatever you purchased for many years and forego upgrading to something better when it came out.
The crutch argument. Reciting the philosophy to yourself as you stare at the price of a purchase can make the purchase easier to justify. But that, to me, is a crutch. It’s like running over a squirrel that crosses your path while driving down the road and saying to yourself, “It’s okay, it’s organic redistribution.”
The learn-by-failure argument. One of the most valuable ways to understand what you value in an item is to experience an inferior product first.
Appreciate the quality. And the follow-up to the previous argument is that you appreciate a superior product more when you can reflect on what you used to have. For example, I had an inexpensive jigsaw I purchased shortly after getting married. I didn’t use it often. When I did, I was frustrated by the lopsided cut. And changing the blade was a chore. Eventually, I was ready for a new saw. I made accuracy of the cut and ease of blade change the key attributes I looked for in my new jig saw (learn-by-failure). And every time I use the jig saw, I reflect on how well it performs (appreciate the quality).
In fairness to impartiality – and to extend this blog – I should offer up an argument or two in support of this philosophy. Probably, its creator never meant for “buy once, cry once” to be applied to every purchase. My first argument is probably too black-and-white. In its favour, applying the philosophy might reduce the number of purchases one makes in their lifetime. If we were more judicious in whether we truly needed something and what it would cost, maybe we’d declutter our lives. Finally, in this age of Facebook Marketplace and Kijiji, the quality of items offered for sale might be better if more people applied the philosophy to items they eventually wanted to sell or dispose of. Let’s call it inorganic redistribution.
