Buy Nice or Buy Twice

... or why you shouldn't spend your money on four mid-priced watches, but save for one premium one.

I've heard buying advice like this occasionally.

The idea is that, by buying something that's right up against, or even slightly below, what you really need, you may well wind up buying the same thing but with better specs and a higher price within a year or so.

This motto works well computers. Sure you can live with the minimum spec of the new Mac Air, but why not sling in some extra RAM and the next internal storage up? Just in case you suddenly want to start editing 1080p footage from a Go-Pro or something. The extra money gives you headroom and options. Maybe you use them, maybe you don't. At least you won't have to buy another one with the RAM and storage when you do decide to edit video. Gamers will have the same considerations over graphics cards, frame rates and other such.

In general, get the better tool in the price range. You don't have to get a hand-made German chef knife - that's silly - but that cheap Chinese junk on Amazon (is there anything except cheap Chinese junk on Amazon?) won't give you the lifetime or satisfaction of a Sabatier or a Global. Ever noticed that most of the professional builders you've seen have De Walt power tools? It's not because De Walt are the cheapest.

Or as the guys at my local Dulux Pro shop say: don't get the dog paint(*), get the Trade Paint.

Does this advice work for cars? If you need a small car with stellar fuel economy, upgrading to a BMW sports car is not meeting your goals. However, there may be a trade-off between one mini and another, and maybe getting the larger storage capacity and a little extra heft in the engine might be useful, even if it does do 5 mpg less. I would never buy a new car, or spend much more than £8,000 on a recent second-hand one. Given how I use cars, it's not worth it. If I drove long distances on a weekly basis, then I could make a case for a 2-litre recent model of something well-made. Some people like to buy new cars: different strokes for different folks.

At the other end of the scale, this is really bad advice for buying art. Buying art, you buy what you can live with and afford. There isn't a step up from buying a Calder mobile, or a small Sergeant watercolour, despite anything the gallerist might say. You buy nice or you don't buy at all.

Somewhere in between is the boy-toy stuff: cameras, hi-fi, watches, and for all I know, fishing rods.

I am never going to spend £6,000 (or even £1,000) on a watch. I don't trust myself not to lose it, or wreck it. You know how that goes: the cheap beater lasts for ever and is glued to your wrist, the expensive item falls off your wrist every chance you give it and a few it made for itself. But every now and then I get a yen for a style of watch, which I can get at the "affordable" price ranges. I'm not collecting, and I'm not looking for an heirloom. I want something that looks different from what I have already. The collectors are right: "affordable" <> "collectable". Also, the idea of collecting expensive watches is a marketing ploy by the luxury companies.

I'm not sure about spending £2,000 on headphones. Spend that on an amplifier, and you could be in for a treat. I'm not convinced that the potential to make similar improvements in headphones is there. Nor am I convinced that I would hear it, given the condition of my ears after all these years. I did hear different styles of sound on a test session recently, but not improvements within the same style of sound.

How about furniture? That stuff is expensive. A really nice wingback armchair can be £1,000+. Assemble a less fancy one from IKEA for about £250. I can't justify that kind of money to myself. Other people could, and I bet they live in bigger houses and do a fair amount of entertaining. But, buy too cheap, and furniture will fall apart in double-quick time, and will need replacing at least once, while the better piece would still have been going strong.

The same consideration applies to shoes and clothes. Shoes from a Northampton cobbler will last five times as long as high-street fashion stuff.

Buy nice or buy twice. Sure. As long as you are buying for a purpose and 'nice' is affordable (even if you have to cut out drinking for the rest of the month).



(*) Dulux' retail mascot is a long-haired Old English Sheepdog, now nicknamed 'Dulux dogs'. Dulux Trade paint is why professionals do a way better job than you do.