When Paying More Saves You Money.

When it comes to purchasing household products, food, and the like, it’s often a wise idea to scan the shelves for the cheapest item.  When selecting a can of black beans, say, my eye gravitates toward the 89-cent can rather than the $1.89 variety, and for good reason – the contents are almost identical.  Why not save a dollar when you can?

But this rule of thumb doesn’t always apply in other areas of life.  I’ll often spend a little (or, sometimes, a lot of) extra coin if the product is going to be well-used, well-loved, and well-kept for years and years.  Which explains why we are now the proud owners of two Lodge cast-iron skillets.  And why I’ll pay full price for a nice pair of running shoes that are sure to travel at least 500 miles.  And why we now have a Keurigrather than one of the other, less expensive models (less expensive coffee makers that, it bears repeating, used to dribble a cup of coffee atop my counter every.single.time.).  I would add my Le Creuset French oven to this tally, as well, but I paid for it with a gift card so it actually cost me nothing.  :)  But you get the point.

This weekend, LeeLee and I said goodbye to our beloved tea kettle of more than a decade – the kettle we bought back at our first little home together in Florida, the kettle that has brewed thousands of pots of tea over the years.  It was past its prime – the inside was beginning to warp, the outside was now sporting scars from a recent near-fire when someone (follow my eyes) left it on the eye of the stove for too long.  We hated to replace it, but its time had come.

For weeks now, we’ve dithered about which kettle to purchase.  It certainly needn’t be $100 – it’s only boiling water, after all – but the $10 models seemed so … cheap.  Flimsy.  Like they weren’t going to last the month.

And so we purchased the kettle you see above, a jaunty little yellow number that rang in at $35.  That’s more than I would usually like to pay for, well, most anything, so before we purchased it, LeeLee and I had a little conference. 

Our last kettle cost about $25.  Amortized out over, say, 2,000 uses (and honestly I’m sure it’s had more use than that!), that comes in at just under 2 cents per pot of tea.  A $10 model may only last us fifty uses, say.  That comes in at 2 cents per use, but we will then have to go out and purchase another, and another, and another – and likely settle on a higher-priced model in the end, at that.  Once you factor in the travel time and the hassle, the $35 model is the winner, at least in our minds.  And so far, so good – three pots of tea and counting! ;)

Some of you may disagree.  Some of you, I’m sure, have had inexpensive products last until the end of time.  I have, too.  But I confess I’m finding them harder to come by in the open market!  Not to sound like a little old lady (I’m not quite there yet!), but they just don’t make things like they used to.  (Whoever “they” are.)  When my mother’s Sunbeam hand mixer finally bit the dust a year or so ago, we mourned its loss – it had been a member of our family for 40 years, longer than I’ve been around!  (See?  Not a little old lady yet.)  Will her next mixer last another 40?  I’m betting not.  It’s just the nature of the era.

And so we fork over a little extra money now for a longer-lasting product that is designed to withstand daily use well into the future.  Sometimes, paying more saves you money.  Where have you saved today?

And would you like a cup of tea?

:)