A fine heuristic if you have enough money to make the choice in the first place.

[1]Sam Vimes’s ‘Boots’ Theory of Socio-economic Unfairness, propounded in Men at Arms:

"But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."

Men at Arms"

[1] https://terrypratchett.com/explore-discworld/sam-vimes-boots...

There are solutions. I find myself posting this [0] here on HN from time to time. It doesn’t work for everything (I’m not sure how well it would work for a pair of leather boots, though the same approach is theoretically possible there as well) but it is a step up from just continuing with the status quo.

[0]: https://www.mail-archive.com/kragen-tol@canonical.org/msg003...

what is this link? I only saw mailing lists, but this looks like a detached email

That’s him posting to his own list. Think of it as an old-fashioned blog post.

I think this post generally is good, but the diet stuff triggered me. Some table setting here, I can't stand daily food prep, I've done a 100% Soylent phase, I've done a 100% eating out phase, I've written apps to balance macronutrient ratios and plan meals, and I've written apps to balance both macro and micronutrient ratios/amounts and plan meals. I now essentially throw random stuff into an Instant Pot and hope for the best.

For almost everyone--and I hate to admit it but this group includes me--food is a core, irreplaceable pleasure. Even when just doing it alone, not even for social purposes. At this point, I'm receptive to arguments that it's the main thing that most people look forward to every day. You can set up all kinds of plans (read: diets) and tech to assist you in this experience, but I think if you live in the rich world, the primary goal of eating is to feel this pleasure, it is a major part of your pleasure life, and as a result these plans and this tech will only ever assist you in that endeavor. They will never be more than assistants, secondary to this goal.

Next, micronutrients are best ingested in whole food form. Multivitamins are literally a supplement, they really shouldn't be your primary source of micronutrients; unless you're willing to do lots of research, you really shouldn't submit yourself wholly to their vicissitudes. Not only are there micronutrients that can't be combined because they interfere in each others' absorption (iron and calcium are the most infamous for this but there are others), but only some multivitamins will actually show you the amounts that your body absorbs in the first place, and you have to know how to look for that (look for amounts in IUs basically, but that's not 100%). You also can't be sure you're not just eating coagulated sawdust, or worse straight up poison (if you think this is hyperbolic just google around).

It's also likely (though the research on this is pretty fuzzy) there are lots of negative microbiome implications for switching from a varied diet to a diet of soy pancakes and multivitamins.

This diet doesn't have enough of the various forms of fats (Omega 3/6/9s, not just sunflower oil). The only way to get here via supplement is to take them by the handful, which you shouldn't do, if only for cost reasons.

This diet really only has half the fiber content you need (the RDA for which is arguably pretty low, i.e. if you were eating RDAs for leafy greens and whole grains you'd easily exceed it). Add that to your list of supplements.

---

To totally argue against myself here, it might be hard to believe but I'm also open to the idea I've seen around that none of this stuff matters as much as research indicates, or at least we're missing something huge. The general idea is that humans have known basically nothing about nutrition for all of our existence--including right now--yet we have somehow thrived, so it seems like no matter what trash we jam into our digestive tracts our bodies find a way to make it work. This is obviously true up to a point, the question is up to what point exactly.

To be clear, I was not linking it for the specific dietary recommendations but rather the approach enabling one to - progressively - avail one’s self of more expensive upfront but cheaper-per-unit options.

Haha fair, sorry to hijack. I do think strategic buying can be super advantageous, but it's hard to do that when you're also laboring under the mental load of being poor. But, yeah clear guides or maybe just less opportunity to buy junk (better regulations) would probably bear a lot of fruit here.

You speak of food as a pleasure only to describe it as a chore.

Food and nutrition do not require that much thought for the average breathing human.

Your hominid ancestors figured it out already— without an app.

Oh, yeah this probably got lost in my wall of text. I 100% agree with this; I might even say that all the fixation with it by people like me is a way of coping with general anxiety, or a brain that always needs something to do, or a person who was so consistently let down by the knowledge, traditions and ways of their people that they groped around wildly for any idea of how to feed themselves / live their lives.

It's expensive to be poor.

Money follows money, that's how it works.

If someone invests 100€ and makes 1% of profit, they got an extra 1€. You can maybe buy a cup of coffee with it.

But if a someone invests a million euros and gets 1% of profit, they get 1000€. That's a cup of coffee every day for almost 3 years.

Exact same investment, very different outcomes.

More to the point: living expenses.

If someone starts out with $10k, invests at 5%/y, that's $500/y added.

If that person's rent + food + utility bills are $1000/month, that $500/y is 'peanuts', and other income (like regular job) is needed to make ends meet long-term.

(ignoring inflation for simplicity)

But if starting with $100k, 5% is $5k/y which would cover 5 months/year living expenses. And no worries about losing a job.

Starting with $1m, that's $50k/y interest, or all living expenses covered, no need to have a job, AND $38k/y left over to increase capital or do fun stuff.

That's apart from effect of increases in the cost of living.

So very different effect even if interest % and all else equal. Moving up the ladder from $1k -> $10k -> $100k etc as savings, can take a loooonng time (if possible at all).

> Exact same investment, very different outcomes.

not exactly the same. The quantity is itself a difference.

All investments would have a risk. The $1million investment has 1000x the risk, and thus, they obtain 1000x the reward. So, the weighted reward for both situations are the same per dollar.

Yes, that is true if you're assuming the exact same risk for both situations.

The one with 100€ won't have access to investment consultants or private banking. Maybe a few youtube videos.

The one with 1M€ will have an accountant, private banking access and unless they found the 1M€ off the street they'll have contacts for investment tips the other person will never have.

I'm not a millionaire, but I do kinda know a few who could be measured as such. I've made good money following investment tips from them. Not life-changing, but fancy vacation amounts.

1% of a million is 10k. But your point is still valid :]

"The poor man's dollar goes to market twice" is a saying where I grew up

Buying cheap in the US is more often due to ignorance of the item, quality, and frequency of future use.

Even most poor people, when educated about certain products can afford the quality item or change their habits to not need the item at all.

Very few people these days don't have access to credit. If you knew you would save 50% over a couple of years, even credit card rates would be better than break even. The real problem is a lack of knowledge, interest, or simply caring about priorities. More likely the CC get's maxed out and payday loans are the next step in a downward spiral.

Very few people in your country perhaps. But I'm pretty sure the % of the world's population with access to credit isn't especially high (apparently there are 2.5 billion credit cards in existence worldwide. But of course many of us in developed nations have more than 1).

> ignorance of the item, quality, and frequency of future use

That is to say, formerly reliable companies outsourcing their production and selling their future good name for current profits.

I wonder what would be example of a product that people would not need at all if educated?

I'd say bunch of cleaning chemicals when vinegar does the job or "branded chemicals" simply contain vinegar anyway.

It's cheaper to cut up a chicken than buy chicken breasts. It's cheaper to make your own burger than buy takeout. Of course there's TidePods etc.

That said, there's also the other side. I've seen people prioritize paying down their 3% mortgage with extra payments, because, "debt is bad", when they could be earning 5% on that same money and have a "rainy day fund".

That might have been relevant 50 years ago, but even good boots are not that expensive. And if you save that much, put the boots on a credit card, the cost of that is less than what you save on the better boots.

Also getting boots repaired is expensive now, more costly than the average new pair.

The Boots theory is funny because it's absurd. It's not actually applicable to life in powerty. There is no class of items where if you are poor you spend more on it than when you're wealthy. People in poverty spend more _time_ on things, yeah, but not more money or money per use.

You can see some discussion on that from people who actually grew up poor in https://mastodon.social/@danluu/111068036776213383

All items are cheaper in bulk, so the class of items that are more expensive for poor people is actually pretty much everything.

Being poor means your friends and family and roommates and neighbors are also broke, so you can't buy in bulk because they gonna steal yo shit. So you're forced to buy singles, which are more expensive. Being able to store the bulk goods from a CostCo run without them walking off is a privilege that you're taking for granted.

I see somethign similar to this in poor countries I've visited. people who are very poor don't have enough money to maintain a bank account so they just store cash. they have a mindset of spending what they have and never saving. I thought it was stupid till I realized that having a bunch of cash at home just makes you a target for getting robbed. SO you end up with people who spend as soon as they have over a certain amount of money because they never have enough to open a bank account. if you try to save enough for a bank account, there's a good chance the money will be stolen before you even get that far.

Ridiculous that banking isn't free. I never pay banking fees. But also.. it's the poor that get hit with the NSF fees and high interest rates which is also predatory.

In a place like that, the banking infrastructure must be really poor.

And as a consequence, anyone who can improve this banking infrastructure can reap the rewards from this infrastructure.

The US would be included in that category. The problem is that NSF fees are legal, and when you're close to the edge of your money, the payroll company having a problem and taking an extra day to deposit your paycheck, or two extra weeks at the start of a new job, means that the bank account gets hit with several NSF fees that you can't ever pay back, so you just have to let the account get closed for being overdrawn.

> There is no class of items where if you are poor you spend more on it than when you're wealthy.

What about something like laundromat fees being higher than the running cost of a washing machine? There's also the concept of "poverty tax".

If you step back a bit from the boots example you can see the boots theory in action.

Consider socks (I know there's another thread that calls this a 'micro-optimization', likely right, but still...).

Never buy a pair of socks. Or, never buy one pair of socks -- buy a few packs, identical, well priced, and ideally on sale. If on sale, buy them now: if they're clearance, you may not get to come back tomorrow. Now you save:

- money: when one sock wears out, you don't need to discard an orphan. Also, if they are prone to early wearing out, you get enough warning to look for another sale.

- time: when sorting, you don't need to match individual socks --- the green ones all match

But a dozen or more pairs of socks looks like an investment when you are on minimum wage.

It's only not true because once you have money you're instinctively driven to advertise that to other people, meaning you'll spend money on items that say "I can afford these". But I certainly know of people who incorporate "buying well and buying once" into their general financial strategy and do well out of it. However I disagree it means they spend less time on things - even expensive well-made items need time invested into their maintenance to truly last (something I acknowledge despite being woefully bad at looking after almost anything I own).

Hmm, there were many things in the UK that used to have essentially rental kind of options that were much more expensive in the long run (TVs and sofas) as well as energy being more expensive if you were poor (prepayment meters). The last one is still true, but much more limited now.

You don't need starvation level poverty though, remember the comparison point is with a salaried captain of the police. So if the point was "they don't spend more because they can't buy any shoes" it doesn't relate to the original Pratchett bit.

You should go to a Midwest Dollar General and buy a days worth of food for a family of 5 and report back on if you think the theory still doesn't apply.

What? There are a thousand things like that, not the least of which is healthcare.

it's true of household supplies and food. you can save a lot of money buying in bulk, but you need a car, ample storage, and cash up front to actually do this. I spend substantially less on paper towels and toilet paper than I did when I was limited to purchasing only what I could physically carry home with me.

of course, now that I can afford a car and a place to store months worth of paper towels, they are no longer a substantial part of my budget. go figure.

There are many things where the poor spend more: laundry; check cashing; many groceries; and anything else where smaller purchases are less efficient.

That's one useful metric, but it's also limited - you're still gambling on an estimated number of uses, which can often vary wildly and in ways you can't predict. This is further complicated by variables such as companies taking advantage of your assumptions about quality and lifespan of a product by selling out a product line to another company who will produce it at a lower standard for less for the same retail price and hope you won't know or notice. I once bought socks assuming they'd last a long time but the company silently cheapened out on producing them at some point and they were falling apart after just a couple dozen uses. And they were expensive! There's no guarantee that Darn Tough won't do the same, or that you'll spill sauce with turmeric on them and ruin them the first day you get them, or etc etc.

At some point trying to explicitly micro-optimize all your purchases down to the socks you wear starts to get lost in the noise and you expend a lot of mental effort on things of minimal benefit, but this is a good thing to vaguely keep in the back of your mind for expensive and/or very frequent expenses that you know you'll always be using.

I personally use a related version of this, and it's a lot simpler. Cost per month.

The biggest factor in buying something for me is typically resale value vs what I pay for it. This is why I always buy the Amazon Marketplace Used items, or used items from local sellers, where available. This way, I mentally only consider the depreciation over the period of time I use the item as the cost. Usually, the depreciation is minimal over a short period, allowing me to buy stuff I don't need just to experiment with it (I keep a budget for this) Then I divide it by the number of months I'll have it， and then compare the value I get from it relative to eating lunch outside ($20), days of work, or something else like that.

I'm effectively leasing things to myself. I'll own nothing and be happier.

I try that but it usually doesn't work well.

For cheap items - it usually costs me more time and effort to sell than the item is worth. I might do it anyway because it helps others.

For expensive items the problem is risk - especially due to "the market for lemons".

I rarely get market price because I prefer to be honest about the known problems. For example: a car has lots of invisible known issues when you've had it a while. Paying to fix the problems before sale is just not worth it (for multiple good reasons).

This really kicked in for me when I bought a grill.

The first time I used it, that cost me "1500". The second, it was just 750 per bbq. By the time I cooked a hundred meals on it, it is a 15 bucks per meal. Etc. Longevity is obviously a big factor too

I spent $5000 on the fastest consumer computer available in 2011. It had a 6-core CPU which was pretty amazing at the time. I still use that same computer today as my main workstation. I've put a little bit of money into it over the years, expanding it. Most recently I bought the fastest CPU that would work in that motherboard, a 12-core/24-thread Xeon for $30 on ebay. So even with adding RAM, Hard drives, new video cards, and a new CPU, it's still under about $2 per day, which has been absolutely worth it considering I've made 250x that per day when I use it for work.

I'm due for an upgrade soon, but I don't have too much reason yet to do it. But when I do, I'll spend another $5k to get a monster machine and it will last me probably until I expire.

Thank you for sharing that. I think this is a particularly good callout: "which has been absolutely worth it considering I've made 250x that per day when I use it for work."

I think that's called "investment" :) If "loving" your computer makes you even 1% more productive and raises your income 1% that's amazing. Similarly, I've come around on my previously penny-pinching ways around things that matter.

Eg I pay for Peloton. Yes, I could workout in a cheaper way, but the reality is (turns out) that I am much more likely to work out if I can roll out of bed and climb onto the bike in my underwear and tune in to one of my favorite instructors. Ditto on buying a large car - I want my wife's life to be as easy as possible so while I am sure we "could" get away with a Toyota corolla, I don't want her miserable every time she gets the kids into their seats or the stroller into the trunk.

These things are worth it because they get me more of what I care about: fitness, family happiness, etc.

>large car Thanks for making the road less safe for everyone else

Years ago I bought a big monitor for work with my own money. Used it for YEARS. Best purchase ever.

Sometimes people have to let go of some stubborn ideas they have.

Did you overall have a better experience than buying mid range and periodically upgrading components? I'm skeptical. I've probably spent around that much (very rough estimate) on 3-4 builds over the same period, and for most of it I had a i7-6700k (4C/8T). If I hadn't just upgraded from a i7-12700F and RTX 3080 to i9-13900k and RTX 3090 within a year I'm pretty sure I'd be well under $5000.

Perhaps I'll put together a spreadsheet with the total inflation adjusted spend for comparison...

The i7-12700F is about 2x the compute power at about 1/2 the power consumption of my current Xeon CPU. The cost to power older hardware is not factored in to my calculations. I'm not also not necessarily getting 2x the work done if I had a CPU that is twice as fast - most of the time the computer is just doing menial stuff. I do have some tasks that max out all cores (no matter how big the system is) and that doesn't run too often, maybe once or twice a week typically. A faster system might save me a few minutes of my time. So far I haven't really needed to upgrade.

I don't game, I write software, and about the only thing I'd like to be faster is compiling an IoT/C project that does slam all my cores and slow things to a crawl. But it's rare that I need a full recompile and the old system does well enough.

I do also have a 12700F system that my work supplied, and while it's brand new and has Windows 11, it's rare that I find it performing any better or making me any happier than my old computer running Windows 10.

The premise is that spending more once is worth it. If you don't need a lot of compute, you probably could have gotten a still high-end machine for 1/3 the price.

That may be true, but it also generates 3x the e-waste.

Cost/use really only works well for things where the results of use are broadly equivalent across price tiers. In the example given, expensive socks and cheap socks are basically the same when new (they'll keep your feet warm, padded, and wick away moisture), the only difference is how long that lasts.

For things like tools its often a bad metric unless you truly only need it once. In addition to durability; the ergonomics, cut quality, fidelity, trueness, etc will often be dramatically different across price ranges.

> In the example given, expensive socks and cheap socks are basically the same when new (they'll keep your feet warm, padded, and wick away moisture), the only difference is how long that lasts.

As someone who swears by high quality wool socks, I’m going to have to hard-disagree on this example.

My problem is that not all cheap socks wear out quickly and not all expensive socks stay nice. It's a bit of luck and who actually counts?

But that's basically the real problem. I want to believe decades ago there was more of a relation between higher cost (but not outright a luxury brand) and quality. Now that is completely random and even if you look for reviews hardly anyone does any "5 years later" tests (except for some maybe paid amazon reviews...)

Darn Tough socks. Expensive, but free replacement when they wear out.

And do they actually get job done... Hammer drills compared to impact drills...

Apples and oranges. I need to sink into masonry approximately never, but demand tight bolt-ups on the weekly. I own several impact drivers, and no hammer drills.

Give me torque or give me death!

I admit impact driver is more of and passion fruit... Not a useless drill...

IMO if you primarily think in terms of cost per use, you're missing a big step in "financial maturity", because for expenses that are in the reasonable range, I think switching to evaluating based on their value to you is much more effective. Is the $8 Starbucks Frap worth the cost per use compared to a $2 drip coffee? Probably not, but it makes me happy, and the value on that is VERY high, and that value additionally rises proportionally as my income grows.

This fits into the "cost per smile" heuristic lower down in the essay:

> How much joy can you get out of each dollar? Some things bring lots of joy for a small amount of money: ice cream, sunsets, nature walks. A cheap date can bring many smiles per dollar.

I think about this whenever I'm spending money on my cat. Some of the highest smiles per dollar I can think of tbh.

Financial maturity... now there's a euphemism.

You can also turn this around by stating that you have fallen for the marketing ploys which attempt to connect subjective emotions - happiness, fulfilment, accomplishment - to consumption in general and the consumption of 'premium' products in particular whereas others look past such attempts at emotional bribery. Is that $8 Starbucks Frap worth the cost per use compared to four $2 drip coffees? Not if you've seen the Fnords [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fnord

That only holds when you have unused money. Eg the "cost" of spending $8 doesn't remove another source of happiness, like a few days in Bora Bora.

I have a buddy who is constantly buying shit. Every day is a new "thing" and he talks about how he just buys what he wants.

Then I'll go on a nice trip or buy an expensive item and he'll be a bit jealous about it - but I actually spend less per year than he does on these things.

It also depends on the category of the product and what 'value' you hope to get from it.

For example recently I purchased a Lego set, the biggest one I've ever purchased and it cost £565 (titanic) which is the most amount of money I've ever spent on what is essentially a display piece once built.

However I enjoy the process of building Lego and this set is going to take me months to build, just devoting an hour or two a week to completing a section at a time. So the initial outlay is a lot but breaking it down to

1. the enjoyment of building the set

2. the enjoyment of displaying the set once it's complete as a sort of home decor item

3. the amount of time devoted to it (I reckon it'll take me about 35-40 hours to complete, but it'll be months before I see the end because it's just a lil hobby to do at the weekend)

...the cost almost doesn't matter.

The HN title cuts off the other heuristics that are described:

> Whenever I buy things I try to prioritize cost per use. Sometimes I consider other priorities such as cost per smile, cost per thrill, cost per externality, and cost per lesson.

Source: https://stephango.com/buy-wisely

Ironically, sometimes calculating cost-per-use takes more brainpower than it's worth.

Sometimes I get a lot of enjoyment of buying a thing that I know I will love and considering all of the alternatives. Other times, I just defer to what worked in the past.

That's a solid plan.

I'd add in another factor: gratification.

This isn't for all items, but splurging on certain things because it gives you an emotional boost shouldn't be discounted.

After all, we only get a precious few trips around the sun...

Unfortunately it is easier and more profitable to signal durability than actually engineer it, which is why there are so many companies that use marketing dark arts to trick you into believing a shoddy product is BIFL (buy it for life).

There is also the phenomenon of Quality Fade where a hedge fund buys a storied brand, cuts corners but keeps prices high and extracts money from the company as it is running it into the ground.

This makes it very hard to assess which products are truly durable, and Quality Fade means even the Lindy Effect is not a reliable heuristic.

I do this a lot for games, but cost per hour. Some games now are really expensive (£60 etc) but if I get 40 hours entertainment out of it then per hour that is actually pretty good.

This is why I put a lot of games I’m not sure about on my Steam wishlist. Then when a game is “cheap enough” I buy it.

If my hunch was right and the game is only “ok”, but I got a few hours of enjoyment out of it for only a few bucks, I don’t have any buyers remorse.

Where I was born, buying licensed games was hard/impossible, so I just used pirated content. Now, even if I can afford to buy, I still try out a pirated version and if it's good, I buy the game in steam(got Witcher & age of empires 4 this way) *(with some exceptions when pirated content gives superior experience, for example AC2/brotherhood where some content can't be accessed no matter how you pay)

I pirate games, play them, and them buy them (some multiple times, sadly) if I'm still playing after an hour or so. Most games tend to not capture my interest and I only play an hour or two and leave them, and I don't want to be paying 60 currencies per time.

I wish they had a free trial for an hour or two, that would be ideal.

on steam you can get your money back if you play less than two hours. i wish they'd make it 5 hours though. two hours is kind of tight to evaluate a large game. for some i can't even get through the tutorial in that time.

I know they have a refund policy, but it's too much of a hassle to go through checkout, enter my card, check out, then play, make sure I don't go to 2:01, etc.

I'd much prefer to install the game, play, and get a dialog "your trial is over, would you like to buy to continue?" and I can pay at that point.

i fully agree. that's why i wanted 5 hours. the 2 hour limit is just to tight.

on the positive side i did notice a fair number of demos pop up on steam lately, which for those that i have tried, let you play the first few levels of a game, which depending on the game is even better because there is no time limit at all. and no need for a credit card either.

Surely quality should factor in somehow? I would much rather play a short, innovative game than a long grind-fest.

Unless you're Papa Burch: "If you watch Paul Blart: Mall Cop seven times in a row, it's better than Citizen Kane, The Godfather, and Gone With The Wind combined."

https://youtu.be/jI2zxBAIepI?feature=shared

Games are cheaper for hour of entertainment than pretty much any other class of entertainment/hobby where you normally pay, even if you only play the game for a dozen hours or less. Movies, concerts, going to the bar, fishing, gardening, sports (including transportation/facility costs), etc.

This also makes it ok to not finish a game.

If you bought a game for 60€ and played it for 20-30 hours but didn't finish it, I still count it as a net positive. 2€/hour for a good time, it's hard to beat that.

When I was a younger cyclist, I felt this way about stop signs. The fine for ignoring one was fixed, rare, and occurred at random, so getting my marginal cost per run sign as close to zero as I could was the rational choice. Penalties that affect your license change those incentives, but arbitrary enforcement rewards noncompliance.

I would phrase this differently: cyclists and pedestrians don't need stop signs. Drivers do.

We already give pedestrians right of way at four-way stops. It's pretty reasonable to extend that to cyclists.

My 10 year old GORUCK GR1 backpack has been around the world and been my only carryon for most domestic flights. Plus it’s my every day commute to work pack. I’ve had to replace some heat shrink tubes on paracord zipper pulls but everything else should last at least another 10 years if not longer.

Posts like this make me think that we rediscover with every generation. Interesting to me that this particular author has found this, but also keenly aware that millions of people (billions?) have reached the same conclusions.

I convert the cost into hours that I need to work. Do you want to trade weeks of your time on this planet for a doodad? Better have good value add.

This is why I ended up purchasing a "hybrid" water heater [primarily uses a heat pump to heat water]. After the first couple years, the substantial energy savings ends up meaning "free hot water" after just a few years of ownership. Costs about 2x a "normal" water heater, but uses 4x less energy.

My ex-manager once told me whenever he decides what to eat for a meal, he prioritizes calories per $.

Does your ex-manager drink cooking oil?

When I was in engineering school, my employed mentors would roast me with precisely this torch.

I like this reasoning.

Logical.