Think like a cheapskate!

Right now, this is more relevant than ever, what with the skyrocketing prices of just about everything and the disease of consooming. It doesn't matter if you're genuinely poor or rich; the cheapskate mindset will absolutely make your life simpler, free of unnecessary troubles and even give you opportunities to learn useful skills.

What do I even mean by cheapskate mindset?

Basically, I define it as being as resourceful as possible, and needing less. Purchasing only second hand items, and/or broken ones at a bargain price and repairing them. Not spending money when you don't have to. Most importantly, asking yourself: do I really need this, and can I really not get the job done with something less frivolous?

Somehow, most people instinctively think of buying a brand new item whenever they need it or their old one fails. Or, in case of something like computers, think that they absolutely need the latest and greatest, and that anything that starts to show its age becomes useless. Nothing is further from truth, in fact, older is almost always better. I can understand that someone who does, say, video editing, needs a high-performance workstation. I can sort of understand that someone is an enthusiast and simply wants high end hardware and at least uses it to its full potential. What I don't understand however, is why normies don't want to spend the bare minimum of time researching second hand computers, and instead go through the route of least effort, waste untold money on brand new sloppa only to browse the internet and do office work on it. Whenever they have something break on them, their first instinct is to buy a new one or pay someone to repair it, even though it may very well be a trivial fault that takes minutes to fix, something that you would know if you at least searched it up.

It's not just about wasting money; this mindset is harmful and conditions you into perpetually consooming, deprives you of opportunities to learn a skill, erodes your problem-solving skills. Because why would you ever attempt to take on a challenge, when you can throw money at it and forget it even exists... If this were me, I would never have learned how to solder, weld, use a multimeter and posses all the knowledge that I have.

Do you really want to be a slave to perpetual consooming? All you have to do is simply need less. Do you need a shiny new PC to play modern slop games? Even though the greatest games in history were all made decades earlier, and can run on any office computer from the previous decade... Well, let's suppose that there were still good games being made today. Even then, is the squeeze really worth the juice? Not for me, personally, if it means having to drop a monthly salary to build a new PC, waste time researching recent hardware, taking the time to build it, deal with the stress of it potentially being faulty on arrival, possibly wasting even more of my time sending it back. All to look back on it, have regrets and doubts about my hardware picks (you'll always have the feeling that you could have done things different or better). It's quite sad, thinking of those people bound by the urge to buy. There has been much lament about the recent RAM shortage crisis, an event that doesn't affect me in the slightest, because I'm perfectly content with my obsolete hardware. Only those who want to keep up with the times are inconvenienced. For all that being in the loop, you might just get something better, but will it make your life better in any meaningful way? Or will your enthusiasm quickly cool down, and you begin to get excited for the next new product? Stop caring, and learn to appreciate what you already have. It is being out of the loop that makes your life simpler and rids you of worries. There are few advantages to being up to date, yet many caveats. At this point, I don't mean just spending money on shiny new things. Consoomerism can apply to a lot of things. Watching news, and even more so being obsessed with current events is also a form of consoomerism. One that I don't think has ever made anyone happy. Novelty means more potential problems, what already exists is most likely set in stone, unlikely to cause you any more troubles. As for me? I lose nothing by choosing stability. At worst, I may miss out on something theoretically better, but does it affect my life in a negative way? Not at all, I'm no worse off than I was before. On the contrary, I have less things to worry about in life. So long as what I have is adequate for what I do, all is good. I don't think modesty had made anyone's life worse. It is in human nature to seek novelty. Without it, we wouldn't get to where we are, after all. But once again, throwing money at the problem isn't the way. It's all just instant, short lasting gratification.

Practical benefits

Even if you don't care in the slightest about the philosophical aspects, there are simply countless practical benefits to what I'm advocating for.

If you're poor

Assuming you haven't already, adopting the cheapskate mindset is the surefire way to gradually lift yourself out of that state. If nothing else, you'll find yourself able to put aside a bit more money into your savings. Truth is, a lot of poor people are poor because they spend money excessively. Seems pretty obvious. I'm not talking about people who were genuinely wronged by fate, like homeless people or those living below the poverty line. I would never carelessly judge them, there are various factors that had led them to end up in such unfortunate circumstances, often very much out of their control. For one, I can think of communities living in former PGR which were state owned collective farms during the communist rule in my country. Following their liquidation post-1989, these communities fell into disarray and workers lost their places of work with no alternative in sight.

But I'm getting a bit off track. What I have in mind is actually someone earning minimum wage, somehow barely making ends meet and constantly complaining about lack of money. Now, I know minimum wage isn't always enough to live comfortably, though that depends mostly on where you live. Oftentimes, you'll find such people spending crazy money on actual non-sense, like streaming services, expensive clothes, hell you even see people taking out loans for brand new (or very recent) cars, or leasing them. Not because they really need them, but to impress someone. Eating out daily because learning how to cook is just so, so difficult. So time consuming, despite basic meals taking a few minutes to prepare. Smoking several packs of cigarettes daily. Should be obvious by now what the problem lies. You'll obviously never have enough money if you smoke away 120 Euros per month for the privilege of destroying your lungs. Let me illustrate this, using prices for various frivolous bullshit in my country (listed in Euro for convenience):

All of that adds up to 210 Euro per month, and even then I'm being very generous, because I know people can and are spending much, much more. In my country, minimum monthly wage (netto) is 823 Euro. Roughly 1/4 of that spent on things that are not only unnecessary, but often quite harmful too. For others, there are seafaring alternatives that not only cost nothing, but are in fact far superior. But alas, spending the extra couple minutes is just so horribly inconvenient for some. There exist things worth spending a bit more money on, but DRM-ridden botnet, junk food, inhalable and liquid poison isn't it. You could live without all these, with extra 210 Euro in your pocket every month. Why not buy yourself something genuinely nice with that? Once again, everything comes back to needing less, realising that you only think you need such things. Why not try to optimise your expenses, even for just a month? A Pascal's wager, with almost nothing to lose, yet much to gain. At worst, you'd return to consooming and be no worse off than before.

Buying brand new items has almost no advantages

Excluding consumables and wear items, there are few exceptions to this rule. You know, perhaps I wouldn't be writing this if almost everything today wasn't literal junk off the factory line, but that's our reality. We pay more for products that are worse than what was being made decades ago. Sometimes less, but it's still unreliable trash that will inevitably end up in a landfill within a decade, or sooner. No winners here. High-end or not, it rolls off the same assembly line in Guangdong, China. Your brand new Stellantis piece of shit has worse suspension and build quality than a 30 year old Honda Civic, have fun with a pathetic 3-cylinder engine that'll explode after 60 thousand kilometers. LCD TV panels that turn purple after less than a decade, while my Panasonic CRT from the 90's (oldest one I have that I use) is still going strong just fine. Yes, yes, it looks worse than a brand new OLED or even a higher specced LCD, but that's not what I'm getting at. That Panasonic, despite being a mass-produced device, is an order of magnitude more sophisticated in build quality, made in Japan of all-Japanese components. It stood the test of time for an already long time, and I expect it to last a few good years still. Perhaps even longer if I ever care enough about recapping it. No doubt it must've been quite expensive back in the day, especially in the midst of the transition to a free market economy in my country, but it was not designed with perpetual consoomerism in mind. Just a high quality product, like everything else back in the day. What made it obsolete was technological progress, not purposely gutter oil build quality. Yet sometimes, even being outspecced is no object if all you need is a device that should do what it was designed to do. Obsolete doesn't equal useless. Good craftsmanship and engineering doesn't expire either (sometimes with a little maintenance required). I will say that even an obsolete but high quality product is far better than modern slop that is better only on paper. It may not seem logical, because why would you want something that is worse, but you have to see for yourself that an item that was as sophisticated as it could possibly be when it came out is far easier to appreciate and remains a symbol of quality. By today's standards it may be inefficient, large, expensive to manufacture, but you have to keep in mind that it may very well have been state of the art back in its time, and the fact that it can trade punches with better technology of today is a testament to that. CRT monitors are one such example, the most advanced ones being practically alien technology thanks to the sheer level of engineering effort put into them. Some such technological marvels are quite sought after by now, some aren't. It's always worth looking at second hand high-end options before buying anything, you may often get a much better product for less money, ironically. As long you don't mind the horrors of it being possibly outdated or missing some modern gimmick feature, it could still be successfully used today without any shame. With tons of swag, rather.

Larger selection

This too is a compelling argument against buying brand new. Second-hand market typically has a broader range of products since it includes products long discontinued. You have a better chance of finding something specific, and pretty much your only choice if said item is out of production and no longer available new. I tend to visit thrift stores quite often, full of various second-hand goods. Seeing how they offer a varied selection of e.g. porcelain and tableware with new deliveries every fortnight, supermarkets pale in comparison. So, what are you paying extra for (other than the label of brand new)? The privilege of a narrower selection and not being able to visually inspect the item before you buy it (as opposed to thrift stores that let you do that)? You pay per kilogram in these stores. For the price of a single brand new tableware set, I think walking out with a lifetime supply from a thrift store is the better transaction.

Bathtub curve failure rate

Ironically, if you buy a second-hand good that was already used for a while, the chance of it not failing on you in the near future is the highest, compared to a brand new product. While this depends mostly on quality control, it is a statistical fact and holds especially true for products with poor or no quality control, as well as those that tend to fail early (most things made today really). While never a 100% certainty, with a used article past its warranty period, its chance of survival increases, since early failures and factory defects are ruled out. In these cases, your only salvation is the right to return or warranty, but even then you have to waste your time to return a product or have it repaired. Oftentimes, products are intentionally designed to fail at random shortly after the end of warranty period (you'd best avoid such garbage altogether). Most of the time, that period is brief; one or two years. Some companies have absolutely scummy customer support (see Asus and their ROG Ally fiasco, for example). All that warranty is little more than a shaky promise, it will only help you (if at all) for two short years. You're not risking any more, in fact, you're often risking less, by buying a used item that's already broken-in and thus only suspectible to random failures up until the period where wear related failures may occur, and only then does the chance of failure increase. How long that takes to happen depends on the type of product, but for some it can take years, especially if they're of high quality. I always recommend buying a high quality, second-hand item, even if it shows signs of wear, instead of shiny, brand-new junk. Marketers want to lead us to believe that the status of brand new has some sort of inherent value in itself. It simply doesn't, unless the item is consumable or a wear item. At best the only advantage it has is less cosmetic signs of wear, not a big deal and in many cases reversible with a little work. Don't fall for empty promises of warranty and support, you may very well get none. It is much better to buy something tried and true and be your own warranty if the need arises.

Money

This, of course, seems rather obvious, but I have to stress that you can save unfathomable amounts of money as long as you're willing to get your hands a bit dirty sometimes. I have tons of things I got from thrift stores or even e-waste for cheap (or free in case of the latter). Sure, they may require a minor repair sometimes or some cleaning, but past that they do their job just fine. My 90's Panasonic microwave came from a thrift store, costed peanuts, and after a clean up it still works great and shows no signs of dying any time soon. Truly unbeatable value. One of my most successful recent purchases from thrift stores was a Dell SK-8115 keyboard for a grand total of 3,50 PLN (0,80 EUR). It was dirty but in working order. I cleaned it up and it looks as good as new, once again stellar value for money, especially since it's a genuinely great keyboard. With just a bit of resourcefulness, repair skills and willingness to spare some of your time, it's laughably easy to get insanely good deals or just free stuff. My stereo setup cost me a grand total of nothing; all of it came from e-waste. That is, Soviet Elektronika speakers paired to a Sharp mini-stereo system that someone brought to e-waste, even though it works perfectly fine and wasn't even in bad shape at all. It's truly ridiculous and wasteful that people throw away perfectly fine electronics without a second thought, but you can take advantage of that to get some really sweet finds. I am not exaggerating that if you have e-waste and/or thrift stores near you, they can cover nearly all of your needs for free or almost free (at least as far as electronics go). Give it a chance, you'll be surprised how much good stuff you can get for so little.

Fun

Lastly, I'd just like to say that if you're into vintage electronics, old PCs. and everything else of that sort, visiting e-waste centres and thrift stores is the only financially viable option of supporting such hobbies. It's truly unfortunate, but it's only getting more and more difficult to buy an old PC, a CRT, VHS tapes, etc. for a reasonable price, what with all the scalpers who in their delusions think they're selling gold and still doing you a favour, when in reality these were all supposed to end up in a landfill long ago, and objectively aren't all that valuable, save for some specific high-end models. Literally any CRT with the magical words Trinitron on it is going to cost several times more than it ought to on second-hand item auctions. Maybe, by pure chance, you'll find one that isn't unreasonably overpriced, but at this point places like e-waste are the only reliable ways to get them without ruining your wallet. It all depends on your luck and where you live, but if you find a good source, you'll be able to enjoy a fairly vast variety of hardware, without ever having to pay unreasonable extra to some scalper subhuman. There's also the element of surprise, since you'll never know what you may find next. Maybe you'll find gold, or utter garbage? Maybe it'll just work? Or it may need to be fixed up. It's genuinely fun to grab an old PC from e-waste, restore it and see what it's capable of. Likewise, getting a CRT, even some crappy shitbox, calibrating it and trying to get it to look as good as possible. It's often the same kind of thrill as consooming a new product, except you're not wasting money, you're getting something much cooler and you might even learn something new.

Afterword

While this article is somewhat anti-consoomer, my primary intention was to highlight the downsides of buying brand new and the advantages of second-hand purchases, and/or dumpster finds. Truth be told, you can still be a consoomer even if you buy only second-hand goods. You can be a consoomer of intangible things, such as TV shows or video games (even if you pirate them) if all you do is mindlessly skim over them without a second thought. Excessively bringing home everything you find on the curb, e-waste or wherever else is classified as a hoarding disorder. That said, buying whatever newest smartphone that comes out or upgrading your PC every two years, as if on command, is one thing. Buying a bunch of cables or other electronics at a thrift store for some spare change, even if as spare parts that you might never use for all you know, is another. It's clear which is more harmful. Or rather, the latter is more harmless than it is harmful, whereas the former might ruin your life if you cannot control yourself. If nothing else, it's typically a result of psychological manipulation, known as marketing. Although I usually don't buy things I don't need, even I am sometimes guilty of buying cables or DVD players or VCRs that I might or might not use from thrift stores for literal spare change. However, other than that spare change, I don't really lose anything from doing that. At worst it'll just collect dust, at best it may come in handy some day. If I one day decide I definitely won't need it or that it gets in the way, I can just sell it or give it to someone. Whether you think that sort of consooming is justified, or merely an excuse, it remains a fact that spending like 2 euros on something I might or might not use isn't exactly the end of the world. Consoom responsibly, I suppose (if you must).

P.S.

This all took me a while to write, far too much time than it should've taken. Because of that, I think some parts could of been written better, but I wanted to get it over with and move on to something else already, since I had already took longer than I intended to write this article. I might rewrite some of it in the future. Either way, I hope you found this writing useful and/or interesting at all.