I totally agree with you. I am on a fixed income, however, I like to use good quality needles and change them after a project that has taken quite a few hours to complete. I can not believe that people wait until a needle breaks. That can be dangerous, and it can wreck your expensive machine some day. It costs well over a hundred dollars to have a new needle bar installed on a machine, and I am told that having needles break can sometimes also ruin the needle bar. I buy my needles from a favorite store on eBay at a good price.