Originally Posted by
bearisgray
I should have worded the original question better.
I have finally learned - that for appliances, etc. that much of the time the best value for us is in the 40-75% range - not the top of the line, not the bottom of the line, but around the middle of the line.
Sometimes all the bells and whistles are just too complex for me to figure out. Sometimes those seem to be the first things to fail. A lot of the time it's the budget that says: This is what you can afford. Deal with it.
What you've described so well is a common sense approach to buying/spending. I try to always buy quality (not as easy to be sure as it used to be, though, it seems to me) in goods and appliances for the long term....and I agree about the bells and whistles. If you don't need/use them, why pay for them? Disposable goods are something else and I buy those depending on how well I like the cheaper or store brand once I've tried it. I won't buy watery ketchup no matter how cheap, nor rock filled dried beans or cheese that doesn't taste anything like cheese. But, as I've said ad nauseum, those who insist on buying only name brands (Del Monte, as an example) should realize that the canning factory that canned those beans are also canning Kroger brand beans, Wal-Mart brand beans, and Albertson brand beans. Same beans out of the same cooker, same conveyor; they just changed the labels. (We had a food canning plant in my town and I know people who worked there).
I guess I'm not a product snob. If it works and lasts, it's fine with me and I don't care about the brand unless personal experience has told me to stay away from it. The truth is most of what we buy these days--whatever the manufacturer--is probably made in China, anyway.