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We tend to think of frugality as buying things with the lowest price tag.

And sometimes, that is exactly right. But not always.

Sometimes the $30 version of something costs you more than the $50 version because buying the cheaper option means replacing it six months later.

And there’s a real, hidden cost that doesn’t show up on the receipt at all — the time spent replacing it, researching another option, returning the first one, or dealing with something that doesn’t work quite as well.

This is one reason we have adopted a fairly simple philosophy when we start researching things that we want to buy: Buy it nice or buy it twice.

This doesn’t mean buying the most expensive version of everything. It just means recognizing that the lowest price tag doesn’t always translate to lowest overall cost.

Our brains are very good at noticing immediate costs.

A $30 purchase feels cheaper (and more responsible) than a $50 purchase because, in that moment, it is cheaper.

What is harder to account for is everything that may happen after the purchase is made.

If the $30 item breaks and you have to replace it, you have now spent $60. And if the $30 item works but takes twice as long to use, clean, maintain, or replace, there is a time cost that never appears on your bank statement.

This is related to the psychology of decision-making overall: humans often give more weight to things that are immediate and concrete than to things that are delayed or uncertain.¹

The money you’re spending right now is immediate and concrete, but the future replacement purchase is hypothetical and the hour you may spend dealing with the problem is easy to overlook entirely.

Our brains can make the cheapest option feel like the responsible choice even when it isn’t.

One of the most useful shifts we’ve made is to start asking: What’s the lowest-cost option over the time we plan to use it?

Sometimes that reframe doesn’t change the decision at all and the cheapest version of something still makes the most sense.
But sometimes, it changes the decision substantially.

Consider something you expect to use regularly for five years: a $30 version that lasts one year isn’t any cheaper than a $100 version that lasts five years.

And cost-per-use can make the difference even more obvious: a $150 item that you use 500 times costs 30 cents per use whereas a $40 item that you use 20 times costs $2 per use.

And then there is the variable that humans have a natural tendency to overlook often: time.

Every purchase has the potential to create work: Researching, assembling, cleaning, repairing, returning, or replacing.

None of those things show up in the purchase price, but they are still invisible costs.

There are plenty of things that we are perfectly happy to choose the cheapest option. We don’t need the premium version of everything.

But for things we use constantly, we are willing to spend more upfront if we have good reason to believe the item will last longer, work better, or save us time.

A perfect example is our Vitamix blender. We bought it almost six years ago and that thing is a work horse. We have used it over the years to blend soups, smoothies, baby food, and dips. I am confident that most blenders would have needed to be replaced by now.

When we bought the blender, it felt like a splurge. And because we are price-conscious, we ended up buying it new open box on eBay for a slightly lower price than new from the manufacturer.

But nearly six years and countless smoothies, soups, and sauces later, it feels like a good purchase because what we’ve gotten is worth what we spent.

The more expensive option isn’t always better.

A $200 version isn’t automatically more frugal than a $50 version because it is supposedly “higher quality” and will last longer.

But sometimes it is.

So I urge you to look at purchases beyond just the sticker price. When you’re deciding between two options, you could consider:

How long will I realistically use this?
How often will I use it?
How likely am I to need to replace it?

Sometimes the answer will still be to buy the version with the lowest price tag.

And sometimes the decision will be to spend more now because the truly frugal choice is the one you only have to buy once.

I’d love to know: What kinds of purchases have you made that truly felt like the more expensive option was the more frugal one?

Jenny :)

Sometimes Spending More Is the Frugal Choice

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