…to a reasonable degree, at least.
Generally, medications. It’s pretty rare you have some sort of specific metabolic issue which calls for the branded version; the generic is usually just as good. I have a note in my medical records to NOT give me the branded version of my meds because there’s something in the expensive ones that gives me horrific reflux, while the others don’t.
Over the counter medications. Store brand ibuprofen, allergy meds, cold medicine, etc. Sometimes as much as 1/7th the price, just make sure the active ingredients match amounts and you’re set.
The problem with store brand medications is they often will have the same active ingredient, but then will have a cheaper or less-effective catalyst used. This generally causes them to be less effective. At least this is what I was taught years ago. I’ve definitely noticed a difference in cold/sinus meds. Generic does not compare to brand name Sudafed.
Decongestants are a weird one. Pseudoephedrine is available but is behind the pharmacy counter where most people don’t realize they can get it. Pretty much every other nasal decongestant has been replaced by phenylephrine which is extremely ineffective. Both the generic cold/sinus meds and sudafed PE will be most likely be phenylephrine, and you might as well not waste your money at that point. Actual pseudoephedrine (sudafed or a generic if they make it) will help.
Reminder, I am not a doctor, pharmacist, or healthcare worker. I’m just a rando on the internet who has heard a lot about this.
Meth heads ruined pseudoephedrine. The last thing I want to do when there’s a compressor filling my sinuses with 300psi of pain is wait in the pharmacy line, show 3 forms of ID, and get questioned about why I need medicine.
Look at me. If I were to start crying from the pressure in my head, the tears would shoot forward 20ft…
Most of the time, yes. Though certain cough medicines have been apparently using benzene in them, which is insane. (Cheaper to produce)
You can look for carbomers in the inactive ingredients list, but they don’t have to put that info in if they don’t want, which is insane to me. We need regulations that ban carcinogens like benzene being used for the manufacturing of drugs.
Newborn diapers.
Get the cheapest Walmart special you can find. Newborns don’t poop or pee enough to warrant fussing over fancy diapers.
Once they get bigger and the contents start getting…bigger, then spend more on better diapers.
I actually had the opposite experience with my son. When he was a newborn and wasn’t eating solid food yet he didn’t have any solid poos and was blowing out the Pampers at least once a day.
Once he was size 2 we started buying store brand but it was also the same time he started eating real food so he would blow out far less often. Now he’s 11 months old and hasn’t had a blowout in probably a couple months and we’ve been using store brand diapers with great success
Plus buy only one pack ahead of time since you don’t know if they will even fit. None of my newborns came out small enough for newborn size anything.
For most people, tools. Most tools will be able to complete the essential tasks. Most people will get by with cheap or used tools.
I have a motto “cheap gets the job done, expensive does it faster”. If you are a hobbyist working on your own time there, feel no pressure to get a “real” tool. Additionally if you are a hobbyist short on personal time, you might want something better.
To go along with your motto, cheap breaks replace with expensive if you still need the tool.
Buy the 2nd last tool you will ever need.
When you are replacing it, then you upgrade to the last tool you’ll ever need
I don’t cheap out on things. Rather, when I’m shopping I’m already looking for something that fills the need and is inexpensive. That’s the goal. The default stance is to spend as little money as reasonable.
Apparentlyv Mr Clean MagicErasers are just melamine sponges which are actually mucho cheapo
I buy the giant blocks of 100 generic melamine sponges from Amazon.
However, having a couple of the Mr clean versions around is prudent. They are slightly different. They deform more easily and disintegrate faster but they get deeper into crevices. It’s super rare that I find something that generic ones won’t do a great job on but it’s good to have a couple of the name brand ones for that time when they don’t cut it.
Yeah, great for cleaning, and I got a pack of 100 for like $4
Mr Clean is like $4 for 2 if you’re lucky
Hot dog buns. In my opinion, the generic, white, store brand buns make the best hot dogs.
I like top split buns. They don’t fall apart
Mascara. There are some $6 mascaras that are way better than the $25 ones.
As someone that often doesn’t wear makeup but keeps some on hand anyways in event of special occasions, can you point me out some $6 brands?
I like E.L.F. volumizing mascara.
Not op, but i personally like this one: https://a.co/d/73OQhwB It clumps up a little bit, but a lash brush helps.
The trial and error is important, so you might end up buying a bunch anyway
Clothes and housewares. Buying secondhand is vastly cheaper, better for the environment, and can get you surprisingly high quality sometimes.
Over the counter medications. If the active ingredient is the same, delivered in the same way and in the same dosage, the effects will be the same.
Games. There’s no good reason to not wait for a price drop and/or sale unless it’s some multiplayer thing and you want to play with friends. In the modern day, you’ll even usually get an improved product after more time has passed for patches and updates.
Second thrift stores, especially for any small appliance that a couple might get 2 of from their wedding. You can often find a brand new crockpot or juicer or coffee maker. 👍
Also anything potentially breakable. Crockery, glassware etc. Best to have something that’s already been stress tested in someone else’s home.
I love second hand shopping for everything, even smartphones and laptops. Just yesterday I bought several pairs of shoes for the kids, some nice sweaters, toys and two wine glasses second hand and I paid 18€ in total, no lie.
Society was brainwashed into buying new shit, while drowning in second hand shit that just looks slightly different. Insanity!In case someone needs to hear this:
DO NOT PREORDER GAMES FROM AAA-DEVELOPERS/STUDIOS
I agree with all of those. Some of my favorite clothing I’ve gotten thrifting. I’ve been able to find never worn brand name clothing for way cheaper. Heck. I recently got a pair of Eddie Bauer shorts, never used (still had the baggie with spare buttons attached to the waistband), for $5.
On board with the thrift shops! I got a $250 brand new wok for $10 and it’s the best one I’ve ever used.
Fun Fact, Zertec is just Citrizine Hydrochloride but 10x the price of generics.
Weddings.
Yes, It IS a big day. It’s not such a big day that you spend your entire life savings, and have no future.
Get a DJ, get a cake, get a hall, get a photographer…forget the doves, forget the ice sculptures, forget the wedding planner, forget the genocidial mimes, forget the big limo, keep it small. Do you really need to invite your great aunt, who you’ve seen 3 times in your life?
You should NOT be spending like $20,000 on a wedding.
Don’t take a loan either.
The genocidal mimes are non negotiable
I know right…we HAVE to have standards
out of the loop, what are genocidal mimes?
It’s right there on the tin
A friend of mine donned his nicest clothes and went down to the courthouse with his fiance and a couple of witnesses. I mentioned this to my sister, and she mentioned that in retrospect, she wished she’d done something similar when she got married.
Did the same, then went out for a nice meal, weddings are a complete waste of money.
$20k?
Damn dude, all my friends getting married are spending a minimum of $50k. $15k gets you the venue for the night without anything else included or factored in (food, music, fucking chairs or tables or lights, etc)
Weddings are a predatory business.
I can get a venue for like $200. What are you guys renting??? The Royal Palace???
Venues (and other services) usually jack the prices way up when the word Wedding is involved. Which makes sense since weddings typically don’t have a lot of room for errors.
It varies a LOT regionally.
Look for a venue in Maryland, you know, with DC right there.
I have a friend who’s entire wedding was the same price as a venue in Maryland.
We got married in DC and saved so much money on locations. We booked the Jefferson memorial 6 months in advance for like $50 (saved a couple thousand), and a boathouse on the Potomac for $800 (saved 8-20 grand) because we knew someone - wedding still cost like 33k. We were so cognizant of cost too - no flowers at all, DJ instead of a band, bought our own booze, etc.
I think people don’t realize how much more expensive cities are, and also do a terrible job accounting for all the true costs of things. Food was obviously the bulk of it and other big things like booze, rings… But I kept impeccable records, and what really added up was the little $100 here, $300 there things. Hotel and plane tickets for destitute father-in-law, all the meals at restaurants you’re taste testing to see if you wanna have the rehearsal dinner there, tips, food while the bridal party is getting ready, gifts for bridal party, the officiant, etc etc.
I wouldn’t trade it for the money back because I’m notoriously cheap, so I pinched and saved and was super proud of our wedding’s price to quality ratio, but I’d be lying if I said the final tally wasn’t super painful and didn’t delay our house a bit. It worked out in the end, though. Thanks interest rates!
Yeah, people definitely don’t understand that you can cut so much and bargain hunt the whole thing and still spend 15-20k. That’s a"cheap" wedding. The average in my area is 33k. That’s not because people are just spending frivolously and don’t budget, that’s because every single aspect of a wedding is expensive. Hell, tipping out the bar staff and photographer alone is expensive.
Skip it if you want, but even as a very frugal person, I’m very happy we had a huge party with lots of food and an open bar. It’s worth it to spend money on life rites. Life rites are like half the point of being human!
If you don’t care about celebrating with friends and family, don’t spend the money, but for us sharing the day with the people we love and merging our families was important.
We got out cheap at about $25… we had a smaller (100 person) wedding, went budget on the food, had a DJ, cake, etc. (basically just what the OP said), and we were still hand crafting stuff to reduce the cost. Shit is fucking expensive.
$25 is cheap, imagine one that costs a whole fifty dollars /s
We spent less than 10k on our wedding and only invited close family. Did most of it ourselves. It was the best day ever!
Spent less than 1k, no real honeymoon…but we bought our first house with the money we saved. 0 regrets.
This. This right here.
Couple goals.
We had our wedding at our house in the backyard, no DJ, a discounted cake from my wife’s work (a bakery), catering from a BBQ place. Still ended up costing just about 2k, after food, flowers, and rented tables and chairs.
I’m in agreement except for the wedding planner. Whether they help with the planning from day one or are just the day-of coordinator, a good wedding planner is worth their weight in gold. I’d rather plug an old mp3 player into a portable speaker and skip the DJ before I recommend skipping out on the planner.
Oh, by DJ, yeah, thats all he’d be doing is controlling the winamp playlist basically.
And a wedding planner I don’t see as being needed.
Step 1) rent local venue.
Step 2) ask cousin to be DJ.
Step 3) pick up cake from dairy queen.
Step 4) Flowers??? I’m sure the florist can figure something out.
Thats about it.
eh, as a photographer that works weddings, any wedding without a planner is hell for me. i might actually just say no if that’s the case.
if you hire people to work it you should have a person who can be their go to while you are getting married.
if you go for an event like you describe people will be unhappy at the lack of food and leave after not long. if that’s what you want, good for you. go for it. if you want people to stick around and have a good time, you need to feed them. that’s expensive, even if you somehow make it all yourself with food from the farmers market, it’s still going to be over a thousand dollars for most people. again, unless you only invite like five people, but most people care about more than 5 people. throwing a big party of any kind isn’t cheap unless you throw a terrible party.
you don’t have to have a traditional wedding at all though. my sister got married during COVID in her backyard on video call. it was lovely. a big beautiful wedding with lots of people is also lovely and uniquely fun. just don’t let you relatives pressure you into things you don’t want. there’s where it always goes wrong.
Mine cost $150. $70 for the license and $80 for the JP to do their thing.
I’m sure JP stands for something reasonable, and that makes sense, but my mind struggles against itself, and all I can imagine is it stands for “Japanese” and also my brain things “Jurassic Park”.
So even though I’m 100% confident that this DIDN’T happen, I’m just imagining your wedding, with people sitting down, waiting for the bride to walk the isle…meanwhile, over by the other side of the room are bunch of Japanese cosplayers all recreating scenes from Jurassic Park. Complete with inflatable dinosaurs and .wav files of dinosaur sounds.
All the while your guest list is like “WTF is even happening over there???”
I’m sorry. I don’t know what ACTUALLY happened at your wedding, but it would have been a HUGE upgrade if you had dinosaur fights, and Japanese cosplayers.
My brother’s father-in-law had offered to pay up to $15,000 for his daughter’s wedding. He gave them the option of taking it all in cash and then getting a courthouse wedding so they could have a nest egg to grow, or spend it all on the wedding of his fiancée’s dreams, or anywhere in between.
She opted to spend it all on the wedding. 😒 My gawd did that piss me off.
Absolutely! Making it memorable and fun does not mean making it expensive. Cut whatever you can’t afford, do not take out a loan to cover anything. Then cut anything that isn’t meaningful to you and your partner.
A wedding planner is helpful if you don’t have a trusted and naturally organized friend who volunteers to handle details for you.
I’d also recommend taking a local honeymoon.
We bought a house, had the wedding in backyard for $10K, we put it all on credit cards for the sign up bonuses and had a 2 week honeymoon to Europe staying in 5 star hotels and first class flights all for $1,300 in signup fees.
Go, and preach this gospel to SE asian families, I beg you.
Getting away with a wedding for under 80k sometimes is considered “cheap” by those standards. And you absolutely must invite your third cousin once removed and your nextdoor neighbor who you hate. You see him every day afterall!
I laugh when I hear some couple spent $20k on their wedding but can’t buy a house. Dude, that could have been your down payment wtf.
I mean…yes and no. A down payment for a single family home in today’s market is many orders of magnitude more expensive than $20k. But I agree that weddings are too expensive. Just have a small party and use that money elsewhere.
Our wedding was under 5k, excluding dress and suit. Immediate family and close friends only, less than 40 people. Major expenses were the photographer, food and booze. We rented a cheap, small place in the countryside, we planned and did everything else ourselves, having a kanban board in the kitchen for a year was fun! My wife even did the cakes herself because she’s an amazing amateur pastry chef. No DJ, but I spent months on and off curating a playlist with a good flow and steadily increasing intensity.
It was the perfect wedding. Huge amount of work but 100% worth it.
My wife and I spent $350 altogether for the paperwork and an officiant. We eloped beneath a tree in a park with her family present, and afterward I returned my dress shirt to Walmart for a refund. I will never regret how low-class that was.
We’ve been married now for ten years.
Here’s my pro tip.
You want a unique picturesque wedding on a budget?
National Parks in the US. If you keep your guest list under 50 people, you can get married anywhere in the park, provided you don’t block access, put up decorations, or damage the park, and it’s free! If you have more than 50 people, you need a permit, and those are raffled off per day, and almost no one uses them.
I got married on the bluffs overlooking Little Hunter’s Beach in Acadia National Park. The drive, food, and lodging for my wedding there cost less than the first payment for the venue of my “local” ceremony in my home city, which we ended up canceling anyway.
If you do get a permit, are you allowed to put up decorations?
Most people are being very specific, but I’d say consumables in general. Rarely is a name brand food or medicine any different than generic. Often they’re literally produced in the same factory. Stuff that’s meant to last, generally a more expensive product will be made more durable (not always), but this isn’t a consideration with consumables. If it’s a one-time use or edible, I’m going with the cheapest option 99% of the time.
I agree except for condiments. They’re cheap enough already compared to how long they last that I think it’s worth springing for the good stuff. Duke’s Mayo, Grey Poupon mustard, Cholula hot sauce, Ken’s Steakhouse salad dressings, etc. If a bottle lasts you six months, what difference does a few dollars make?
For staples like flour, bread, canned products, OTC meds, who cares. I’ll go as cheap as possible.
You’re calling Ken’s good?
My friend once wrote a letter to them about how bad their blue cheese dressing is. In return they gave him a voucher for a lifetime supply of it. That shit is disgusting, IMO.
That’s a “lol eat shit” response if I ever saw one.
Their blue cheese is terrible, but some of their dressing varieties are quite good IMO. I consider their Lite Caesar and “Simply” Greek some of the best off the shelf brands. Come to think of it, I don’t know of any blue cheese that isn’t from the refrigerated section that is worth eating.
It’s funny how people won’t cheap out on something like a mattress or clothing but consistently buy the cheapest food possible which is going into their bodies.
You spend at least or about a third of your life on a mattress. That shit’s important.
And most people eat food at least 2 times a day.
Yeah, but you don’t eat the same meal every single day, and you don’t purchase several years worth of food all at the same time.
I agree with eating healthy, but if you’re buying cheese-it’s, as an example, the generic brand is equally bad for you as the name brand. You should still try to make healthy choices, but name brand doesn’t make anything healthy.
I think it’s funny you used cheeseits as your example because that’s one of the few things I won’t buy generic of because they’re just different. Little cookies, crackers, chips, and chocolates are usually brand specific in taste (though don’t assume you prefer the name brand, you may prefer the generic!) so they’re not fungible. I’d rather skip the calories than have generic cheeseits or Doritos.
Unpopular opinion but wine.
From my experience majority of people can’t distinguish between 5€ wine and 500€ wine. And even if they do, they say it tastes “a bit better”, not worth the 495€ difference. Pick one that tastes good to you and don’t be ashamed if it’s cheap.
I’m far from a wine connoisseur and my favorite is an $8 rosé wine you can find at your local grocery store.
I will disagree with a caveat. Basically yes there is a difference between wines, and it’s not BS.
There is a world of a difference between a $5 and a $500 wine. But there isn’t a world of a difference between a $5 and a $30 wine, nor is there a world of difference between a $500 and a $1000. It’s about a class structure of the product as with so many things. There’s cheap and simple and there’s more sophisticated and expensive. But once you’re comparing within the same class, it’s really just a matter of varying subtleties. There’s certain distinctions that are absolutely distinguishable such as dry, sweet etc. and there are undertones. This stuff is absolutely real so if someone says it’s all nonsense that someone has not really had the experience needed to make that kind of judgment.
I drink between $5 and $500 bottles, and while I will agree there is a distinct difference at the higher end, it doesn’t mean the $500 bottle will be better than a $20 bottle to the person drinking it. I humor the people that care about the price, but distinct notes of so-so music doesn’t spin my wheels.
Yeah, no it’s all a question of the person’s relationship with wine, as with other things. If you are perfectly fine with a cheap wine then yeah, plenty of them are delicious. But a connoisseur can and will appreciate what a $500 wine offers them, and it’s not qualities you can find in any $5 bottle.
Like with many things, if you appreciate the higher-end selections among them, then you’re getting something you can’t at the low end. The question is, even with those qualities, is it really worth $500? And that’s just a matter of economics.
When my son was born I got a $100 bottle of Glenlivet 18 year French Oak Finish. That’s a rather sophisticated single malt; by no means is it the best because I know people who have bourbon or scotch that costs like 5x that. However, you will not anywhere or anytime find a cheap scotch that even comes close to that Glenlivet. It was some of the smoothest and most delicious single malt I’ve ever had. Lasted me nearly a year.
Sigh. Due to a medical condition I don’t consume alcohol anymore, and haven’t for a long time. But goddamn do I miss good scotch, bourbon, beer… sigh.
Oh god, right there with you on scotch, all whiskeys (and whiskys) in fact. But wine can be hit or miss, even at the high dollars. Years ago I found an amazing cabernet with a full body and heavy chocolate notes for $2.12, and dank it for a year. But I agree that as you get up to $20-100, the likelihood of something terrible is less, and over $90 very rare.
I’ll have a glass of something with Glen in the title in your honor tonight.
If you’re reading this and curious about wine, a couple of things.
1 - Drink what you like. If you want red wine with fish, fine. The people who care, care more about rules than enjoyment.
2 - Drink what you like. I opened a $500 red for my dad’s birthday, it was so-so to my palate. I love $12 NW pinot noirs. Don’t fixate on a price.
3 - When you find something you like, take the bottle to a wine store and ask for a description of the notes of that wine. Ask them to suggest similar wines, and learn to pick out the notes that matter to you. People who don’t know wine talk price, but your sommelier really wants to hear “I’d like something full-bodied, no acid, heavy tannins, smooth finish with some fruit notes.”
4 - Your waiter is rarely a sommelier and just wants a region and type of wine. West Coast pinot noir generally makes a table happy.
Awesome.
I agree about the wine; I was just going on like the broadest scenarios because of course when it comes down to it, there’s nothing objective about it. And I agree with the pairing if I see someone bring up the issue of this wine with that protein I take pity on someone who is so stuck to these absurd notions they don’t know what enjoyment actually is.
Hah, it turned out it was 15 year Glenfiddich 25 years ago. So Cheers!
Wine is a huge scam.
Sommeliers are just salespeople making shit up.
It’s bullshit, you don’t detect notes of 15 different things all mixed together.
The French Fiasco (or whatever it was called) in the mid-70’s is proof.
It’s actually not really that hard, any cook worth their salt can make a good shot at reverse-engineering a sauce from tasting it. It just takes a lot of practice at tasting things.
I somewhat disagree, 5€ is too low to get a decent wine imo. Buy a wine for 10-15€ and there is no longer any difference from the 500€ one.
The last point however is the key, and I agree wholeheartedly. If you can find one for 5€ then that is good enough
There have been so many studies showing that everyone from average joes to top-tier judges can’t tell the difference between cheap and expensive wines.
Seems something like [Proportion of People OK w/the Wine] - [Price] might be:
50% - $5
75% - $10
90% - $20
95% - $30
99% - $50I made all of this up. Who actually drinks wine? Did I come close to your made-up numbers?
Also assume some of the highest-rated wines at each price point for consumers who appreciate that style in general.
I’m not much of wine drinker myself, but I once did a chef menu with the wine pairing. Every two dishes, they’d bring out a new glass of wine. It was kind blowing how the would taste one way with the first dish and a completely different way with the second dish. I’m not sure I can tell the difference between a $12 bottle and $40 bottle, but in that one meal i understood two things: first, if you know what your doing, wine and food pairings can be magical and, second, I don’t know what I’m doing.
I highly disagree. I always walk in and say. “Vitner! Your finest box of wine, on the double”
Possibly an unpopular opinion among parents, but: Diapers. I’ve noticed no negative effect on my kids when going offbrand.
We tried cheap ones, but our kids get irritated skin from them. Pampers works for us. That being said, I’d go for the cheapest brand that works for the little ones.
I remember the expensive ones, Pampers, being way worse, the pee is so absorbed the kid doesn’t feel it but is still in it and get irritated skin, and poo leaked way more easily.
Shit, I never thought that might be why, but we’ve dealt with a lot of skin irritation, and our kid prefers keeping a dirty diaper over getting changed. My day is ruined.
Yeah, that’s the only real difference I’ve noticed: The fit. On my oldest kid, libro fit best. The rest were offbrand. I think it’s mostly down to each individual kid and not so much the brand.
Ditto. They also smelled worse too. We found that the Target brand diapers when Target has their gift card deals was the time to stock up on their whipes and diapers.
Video games. Unless it’s a game I play with friends I typically wait for it to drop in price significantly.
Yup. My strategy has long been:
- Put game in wishlist.
- Wait for it to drop to under 20$ (or close)
- Profit. Well maybe not profit, but save money.
Also good to wait until all the bugs are worked out. Been playing Cyberpunk recently and it performs really well!
Also, if you’re not going to play it this week, think twice! And, if you’re not going to play it this month, think a third time!
Waits and waits but Nintendo won’t budge.
Generic medicines
