coffee. pretty much every local roaster within 50 miles of me has a better dark roast than 99% of the grocery store crap, which is also usually already stale when they stock it on the shelf
Dumber tech that works without internet/network/bluetooth/account or stuff that I can connect to HA.
Who is HA?
Wikipedia link to Home Assistant
official website for Home assistant
In short, open source platform to run your smart devices locally when possible.
Food, cocktails, occasional fine dining.
Definitely agree on occasional fine dining. If you can afford to save up for a really nice splurge meal every once in a long while, it’s absolutely worth it. The key is to find a place that is truly actually good and not pretentious or Instagram hype. But when you do, the combination of incredible food, drinks, and service can reinvigorate your zest for life.
Not personally, but my parents would pay much, much more for cooking utensils than what “it’s worth”. They live in China, and I don’t think the locals (especially their generation) trust Chinese manufacturing that much… so for anything food- or health-related my parents would just get stuff from say Japan, the US, or the EU. Quite sure mom side still insists on buying kitchen knives from Zwilling whenever she’s traveling
I guess this is becoming more relevant now that Temu is a thing
I dunno’, with all the chemicals around food and microplastics stuff, I’d say they’re pretty wise for getting good tools.
Also she has good taste if she’s getting Zwilling. Good nad pricy, but arguably worth the price if affordable.
Toilet paper. Having a happy GF and a happy daughter is important.
Paprika. The grocery store stuff may as well be red glitter for all its flavor. I go to specialty spice stores to buy a premium paprika so it actually has taste
Agree on commercial paprika being little more than food colouring.
Food. Could I survive on rice/ potatoes/ pasta with veggies? Surely. But do I want to spent 10 bucks on ingredients for my favourite homemade food? Yes.
more like 100 bucks.
10 bucks buys me like 1 lb of decent chicken these days. good chicken is 20
Don’t look at beef prices… I’ve eaten more pork in the last week than all of last year.
20 bucks gets you 8 oz of beef. a nice cut is 30 or 40
good news is that cheap cuts, like shoulder are still cheap. they just take like 4-6 hours to cook.
Contractors
How much do they charge and how much would you rather be paying? Asking as a contractor.
Enough to make it feel like a punch in the gut. And then they schedule months out. Why do I do this? Two reasons, one i know they have already priced in all the headaches that they deal with on a daily instead of bullshitters who act like it is no big deal and two because once they start I know they will stand by their work and resolve any reasonable unforeseen/ concerns for the price they quoted. Real talk? Im a little lazy trying to get multiple people out and try to price around. If they show up for a quote when we scheduled it and know what they are talking about I pay.
I know you’re being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but being an honest, trustworthy, and genuinely pleasant person to deal with will let you get away with at least a 10-25% premium in my opinion (depending on project size). More importantly, if you can deliver that service without charging too much of a premium, you’ll be the first, and maybe only, person I call or recommend for the next project.
No, I’m actually being very serious. I’m self-employed and started my business 2 years ago from scratch with nobody to ask advice from. Everything I do is based on my own judgement, not on a “this is how others do it too” mindset - including my pricing. That’s why I’m asking; I’m curious to hear about people’s expectations. I don’t have any peers to compare my practices to, so I’m only relying on customer feedback. Close to half of them have called me back to do another job, so I guess I’m at least doing something right. I just want to make it a win-win situation as much as possible. I know from personal experience what a nightmare it can be to try and find a quality contractor, so that’s the niche I’m trying to fill.
The cheapest contractor usually does the lowest quality of work. Same thing with availability, if they have openings today, there’s a reason for it.
In my experience paying a cheaper contractor just compounds expenses in the future, because you then have to pay what you should have paid to get their mistakes repaired.
Fiber Internet. Synchronous gigabit up and down with no datacaps is a must. My ping in fps games is like 9 ms and it’s amazing. My homelab uses a bunch of data each month and as someone who’s chronically online it’s been such an awesome luxury after growing up with crummy dialup and DSL
I wish I could get symmetrical gigabit. I’m stuck with Comcrap: gigabit down, 40 MBPS up with a datacap. My apartment complex has a deal with Comcrap, even though they just installed fiber down the street from us.
Avoiding the usual toilet paper and paper towel answers, Bluetooth speakers.
Decent sounding ones can be had dirt cheap, but I’ve found that ones made by power tool brands tend to last longer and be more reliable when abused. I’m more than happy to pay double price if it will last me 4 times as long before it fails on me. I haven’t had my current one very long, but the last one lasted almost 6 years of genuine abuse before it died after falling into a vat of used motor oil. The usual life span for bluetooth speakers is about 6 months (general abuse) to a year or two (battery failure). I’m a bit rough on my kit.
High quality Greek yogurt. The flavor and texture is very much noticeable.
I’m starting to realize high quality organic coffee is a thing too.
High quality Greek yogurt + high quality honey!!!
really good yogurt goes bad after like a day though.
everytime i get the really good local yogurt… it’s like sour after 2 days. and i’m not eating a 2lb of yogurt in two days. and you can only buy 2lb amounts.
The reverse: I pay more for a worse experience haha. Illegal weed is cheaper and more convenient, they deliver to the door 24/7. But I’d rather not contribute too much to that economy, despite the legal industry having a worse experience.
But I’d rather not contribute too much to that economy
Why not?
in my country, the black market marijuana trade is run by the same gangs that trade weapons and traffic minors. i buy my weed from the guv’ment store even though it is more expensive, because it supports legitimate retailers and growers. everyone along the supply chain (including me, the buyer) pays taxes to support good schools, hospital, transit…
It funds organized crime. With turf wars, kidnapping, shootings, child soldiers and dealers. All to fund some rich asshole’s lifestyle in dubai.
Ya need to find the old hippie dealer who sings to his crops.
Damn, you’d think weed dealers would be more chill, lol.
The weed dealers are alright, it’s the weed dealers dealers who are problematic
Around here usually they’re kids on scooters, because they in practice have no legal consequences.
Some might want to, but as it’s an illegal market they can’t rely on police. So the most ruthless organizations claim the territory.
It sounds to me, from the answers, that period are spending more for all the things they are listing because they are worth it to them. That they are answering no differently then if the question was “what’s worth spending significantly more on”? (That’s how “worth” actually works, so I’m not sure how one would answer this question accurately.)
I stopped going to the theater unless what I want to see is on IMAX. The screen is bigger, the seats are comfortable etc etc. Everything else I can watch at home.
screens.
i used to buy cheap monitors, tvs, phones. but now I’d rather pay way more because it’s so much nicer to look at and easier on my eyes. everything i buy now is high end. i don’t care about the specs, but i care about how nice and relaxing the image quality is.
a $600 monitor isn’t functionally better than a $150 one, but man it’s so much easier to look at.
