Don’t buy a knife that has a thick ridge on the part of the blade close to your index finger. It is supposed to protect your finger, but you don’t need it and it interferes with correct sharpening of the blade. Knives with this thick metal ridge (often the ‘high quality expensive ones) tend to get a concave shape after a lot of sharpening. It makes it very hard to cut food on a cutting board. A good chefs knife is convex so you can cut with a slight rocking motion, just rocking up the back part of the knife enough to clear the height of the food. The tip stays on the cutting board. This will save you some nasty cuts.

Buy a sharpening stone, two sided, one that is coarse and one fine. Make sure it is a water stone, not an oil stone. Then you don’t have to buy and keep special oil for it. If you have an oil stone, DONT use vegetable oil. It will eventually gum up and be very hard to clean. If you already have, soak in heavily dish-soaped hot water. Scrub clean with a brush. Repeat until clean. Use either proper oil or only water. Most oil stones work with water if you clean the oil out first.

Use a wooden cutting board, keep it clean and disinfect with a solution of 30ml bleach with 1 litre water when you are finished using. Label and keep in a bottle away from food. This is a very inexpensive but useful disinfecting/cleaning agent. If you have to use a sponge, always clean it with this disinfectant. The same with cleaning clothes, rags, etc.

Keep a separate cutting board for meat, fish and poultry and always clean, rinse and disinfect between different kinds of meat.

Btw, I found that I can do most of my cutting with an eight inch french or japanese style knife, including filleting large salmon and deboning most cuts. A deboning knife can come in handy for large cuts, but you can often get away with a sharp paring knife. I bought mine for $3, it has its own plastic box and is as sharp today as the day I bought it. Keep all your knives so they don’t rub other metal items. Don’t just toss into a drawer, they will get dull. Don’t toss into a sink full of dishes, they will get dull and someone will cut themselves.

The only other knife I really use is a serrated bread style knife, ten inches long. Again, I found an inexpensive one worked as well, if not better then the expensive ones.

I bought a pair of great Chicago Cutlery knives for $30 almost 10 years ago. I keep them sharp and they’re the best I’ve ever used. Now if I could just keep my wife from putting them in the dishwasher…

1. Price is irrelevant
2. Quality – somewhat irrelevant
3. Everybody’s skin, genetics, conditions, health, habit, allergies are different.
4. The highest skincare cost is probably the trial and error stage (even if you’re buying drugstore creams, this cycle can be expensive, to get it right)
5. CHEAPEST solution is to quit smoking, drink lots of water, get enough sleep and cut down the caffeine. Your skin will cooperate so much better with the products you use. $ or not.

Kept on happening where my favorite shampoo or conditioner got phased out or hard to find. Currently using Suave coconut shampoo and conditioner and they are almost as good. (However if you can find Neutrogena triple moisture daily moisturizer, best one I’ve used and- if you can find it- around $5).

Husband wears Wrangler jeans ($14.50) and they look good on him.

As far as wine, found many $7, 8 dollar bottles of wine I’ve greatly enjoyed. However I’ve also have had some bad $4,5 wines and one time at a bar ordered their cheapest red and it was undrinkable, so I am now wary of buying the “cheapest”. It’s no bargain if it’s unpleasant to drink.

Instead of expensive bath salts, get a big carton of epsom salts. Can always dress it up with essential oils.

Circo pull ups are a great bargain – one of the cheapest by unit cost but work great.

Red Baron frozen pizza if not looking for exotic pizzas. Don’t just compare the price, look at the size/weight of pizza.

I also like Mondoro Asti Spumanti ($13) much better than any other champagne/sparkling wine that I’ve tasted.

I do have a nice chef knife, bought a good set of knives when I was in college (not on credit, paid cash). I still have them 18 years later and with a little sharpening every other month they’re in tip top shape.

On prescription medication, I take generics but only when necessary. I usually try to find an herbal or homeopathic alternative, which are often WAY cheaper and don’t have the side effects. I am highly skeptical of the drug business. I’m happy that my Dr is also this way, she usually recommends old tried and true cheaper over the counter alternatives to super expensive new presicriptions. She says she’s not comfortable telling her patients to take things that haven’t been proven well enough.

I would also suggest trying to find a good quality used item. I got my camera from a friend (professional photographer) when the upgraded. Now I have a nice “new to me” camera that I don’t feel bad lugging around the garden for my blog photos. I take good care of it, but I’m not worried about it getting dirty or a little dinged.

On beauty care, I discovered using all natural products to be much cheaper, not the store bought manufactured ones. I buy green clay in bulk and use that instead of soap on my face and I use rose hip oil for a moisturizer. Can’t believe how much better my skin looks and I’m happy it’s cheap and non-toxic!

I only buy jeans every 3-4 years because I only wear them at home/going out. I like the soft, pre-washed ones, and being a woma in my late 40′s I was desperate to fine a good fitting pair!

I bought some designer jeans online (7 for all mankind) on a whim & I was astonished—-they have an amazing fit that is comfortable and actually very flattering. I even get compliments on how my jeans look all the time! They are very soft denim and yet wear like iron (I am still wearing one pair 4 years later). The sizing is true, too–I ordered another pair a year later and they fit identically.

I am happy to wear only these designer jeans, and skip the low quality stuff from Gap and Limited that falls apart very soon (if it is at all stone-washed), that don’t run true to size, and that are cut so unflatteringly.

I don’t need many pairs of jeans if they fit great, look great, and last forever.

Electronics–absolutely–you can’t go for the lowest price.

T-shirts that I know are going to be rags in a few years anyways (meaning like plain, wear around the house stuff) I’ll shop for the bargain.

Generic brand food is another example.

I think you have to use a combination of both and know when to spend more for quality, because as you say, sometimes the extra money you spend is for nothing at all.

As for generic drugs – my peeve is that many of them are manufactured in India and China. I don’t appreciate my insurance forcing me to purchase items made overseas.

Bottom line was that most clothes are manufactured similarly, and that the variations in quality were minimal, if even noticeable.

The piece went on to say that wealthier folks were buying their simpler pieces, such as t-shirts from places like Target for $10-$15, rather than spending outrageous amounts for designer pieces that are very similar.

Everyone’s heard of the 80/20 rule by now, right? It states, roughly, depending on what you apply it to, you get 80% of the output from the first 20% of the effort.

What that implies is that for the last 20% of the output, you have to put in the remaining 80% of the work.

So, a product that’s 100% as good as it can be has five times as much work invested in it as a product that’s only 80% as good as it could be. You end up paying five times as much for 25% more quality.

That’s if you believe the 80/20 rule, anyway.

I’ve also read good things about Costco’s Kirkland brand of clad pans but I have a tiny kitchen and just needed the 3, open-stock pieces.

Great (less expensive) diapers: Luvs or Berkeley & Jensen (BJ’s warehouse brand). Just about as good (and soft) as name brand.

Keep ‘em coming! Great stuff.

People should not just consider cost, but the social ramifications of the purchase. If two items are of equal quality and one is cheaper but build in a place that devalues human life and the other costs more but is build in a place that values human life, one should consider paying more for the more expensive product.

People wonder why their neighbors are unemployed. It is because you can’t compete with free labor nor should you have to.