Consumerism Jam: What Stuff Do You Spend Extra On?

Peen Simmons said:
One thing I believe that you should always spend the most on (relative to your budget) is suits. Always buy the best suit you can afford. And get it altered to fit you.

Absolutely cheap H&M suits or unstructured off the rack looks are awful on anyone over 19. They look bad on teenagers too, but who the fuck cares about what teens look like.

If you don’t wear a suit every day, make the suit you do wear count extra. Because you’re only putting it on when you have reason to look good. Have someone measure you and fit you.

Don’t buy something that looks like a bad rental when you wear it.
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That reminds me.

Shirts.
I used to buy nice shirts.
I will again, but less often.

I couldn’t believe how nicely a quality material hangs on the body.
 
As for material items: nothing. About 20 years ago I heard Richard Gere say in an interview that "you don't own your possessions, your possessions own you." This hit me as one of the truest statements I'd ever heard. I've been working hard to reduce the amount of possessions - and one component of that strategy is to not bring new stuff into the house.

But even before then, I have always been a bit of a minimalist. I've had the same electric and acoustic guitars for 40 years.
 
GomezAddams said:
As for material items: nothing. About 20 years ago I heard Richard Gere say in an interview that "you don't own your possessions, your possessions own you." This hit me as one of the truest statements I'd ever heard. I've been working hard to reduce the amount of possessions - and one component of that strategy is to not bring new stuff into the house.

But even before then, I have always been a bit of a minimalist. I've had the same electric and acoustic guitars for 40 years.
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yeah , this was one of those "wholly shit" moments for me when my mom died and it was reinforced ten fold when my brother died and I took possesion of the storage rental that his ex wife had deposited everything left of his (minus items of value like guitars she had sold off or perhaps a few momentos she let my nephews keep). When someone close dies you really see how meaningless material posseions are. It's the old saying "you can't take it with you".

Its nice to have things which bring true value to your time on earth and it's definitely ok to keep "heirlooms", stuff which was "meaningful" in a soulful way but 90 percent of things we "own" is just disposable.
If anyone wants to start on a path of "less is more" The easiest place to start is physical media ("digital clutter is another topic alltogether but still)....go digital and get rid of all those physical things like books, vinyl, cd's....There's books like ones that were gifted or had an inscription i can't part with but yer random paperback....donate the s.o.b.......get rid of it...free your space , free your mind.
 
I obviously don’t buy them frequently, but when I do, I tend to buy higher-end — projectors and TV screens.
 
Watches.

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DdBob said:
If anyone wants to start on a path of "less is more" The easiest place to start is physical media ("digital clutter is another topic alltogether but still)....go digital and get rid of all those physical things like books, vinyl, cd's
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I was with you until this statement. Get rid of your digital media. Take pictures, print them, and put them in photo albums. We have a whole generation now with no history. Have you seen documentaries films where great great grandchildren share photographs of their family ancestors to tell a story?
 
rickenvox said:
I was with you until this statement. Get rid of your digital media. Take pictures, print them, and put them in photo albums. We have a whole generation now with no history. Have you seen documentaries films where great great grandchildren share photographs of their family ancestors to tell a story?
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well theres exceptions to every rule and who says you can't print some of them. Just because they are digital doesn't mean they have to be lost. You should have it on your hard drive, a couple different sources online, a cloud based backup like Backblaze and even a extra hard drive if you want.
here's food for thought....the recent fires in California. now some poor folks lost EVERYTHING and that includes analog photos, physical media. If they have them stored cloud back up then they still have them. there are pros and cons to both methods like everything else in life.
 
dodgechargerfan said:
If there is something I sort of, kind of, want to collect, I’ll buy two or more of the same thing and put at least one away.
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I have a buddy who used to collect comic books, he and his brother both. When the new edition of the X-Men came out for example, there'd better be at least 4 copies in the store, as they'd each buy 2, one for reading and the other into a plastic sleeve, where they were catalogued and stored.
 
Holidays - in the past 2 years we've easily spent over £20k going away.

We like nice gins and I like single malts.

I've no idea how much it costs to run and maintain but I'm in my hot tub at least 10 hours per week.

Apart from that I'm not into ''stuff'
 
DdBob said:
well theres exceptions to every rule and who says you can't print some of them. Just because they are digital doesn't mean they have to be lost. You should have it on your hard drive, a couple different sources online, a cloud based backup like Backblaze and even a extra hard drive if you want.
here's food for thought....the recent fires in California. now some poor folks lost EVERYTHING and that includes analog photos, physical media. If they have them stored cloud back up then they still have them. there are pros and cons to both methods like everything else in life.
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Yes do both. But print them. When I go to homes of younger people they have nothing to share, other than a couple smartphone photos which phone they have to pass around the table to share. Yeah they've got tons of vacation shots, but it's never convenient to pass your phone around and tell each person to scroll through as little as 20 photos. I still have my film based cameras, because the pictures look awesome. But I do mostly use my phone or digital camera to take pics in everyday life or on vacation. I have had to adopt a habit of printing the good ones out and even using those online photo album services. I just found that if I didn't no one ever looked at a picture of a France or Spain trip again. I want my son to have memories and have those memories refreshed and helped by photo albums like I had when I was a kid. Yes you can do anything with digital media, but most people don't.


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Digital media - when film is free and unlimited, you wind up taking way too many photographs. And of course you can choose the best, etc., but the time spent on curation .... yipes. I'm all for digitizing, but I had to learn how to choose quickly and delete 87% of what I was doing.

I used to love consumer items, but as much as they're great for 'that one time,' I hate storing stuff, and now I have a house full of things I'd love to carefully move to other folks.

Stuff really does just weigh you down.
 
I've come to think of material consumer items as (often) a waste of money even though I have been guilty of spending for good stuff in the past. If I know that eventually the stuff will become obsolete I have less trouble if it means a better experience for a while (thinking TV's computers etc). But my house is filled with things that I bought that is essentially useless because either I or technology has moved on. I'm not one to want to spend time trying to sell things on CL or simply no one wants it (old 35mm camera equipment comes to mind) so it sits around. These days I'm content with paying for consumables or experiences over stuff
 
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