• weeeeum@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    Luxury is cheap if you are clever. You can buy a premium 500$ office chair from 10-100$ if you can find one locally used one.

    Buying the best value refurbished laptops and computer parts can save so much money. You can buy a refurbished laptop with 512gb SSD storage and 32gb of ram for 250$, the newest MacBook has 128gb SSD storage and 8gb of ram for 1000$. You can literally buy 4x the ram and storage for 1/4 of the price.

    I have like 20,000$ worth of furniture but payed like 2,000$ for it. Use Google lens on cheap furniture you see and you’ll find some extraordinary value. I once found a 4,500 brass chandelier for 45$ at a habitat for humanity. Make sure to buy it from a store that checks for bed bugs etc.

    Knowing how to repair stuff. The value of expensive items are very delicate, a single broken part can make the price plummet. This way you can get an expensive device, or anything, and replace a small or simple part. Did this on a cheap laptop with a broken power button and it works great.

    Knowing how to “tune” your tools and stuff. A lot of cheap tools and items can be made much better with some fine tuning. On a saw, re-set and sharpen the teeth, on a knife thin and sharpen the edge, run Linux on old hardware etc. For everything you have, squeeze every last bit of performance out of it.

    • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      9 months ago

      On the note of fixing things: if it’s already broke you might as well try to fix it. If it doesn’t work then at least you tried, if it does work then you saved yourself some money and gained some useful skills.

      In the last 5 years of living in my apartment I’ve fixed and sold about a dozen TV’s. All of them were found by the dumpster or on the side of the road.

      I even fixed my 75in 4k OLED TV after Best Buy cut me a check for it saying it was unfixable. So basically a free $1500 TV because I figured out how to fix it.

    • x4740N@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      9 months ago

      I’m against used furniture that you sit on like chairs and couches because you don’t know what the previous owner did on them and indont want to be in a seat that has had contact with bodily fluids

        • weeeeum@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          9 months ago

          I forgot to mention to only buy from thrift stores and such. Places that make sure to check for bugs