The right way to shop for quality without going broke

As a self-proclaimed cheap person I often feel a sense of pride when I tell myself, and others, that I refuse to spend over a certain amount on basic items such as shoes, clothes and other necessities. Sales and clearance items always caught my eye. I relished every opportunity to brag on how little I spent on my personal items. The less I paid for an item, the more I believed that I had made a great buying decision. Lately, however, I have begun to undergo a mental shift in how I perceive my buying decisions. I started to cross over to the dark side and spend a bit more money on some of my purchases.


Whenever I do spend a little more for an item that I use frequently, I usually can immediately tell the difference between the quality of the item compared to its less expensive counterpart. After experiencing this scenario on several occasions, I finally had to make the decision to allow myself to purchase "higher end" items with a few ground rules:

Purchase high quality items at lower end retailers
There's no need to overpay for quality items when you can purchase the same quality for half the price. Stores such as Marshall's, Ross, Burlington, and TJ Maxx often have a great selection of name brand items at huge savings. Why pay a few hundred dollars for a high end bag when you can buy the same brand name product for pennies on the dollar elsewhere.

Spend a little more only on high quality items I use on a regular basis
I can not tell you how many times I suffered the consequences of buying a $10.00 pair shoes at a discount store. Because shoes suffer a lot of wear and tear, I found myself on more than one occasion with broken straps and severed heels, while out in public, as a result taking the cheap route with my shoe purchases. By spending a little more on better quality shoes, I avoid additional trips to the store and end up buying fewer pairs of shoes in the long run.

Never pay too much for high quality items
There comes a point where paying more for better quality goes too far. Paying a few dollars more for an item could mean that you are paying for additional quality but paying 200% or 300% more than the median cost for an item is an extreme. When you pay that much more for an item, you go well beyond the point of paying for the additional quality and you go into dangerous territory of paying more for the name on the product. That is not what you want to do. Avoid that situation by creating an expense threshold that you make sure not to cross.

Take better care of your stuff
Before deciding to spend a bit more money on some of my purchases, I wouldn't put much effort into the preservation of the item. Another $10-$20 dollars would not be a big a deal for me to spend to replace my broken or torn product. Now that I spend a little more for some items, I find myself taking better care of my belongs as a wonderful consequence. The more care I put into preserving my belongings, the more money I keep in my pocket by not having to replace that item.

Don't get me wrong, I still browse discount store and clearance racks for sale opportunities of a lifetime. The difference now is that I ask myself if the super-discounted price is worth the possible trouble and headache of having to replace that product in a short period of time. Spending a few dollars more for the quality may be a bit painful in the beginning, but in the overall scheme of things, I feel that I am holding fast to my "cheap" nature by not having to spend more money to buy that same item again in the near future.