Every now and then I get accused by local friends of mine of being "stingy" and I really hate it when this happens. I am mindful with my money for sure, but I'm not pinching pennies over here. I am one of those people that has some level of financial security for a number of reasons and one of those reasons is that I don't spend money unnecessarily on things I do not need.
I am a minimalist by necessity and this all came about when I moved away from Krabi, Thailand; a city that I have lived in for nearly 15 years in a row. Looking back, that was the longest stretch of time that I have ever lived in any city any time in my life. As you would expect, I ended up accumulating a lot of stuff and much of those belongings were things that I simply ended up throwing out or giving away if I could. It was from that point forward that I decided that I was not going to live a life of buying superfluous crap ever again.
For one thing, it isn't very practical to have a bunch of belongings when you aren't sure what country, let alone what city, you are going to live in a year from now. I am in that situation right now as I am not certain where I am going to live in a month or two. I think it will be either Vietnam or Thailand, but I am not 100% sure about either of those options. When you live your life in a constant state of limbo like this, having a bunch of belongings to lug around with you is a recipe for disaster.
This is one way that I save money and it has been a wonderful change to my life for the better. However, there is another side of me that I get flak from my friends about on a regular basis and it has with me being unwilling to pay for things that I think are overpriced.
For example: Years ago a lot of people were moving over to Macintosh computers. I was pretty tech savvy back in those days and when I looked at the actual components that were present in a $1500 MacBook, I did the math on those components if you were to build our own laptop and the total came to around half that amount. I do not think that $1500 for a really powerful computer is expensive, I'm typing on one right now actually, but the notion of paying $1500 for an $800 computer with a glowing apple on the back of it is ludicrous to me.
I feel the same way about a lot of much more common things that are right here in my neighborhood. There are these pubs that are right on the beach here in town and the beers are 50k VND there. Within sight and just across the street from this same pub is another pub where the exact same beer is 25k VND, yet my friends always want to go to the one on the beach even though half of the people who attend will later complain about sand being all up in their shoes and flip flops. We NEVER get in the water and therefore I don't see the point.
I make enough money to pay $2 for a beer but I can see absolutely no point in doing so when there is a $1 beer available at the same location. The fact that it is merely $2 is irrelevant to me... the fact of the matter is that it is 100% more expensive than it should be and therefore I don't want to pay for it.
For things that I am definitely going to use and there is no alternative such as my PlayStation and my computer, I definitely WILL pay top dollar for them because they are useful, I know I am going to use them a lot, and like I said, there is not alternative product.
Phones are another matter altogether and I am just alarmed at how many people spend so much of their overall income on these things. Again, I don't think that mobile phones are expensive, I think they are overpriced. The manufacturers are able to get away with this because the global population has been duped into thinking that the $1000 phone are necessary. I recently purchased the 2nd cheapest Samsung that the mobile phone shop had in stock and do you know what my phone can't do that my friend's $1500 latest iPhone can do? Not a lot as it turns out. Sure his pictures are nicer but other than that the stuff his phone can do is a bunch of what I consider to be crap that I don't want to do. If it served a purpose, I would gladly shell out the money but since I only use my phone for normal things, me buying a $1000 phone would be completely insane.
I recently found out that there is a pre-built Apple computer that retails at $52,000 and people are actually buying it. I am not a fan of Apple products and have only owned a few of them in my life, one by accident. I have never understood the justification for these products costing double what their non-Apple counterparts cost. With the exception of that insane $52,000 computer, I don't think that Apple products are expensive, I think they are dramatically overpriced.
Coffee is another example that it seems the entire world, especially in big cities, gets the wool pulled over their eyes on a daily basis. When visiting a friend in NYC it was absolutely alarming to me how much people were paying for Starbucks coffee - sometime near $10 a cup when at the corner stores they have coffee that you can basically pour as much of it as you want for $1. Yeah yeah, I understand that there is probably a difference in quality between Starbucks over the bodega on the corner but is it 10x as good?
It isn't expensive. I have $10. It is merely overpriced.
I look at almost everything in my life this way. When I see a shirt that I like I always check the price. I can see no reason why any shirt in South East Asia should ever cost more than say, $10. They are all made here after all and we don't have ludicrous markups on fashion here like the west does. I will not buy a shirt, regardless of how much I like it, if it is out of this price range.
Once again... $10 is not expensive for this shirt... It is merely overpriced.
My friends can call me stingy all that they want but I personally feel that there are far too many people in the world who are getting duped by overpriced merchandise across the board. This is a real reverse culture shock for me anytime I revisit the USA - which isn't often. Virtually everything is overpriced there unless you are in a Mexican restaurant.
So what say you? Do you regularly purchase something that is overpriced? I have only one thing in my life where that is the case and it is my snus that has to be imported from Sweden. It might be illegally imported for all I know and therefore, this definitely overpriced indulgence of mine is the only deviation I make from my rule. I am happy to say that there are no others.