Many of us have a good friend who loves a good deal. Instead of buying the high end stuff, he buys cheaper alternatives. And most of the time, this bits him back. The things usually break quickly, sometimes just don’t work, and he often ends up paying the same price as buying a high-end thing because he has to buy several “good deals”.
I have a bit of another way of doing things.
A lot of my work happens on a computer. So having a good one that doesn’t slow down, has strange bugs, and so on, makes a huge difference for me. It’s really my main work tool. Until a few years ago I always had this rule of thumb: “Buy the best device you can afford”.
And this rule of thumb has served me well. My machines (camera, phone, laptop) usually aged really well. Now I’ve added a little extra to that rule of thumb: “Buy the best refurbished device you can afford”.
In fact, the computer I’m using at the moment is a second hand one. It’s a beast, and I wasn’t the first one to use it.
For which parts of your work would it make more sense to buy high end tools? Where can you find those as refurbished or second hand? (1)
(1) If you are an Apple user, Apple has a pretty good refurbished store. If you live in Switzerland Digitec has a good “second hand” section, and there are companies focused on just selling second hand devices like Revendo. All of these are not just second hand but they come tested and with a warranty.