Your favorite money spending tips

[Undertoad]

(This is not a parody thread.)

My momma taught me a lot but one thing she failed to teach me was the importance of spending enough money on tools.

She was always very cheap about lawnmowing devices, power tools, and the like, and I took that attitude when I first moved out. But since then I've learned: that a shitty cheap cordless drill, for example, is not really a tool at all, but a pain in the ass that you must put up with while trying to actually get something accomplished.

I'll never forget the first weed-whacker that my momma and ex-wife colluded on forcing me to get. They demanded that cheapest available electric was fine to whack our 1/3 acre lawn. It was actually branded "clip-stik" which should have been the first clue that it was inappropriate for an actual man to wield. (And looking back, the first clue that I was systematically being feminized in the relationship...)

The correct whacker for the job cost 3 times what the cheapest one cost, but saved countless hours of pain and frustration. Since then I've come to the same conclusion about almost every tool I've owned. If you pay for the expensive one, it'll actually work, and then you'll actually use it and not throw it away in a few years.