dogboy said:
It depends what I'm buying. If it's music related, I buy expensive stuff, not necessarily the top of the line, but up there. I bought a Yamaha Avant Grand N2 digital piano that cost close to $13,000. But if I bought the grand piano it was sampled from, it would have cost me more than a quarter of a million dollars. It's all relative.
I'm going to sound completetly spoiled, but I've never had to buy an instrument, I inherited all of mine. That being said, I would gladly save up a lot of money to be able to buy a more expensive violin that suits me rather than go with a cheaper one, because it really does make a difference. I own two violins, one was cheaper (still like 500 Euros, but that's nothing for a violin) and one that was really expensive, and I know which one I like to play more.
Though I must say there are some hidden gems out there: So, for the uninitiated, when a kid learns to play the violin, they're usually too small to hold it correctly, so there's smaller versions of them. When I got my 3/4th violin, it was obvious that I was growing fast and wouldn't be using it for much longer than a year, so my parents didn't want to spend a lot of money on it. We ended up buying a 100 Euro violin (again, nothing compared to what one could pay) and it was really really good. As predicted, I soon moved on to a full sized violin, but man, that was a surprisingly good instrument.
And now I've started playing the viola, and the instrument (also inherited from a very tall family member) is waaaay too big for me, but it sounds so darn beautiful that I am loathe to get a different one. It was also very expensive when bought, and I've tried cheaper ones, but the sound and feel of it is completely different.
In non-musical things, I tend to go for inexpensive things, or second-hand-stuff. I'm also someone who takes full advantage of sales, like the one my fabric store is having right now where everything is 50% off. Quality is still important to me, if I know something is only gonna last through 5 washes I'm not gonna buy it, but waiting for sales means I can buy quality products on a student's budget. I definitely go by the "cost per wear" thing: If I can only wear something 5 times, but another thing 50 times, I can afford to splurge on the 50 Euro thing and get the same cost per wear as I would with the 5 Euro thing.
I'm considering buying a new sewing machine and maybe even a serger soon as I'm getting more serious about sewing: Mine still works, but it has many flaws. Here I'd go middle ground: I don't need a fully computerized machine that can stitch fancy disney motives (though that might be nice one day...), but I need one that will sew a seam without the thread ripping halfway through. A serger could be seen as an investment: I wouldn't want to open an online shop for clothing if I can't properly finish the seams, but with a serger, I'd feel confident enough to sell my creations. But a proper sewing machine has higher priority.