lesson in cheapness

[Brett]

I am cheap..........very cheap.


Most often it serves me well and saves me significant amounts on quality items. An example would be buying a low-mileage 2 year old vehicle for half the cost of the exact same new vehicle.



But sometime it bites me in the *** and in the long run costs me more than if I had just bit the bullet and paid for a quality item from the beginning.


I recently purchased a very nice black argyll jacket for dressier functions. I looked around online for quite awhile and purchased an off-the-rack jacket from one of the sponsers here. It is a really nice quality item and I am very happy with it. It also saved me quite a bit over having one custom made.

However, I am not an off-the-rack type build of a person and I knew that when I ordered the jacket, hoping it would fit well enough to look good anyway.

It didn't, but after $90 in alterations from a top notch tailor it fits great. In the end, it cost me not much less than if I had gone with a custom jacket and I have a feeling a custom jacket would still fit me better.

I just want to re-state, none of this is the fault of the sponsor I bought the jacket from. They provided me with an excellent quality product for an excellent price.


The lesson for me is: sometimes being cheap pays off, but often you need to spend the money to get the quality (or fit in this case) that you want.

[piperdbh]

You're exactly right, and I would add that my 15-year-old, high-mileage car is exponentially cheaper than a new one.

[Brett]

You're exactly right, and I would add that my 15-year-old, high-mileage car is exponentially cheaper than a new one.

I hear ya.

My car example was a generalized one and not mine. I'm actually too cheap for my own example.


I drive a 1989 ford f150 I purchased for $2000 over 3 years ago. It only has 160,000 km's and lots of life left.

I can't bring myself to ever pay more than $5000 for a vehicle.

[piperdbh]

160,000 miles? That's barely broken-in. My '97 Escort has somewhere over 210K. I don't know exactly, as the odometer quit working a couple of years ago.

[Brett]

160,000 miles? That's barely broken-in. My '97 Escort has somewhere over 210K. I don't know exactly, as the odometer quit working a couple of years ago.

160 000 km's, which is not quite 100,000 miles

[creagdhubh]

I have been advocating this for years, and not just with Highland attire. I'm afraid with most things this day in age, you get what you pay for. I like a good deal just as much as the next guy, but I always ensure I purchase well-made items from a reputable company. If this means saving my pennies a wee bit longer, then so be it. This approach has given me no problems whatsoever.

Cheers,

[Tartan Hiker]

My grandfather said it best:

"The stingy man pays the most."

[tyger]

You're exactly right, and I would add that my 15-year-old, high-mileage car is exponentially cheaper than a new one.

I have owned 3 vehicles in my lifetime, all USA made, none got less than 300,000 miles. Yep, I had to fix and repair. But I am still driving 2 of the three, and now I have a "new" car: 1983 300D turbo with only 200,000 on it.

[Fedgunner]

My grandmother once told me, "We're too darn poor to buy cheap."
It took me a wee bit to understand what she meant.

[Panache]

Cheap goods are always cheap goods and should in general be avoided

However Frugality is a virtue and there are things in life where less expensive alternatives can work just as well as the high quality stuff (and thus saves you money for the things where you really just have to spend the money to get the high quality stuff).

Imagine you aren't a dressy kind of guy and go to very few formal highland events. So instead of a very expensive pair of dress shoes or ghillie brogues, a fancy custom dress sporran, and a Rab Gordon custom sgian dubh you go get a decent pair of black oxfords of at Target for $30, a white rabbit fur sporran off ebay for another $30, a plastic handled sgian dubh at a highland games for $7.

In truth no one is going to care or notice whether of not the sporran is a custom made L&M one. They will notice if it is worn crooked or too low.

They won't notice that the shoes aren't ghillie brogues or fine Brooks Brothers one , they will notice if they have a good shine on them.

And they won't notice your sgian dubh at all.

So these cheaper alternatives serve you just fine and as long as you take care of them and wear them right they are prefectly acceptable for the required kit at a highland formal event.

Now they will notice an ill fitting and cheap looking jacket. It is going to stand out like a sore thumb and make your outfit look bad. So spending the brass to make sure you have a good quality good fitting one is important. Please note I say "a good quality good fitting one" not an expensive one or a name brand one. I have a tailcoat conversion PC style coatee that served me well for years and cost a fraction of a new one. It fit me well, the original tailcoat purchased cheaply in a secondhand shop was of good quality, and I took care in how I had it altered by a talented seamstress. .

As long as you avoid cheap thin looking hose, you don't need to spend a lot of money on them. Far better to invest in a little thought on which color works best with your kilt (and make sure they are pulled up and folded over right and your flashes are even!)

Your dress belt and waistplate can cost $40 or $200 and they won't know the difference. They will notice if it is sagging or not centered on your waist.

Make sure your shirt is clean and neat and it can be a handmade one or from K Mart, not one will really care. Ditto with your tie, as long as it is neatly tied it can be from Macy's or the Salvation army.

As for your kilt. A clean and neatly neatly pressed, well fitting, and properly worn kilt is going to look really good. A wrinkled, poor fitting, and badly worn kilt is going to look terrible. It doesn't matter if the kilt is a mass produced imported acrylic one, a machine sewn poily viscose one, or a handsewn Scottish wool one. Being clean and neatly pressed, fitting you well, and being worn correctly are infinately more important to looking your best than what it is made of and who/how it was made.

I am not saying that nice hose are a bad choice. Tartan hose, diced hose, really thick wonderful hand knit natural colored wool hose, etc can really can add to an outfit but their absence don't ruin an outfit. I love and own beautiful sporrans, a nice shirts, fancy waistplates and all the rest. They are truly just grand and can give an outfit jsut the right pan...err... flair. Except for the sgian dubh, no one really cares at all about them except other members of XMTS.

In a way all of them are just icing on the cake for a good looking kilt.

The OP's point is very valid. But the importance is that to get a jacket that fit him well there was no way around the fact he needed to spend the brass for it (one way or another). This doesn't mean that everything you buy must heirloom quality. Now given the choice I'd much rather have high quality hiking boots than a high quality dress sporran. Because the boots are something that will get used more and the quality out on the trail interms of comfort for my feet and lasting hundreds of miles is way more important than "wowing" the folks at Burns Night once a year. An adequate sporran will do just nicely thank you.

Now I have a lot of kilt and kit. Some of it is the very, very best quality (Tewksbury kilt, FB sporran, Montrose doublet, custom tartan hose) and some is mass produced stuff of good quality. None of it is cheap, but that doesn't mean it was all expensive either.

Ultimately I think it better to have just the right dusting of powder sugar on really good cake than poorly applied fancy icing to a tasteless cake.

Know when and where to spend the money on. Know what is really important (the cake) and what is just icing.

Cheers

Jamie