Most people like to save money. But in some cases, saving money is counter-productive or will cost you more money, or so much time that you had wished spending a little more money.

Buying low quality items is one of these situations. The old saying too poor to buy cheap captures to essence of it: low quality ends up costing more on the long run than saving some money on the short term.

Falling for deals that are too good to be true is another one of these situations. When something is sold at a significant premium from the cohort price there is likely somethig wrong with it. Not engaging at all with this type of deals is in my experience the most effective strategy here.

Both these situations share the same consequence: next to potentially paying more money on the longer term the biggest cost is lost time.