Plato's Footnotes

In the post-graduate world, money has rather dramatically changed shape and meaning in my life. Being the kid that would always have leftover Valentine’s day chocolates a year later because I didn’t to run out of them, I’ve had a similar relationship to money. Growing up, my sister could always count on me to have a $20 bill in my wallet because I rarely spent my cash, precisely because I wanted to have it for a good occasion. I strongly contest though that this doesn’t make me cheap but frugal. Quite simply, I see the distinction between cheap and frugal as quantity vs. quality. I see cheap as focused on the short-term, buying the cheap clothes or dishes or bike or meal because it feels like saving the most money. I see frugal as simply buying good things less often, or better yet, buying with intention.

I bring this up because I need a mattress. The Lerners have very kindly lent me their futon for the last several months because, when I moved out from their basement, I didn’t quite have the funds or job security to throw a couple of hundred dollars at a sleeping device. But a guest that stays too long is the worst guest of all, and accordingly someone who borrows something without demonstrated intention of giving it back is really, really annoying. To give them their futon back, I need something to replace it. The fact is though that I don’t particularly want to think about replacing it, I just want something good to appear.

As stated, I pride myself on having really nice things. To do that, I just don’t buy stuff as often. But it also means that, when I do buy things, I’m not really all that interested in shopping around for the best deal. I was contemplating saving up for a new computer a year or so from now. I went to the Apple website, found the price range I was considering, and plugged in how much I would need to save each month to make that happen. A week or two later, I was walking through Best Buy with my brother and noticed that other laptops were half or a third of what I was considering paying. What I really want is an Apple that makes me feel good, rather than a PC that I’m convinced will be dead in two years. But even if the PC will be more cost effective over the long haul (that is to say, I won’t need to replace it from breaking and that, over 5 years, my computer budget will be less buying a PC or two rather than an Apple), I don’t really care. I don’t want to think about the specifications of my system and the intricate details of what I need vs. what I can afford. I want nice, beautiful, aesthetically pleasing things that work well without me having to learn the shape and size of the entire computer industry.

Accordingly, I want a good mattress, one that I can sleep on comfortably that will last about as long as a mattress should last. I don’t want to scrape the bottom of the IKEA barrel to buy one, but I also don’t want to pay $500, a significant percentage of my monthly income, at this point in my life. I just want good and inexpensive. I want the bottom of the good quality heap. And I don’t want to become an expert in mattresses and their prices to make that happen.

I read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell the other month and he talked at length about people who shop and gather knowledge. (Shopping was a useful metaphor for the issues he was raising.) He would speak of these people that knew all about cars, what models were safest given their price and specifications, when they would be on sale and where, and what was a good deal and what wasn’t. I like having money and I like the purchasing power it gives me, but I don’t want to spend a whole weekend (or month or year) figuring out the market. It just doesn’t interest me. I’d rather read or spend time with friends. I would rather pay 10% more, in general, with 50% less knowledge and effort.

This makes me feel a little lazy, but mostly defensive. I realize that capitalism is the greatest thing since feudalism (and sliced bread) and I should be excited about the opportunity that Ebay and Craigslist give me in finding what I want at an amazing price. But I just…don’t care.

Instead of talking in generalities, here’s an example. Penzey’s spices are amazing. As a brand, I put full faith and stock in their quality. A 16 oz. bottle of double strength vanilla costs $46.95. Comparatively, I can buy a 16 oz. bottle of real (not synthetic) vanilla at other stores for probably…$20? Something like that?

The thing is, Penzey’s spices smell absolutely amazing and, whether or not they actually make my cookies taste better, buying, owning, and using their vanilla makes me think it tests better. I gain value from simply knowing how great my vanilla is. (I don’t actually have Penzey’s vanilla yet but…just you wait.) I’m sure I could find equally or nearly as good vanilla at other places for less money. But I don’t care. I like strong brands that do the work for me so I don’t have to think about shopping around. And if they want to charge me a little bit more in the process, that’s fine, so long as I can depend on them to maintain the quality of their product.

To buy a mattress, I can look online or try my hand at some of the stores in the area. I know about what I want to spend, but don’t have any idea what makes for quality in a mattress. I’ve never had problems sleeping and rarely find my body aching from anything but the worst mattresses (as in the one’s at band camp). The futon I sleep on now actually has springs in it, but I slept on a springless futon at my brother’s for a least a summer (if memory serves) and never had any problems. So I’m really not that picky. What I want is a person or brand who has my best interests at heart to produce an inexpensive but comfortable mattress and then tell me where it is. But no one is forthcoming and places with names like “Discount Mattress Store” don’t give me much confidence. And places without names like “Discount Mattress Store” are selling things at twice my budget but, I would guess, without twice the quality.

Ah conundrum. Such is life. At the very least, I’m glad to know I can deny most of my desires for the sake of buying really good things. Now I just need to find out what those things are…

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 29th, 2011 at 3:15 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.