Being Cheap Can Cost Money

Everyone has experienced the cost versus value decision.  Should I buy the best or the cheapest product that I am looking for?

Sure, there are times that buying a lesser quality or last year’s model will have little to no effect on the product you are looking to purchase.  If you are buying a TV on sale at a big box store you are generally buying an older version of the technology, unless you go into the special sales area where they are selling the newest, state of the art and the most expensive product lines.  In reality, six-month-old technology in a TV, can halve the price, with the latest and greatest technology only being important if you really want to have that newest TV technology.

Then there are items that people think they should go cheap rather than spending the money.  If you buy a cheap used car and then have to continue to put money into the car to be able to drive the car, then you have made a bad decision.  The odds are that in the end, you put just as much money in the car repairing it then you would have if you purchased a better conditioned car to begin with.

The same goes for DYI people.  I have repaired many an item that was broken, knowing that if I was unable to repair the broken item that I was going to replace it.  Then there were the projects that I called a professional right up front to fix the problem, as I knew that I was out of my league related to the repair for many reasons (lack of the right tools, time or knowledge related to the “trade craft”).

Often business owners have a DYI or go cheap attitude to getting things done, when they should be calling professionals to help address an issue within their company.  How many times have you heard of business owners and major companies postponing or scrapping an important business initiative because the whole project has been a mess from the beginning?  The company may have gone cheap at the start of the project or screwed up the DYI fix.

I often have people call me to clean up their messes when they could have saved a lot of money by calling me in the first place.  To clean up a mess can take twice as long and twice the money, therefore being cheap at the start of the project costs the company more money and time in the long run.