» Should You Always Buy the Best (aka most expensive)?

I was watching the film ‘Pretty Woman’ the other night. Richard Gere’s character, the rich Edward Lewis, was asked by hooker Vivian why he stayed in the penthouse suite when he didn’t like heights. His response: ‘Because it’s the best.’ And the most expensive.

This got me thinking. Just because you can afford the best, should you buy it? Should you buy something that you can’t fully appreciate because it’s the best? Why would you choose this, rather than paying less for something that you appreciate just as much?

Bocca"Marilyn" Sofa - an expensive buy, but is it 'the best' choice?

Conspicuous consumption has a lot to answer for in today’s western society. The need to be seen to possess an item that someone has defined as ‘the best’ has put a lot of people into debt they can’t afford. The desire to be seen as someone who can afford ‘the best’ often overcomes good sense.

Who sets these standards that so many people seem to believe they have to aspire to? Who decides what factors make one item more desirable than another? Why do the many accept the value set of the few?

Most people want to be part of the crowd, which means adopting the attitudes and ‘uniforms’ of the majority. And if you’re unfortunate enough not to be able to afford the trappings of the crowd, you have difficult choices to make:

will you

put yourself in hock as the price of joining, and keep adding to your debt to maintain your membership?

hover on the edge of the in-crowd with your cheaper versions of their possessions, experiencing nasty looks and snide comments as your differences are noticed?

or

find your own values and stay away from the crowd, facing the hostility, suspicion and ridicule often directed to an outsider.

Society assumes the right to judge someone who struggles to belong, or chooses not to. But society  is far slower to comment on someone who spends large amounts of money on things that don’t add to their genuine happiness or appreciation of life, just because they can afford to.

We’ve encountered a similar situation while looking for a living solution in Greece.

It seems many Greeks, especially those with land to sell, have the impression that people from the UK both have, and want to spend, lots of money on buying land and  building property. It’s hardly surprising they’ve formed this impression really, since we’ve encountered several people who are building homes much larger than they need for their own use, based on the expectation of friends and relatives coming to stay. They seem to be incorporating the equivalent of free hotel rooms into their homes.

But we’re not like that.

Firstly, we want a home for just the two of us. Friends and relatives may come to visit but this won’t be for the majority of the year, so why would we want to build bigger for this possibility? For the rest of the year it’s just unused bedrooms and bathrooms that get dusty and need cleaning. Not my idea of fun.

Secondly, we’re planning for our life, not that of our descendants. The prevailing attitude these days seems to be about leaving things to be inherited by others, and many older people seem to deny themselves so their children can benefit. We will have things to pass on once we’re no longer around, but we don’t see any reason to save for this inevitable event at the expense of our own lives and current enjoyment.

Thirdly, we don’t have lots of money to spend. And even if we did, we wouldn’t want to put it all into the  property we live in. We want money to travel and to follow our interests. We’re prepared to put a certain amount of money into property, but by no means everything we’ve got. And we’re not prepared to go back into property related debt, after having finally become debt free.

So we know we have to make compromises and choices, and we’re willing to do this.

But it’s a struggle.

It means we have to look at non-traditional forms of construction, and find different solutions to some problems, and this is something many Greeks have difficulty with. They’re used to doing things in certain ways, and often slow to change. (We’ve watched the way they nail together planks of wood to hold the concrete foundations, then take them apart again afterwards. We’ve speculated about how they could do this more quickly by using larger pieces of wood that they don’t have to assemble and disassemble quite so much.)

Actually we’ve found the need to look for more economical solutions liberating, as it’s forced us to explore things we might have overlooked. And it means we’ve explored ideas that are not only cost saving, but also more environmentally friendly. During our investigations we were reminded of the possibility of building a home from used shipping containers. Metal boxes that are rigid enough to withstand earthquakes, and that provide a partially finished structure. It’s seemingly uneconomic to return them to their original port, and for some reason they don’t get re-used until they wear out.

Container home

This gives us the opportunity to recycle a small piece of something that is likely currently littering up a container port near you.

We can make further savings on waste disposal costs with green solutions for waste water and sewage.

Most house builders in Greece include fully fitted (often Italian design) kitchens and bathrooms as part of their marketing. We’ve had to explain more than once that we no longer feel the need for designer this or luxury that. Simple and functional is what we’re looking for.

We’re not skimping on everything. Where things really matter to us, when it’s something we truly value, we will pay what our choices cost. But the important thing for us is that we are making the choices that suit us, not the ones that other people would want us to make. We’re making choices based on values that we hold, not because some interior designer has said this is the latest ‘must have’ product.

And probably the most valuable part of the challenge comes from the fact that we’ll be able to do  most of the work ourselves. There are two elements to this.

Firstly, we will retain control. We know that all choices will be made with our input, and based on our values. This wouldn’t be the case if we were building a house to a standard design with traditional materials. We’ve heard too many examples of things being agreed but then changed to suit the builder, and by the time the change came to light it was too late to do anything so it had to be accepted.

Secondly, and the most important for us. We will be able to say ‘this is the home we created’ not ‘this is the home we bought’. Being such an integral part of the process fits with our values.

And I also have a strong desire to prove the wrong. To stand up and shout that it is possible to find a living solution that is THE BEST FOR US but not the most expensive.