Answer from Ђanya[guru]
“I'm not rich enough to buy cheap things,” Baron Rothschild used to say in his time. And oddly enough, but in this aphorism there is much more truth than it might seem at first glance. And there are many examples of this.
Cheap Chinese sneakers that disfigure the gait, up to getting a leg injury. Exploding batteries in phones from an unknown manufacturer. Sausage of dubious origin, causing severe poisoning of the whole organism. Diet pills that affect the liver... I don't think it's worth going any further, there are plenty of examples. Of course, you can get all of the above "adventures" for a lot of money, there are enough fakes. But this is not about that, but about whether it is worth saving on your nerves and financial resources. No wonder they say, a miser pays twice.
Just the other day I visited a center selling household appliances. The reason is banal, but very responsible: I had to ask the price of a gift for my beloved mother, who has a birthday the other day. Having looked at the necessary things and noting in my mind the required amount, I make my promenade through the bowels of the store and wander into the department for the sale of washing machines. And there is a scandal, emotions and other manifestations of the nervous state of the body. A certain madam, pleasant, but disheveled appearance, expresses an abundance of fair claims to a representative of the store administration. As it turned out from the verbal battle of the discussion participants, Madame had the imprudence to trust the persistent recommendations of the sales assistant, who advised her to buy a washing machine not from Miele, but from a friendly Asian country. They say, why should you pay three times more when this unit also erases no worse. It is understandable, it is beneficial for the consultant to sell what has stagnated in the penates of his native institution. And people will buy good equipment even without a hint.
So, Madame took her word for it and bought what was recommended. But just the other day, something broke in her purchase and all the contents of the machine safely spilled onto the floor. The master who arrived promptly issued a verdict that the case was out of warranty, since someone had already unwound the unit before him and repaired something there. Hence all the leaked (sorry for the pun) troubles. An independent examination confirmed his conclusion and issued a corresponding document. Madame, being in righteous anger, immediately arrived at the place of sale, together with a representative of the Committee for the Protection of Consumer Rights, demanding a refund and compensation for the damage caused. Naturally, the representative of the store made big eyes, in every possible way disowning the troubles. I did not stay there for a long time, there was not much free time.
Actually, the situation is familiar to many. When buying equipment in Russian stores and trusting "knowledgeable sellers", you run the risk of being in a similar position. And all because these same sellers often do not know what they are selling. But what they NEED to sell today, they know by heart. Still, because their salary directly depends on what they sell. And it will work for you or it will break in a month or two, your problems. Therefore, it is better to find out in advance through the same Internet, since there are a lot of sites with reviews, maximum information about the device that you plan to purchase. And listen less to sales consultants, they have completely different criteria.
In the case described above, the woman initially came to buy a Miele washing machine. And it’s not just because she wanted to spend extra money. The German company Miele produces household appliances premium class, that is, the highest level quality and reliability. And judging by the statistics, these are not beautiful words.
Frankly, I feel a little sorry for this woman who, in her naivete, bought not what she wanted, but what was imposed on her as a way of saving money. Although, if you think in this way, you can get by with the "Baby". It costs a penny and seems to even erase. The only question is how it erases and how long it takes
Answer from John[newbie]
We are not rich enough to buy cheap things. We have all heard this phrase more than once. Once upon a time, I understood it somewhat simplistically - that many purchases that are cheap at first glance, in the end, have a very significant impact on our budget.
But a broader understanding of it developed in me as I got more deeply in touch with myself and my sense of self-worth, as I learned to love myself anew every day...
The fact is that cheap things are not able to fill our lives with joyful emotions, they bring only chaos and disappointment. And the point here is not at all the price, cheap things are those surrogates with which we replace what we really want.
Surely many of you once held Glamor magazine in your hands. So, in each of its issues there is a heading "I want and I can." So often it happens in our lives - we want one thing, but at the last moment we do not allow ourselves to have it, replacing it with something cheaper, but in the end we experience only disappointment.
In many ways, these are echoes of childhood - far from all of us it was secured. But after all, you have already grown up and are not obliged to choose for yourself universal, strong and practical things that your younger brother can wear later ...
The pleasure of cheap things - bought just to buy something or on the occasion of a sale, because "it was already 70% off", because there was no time, but I had to buy urgently, because I was persuaded - the pleasure from such things, as a rule, can only be at the moment of making a purchase. And then you come home and are left alone with an unloved thing, which, at best, settles like ballast in the depths of your closet, and at worst, you are forced to wear it every day and be disappointed.
After all, it is empty, it does not carry the energy of love, the magic of a wish come true, the taste of expanding its usual comfort zone, permissible luxury and elegance.
Surely this has happened to you more than once - you want one thing, but in the end you deviate from your desire, making a “rational” choice, why what you end up getting is much better than what you wanted. You persuade yourself. And everything seems to be correct, but for some reason there is no feeling of happiness.
And the point here is not at all the cost - such a “cheap” thing can in fact be very expensive. It's just not what you really need.
And vice versa - you can buy the thing of your dreams with a huge discount and then wear it for a long time with pleasure and joy - it often happens to me lately. It seems that this thing was created by my special order, waiting for me. and at its quite affordable cost, it has all the parameters I need - color, size, style, composition ... Pack it - we take it !!!
Such purchases are at completely different poles and ultimately lead us to a completely different lifestyle, because cheap things increase our state of scarcity, and expensive and high-quality acquisitions of our dreams activate our inner flow of Abundance. Naturally, if we sincerely allow ourselves to have them.
How do you feel when you put on the dress (jeans, handbag, shoes) of your dreams? The mood immediately rises, the back straightens, the gait becomes more elegant and feminine, the eyes - shining and bewitching. You feel like a queen!
Surely you have such a happy and beloved thing that you cannot part with for years. Because it is 100% YOUR item, bought in good mood, or maybe associated with some memory, a day when you were especially happy ... And it becomes the anchor of this state, bringing a piece of it into your life every time you put it on.
Fortunately, in recent years I have had a large number of such acquisitions. Many of them were bought for me as gifts by my loved ones during our travels. And even though the cost of many of them at the time of purchase seemed a little high to me - if you count how many times I then put them on with great pleasure, then these investments paid off many times over!
It is for these reasons that I have recently become very attentive to the purchase of underwear, nightgowns, dressing gowns and clothes for the house - this is what concerns me every day, what I sleep in restore my strength and I must certainly like these things , be made from natural materials excellent quality and cheer me up!
My friends laugh at me that my nightgown and dressing gown cost more than my coat, and that I can wear a better and more elegant dress around the house than on the street. But I wear these things with great love and joy every day, they are the first thing that my body feels every morning and what sets the mood for the whole day. The coat is the thing that leaves its hanger in the closet only occasionally.
Well, what is more important then? External effect or self-love embodied in such deeply personal things?
Recently, I generally stopped choosing things "from the mind." I just imagine what I want - one way or another - and then trust my intuition and go shopping. And this is the best for me the best option You can't fool the body. and if I feel even the slightest discomfort in the fitting room, then this is not my thing! After all, you always recognize “your” thing by the state of correctness, inner warmth, inspiration, and sometimes the flight that it gives. Trust your body, immerse yourself in sensations - it will never deceive!
Imagine such a picture. You open your closet - and every thing there is your favorite! Each is carefully folded, hung, neatly ironed - because you want to take care of your favorite things! Some of them carry the exotic spirit of distant wanderings, others are sewn especially for you by a caring hand, and this dress is still saturated with the aroma of luxury that filled the boutique from which you, so happy and joyful, brought it ... There can not be too many such things Because love is not a cheap thing! And each such pearl of your collection needs attention and care! You put on not just a piece of clothing, but a special state - a mysterious stranger, a luxurious elegant lady, a successful business woman, a romantic girl, a fabulous princess, a happy wife and mother ...
Good things are like good friends - they only get better with age and never let you down!
A happy woman who is in deep contact with herself consciously chooses only what she can easily go on a journey along the Stream of Happiness and Abundance! After all, she values her life too much to waste it on unnecessary, unloved, things that do not bring joy and pleasure!
This is the state I aspire to, over and over again choosing the best for myself. exactly what I want and what I can love and want long after the purchase is made!
What do you choose for yourself?
"I'm not rich enough to buy cheap things," said Baron Rothschild. I have been a big supporter of this concept in my life, but now it takes on a special meaning, and not only in everyday matters, but also in relation to the stock market.
Investors usually like undervalued stocks because they can make the most money. If positive changes should occur in the company in the next 6-12 months, and the market does not know about it or does not believe in them, then the first buyers skim off all the cream. This applies not only to individual stocks, but also to entire countries. For example, at the end of last year, funds began to invest more actively in Russia, because our shares were the cheapest among emerging market securities, and the second stage of quantitative easing in the US led to an increase in oil prices. People who invested in Russia at the end of August 2010, bracing for a slow recovery Russian economy and political instability, were able to earn more than 50% just on the index in seven months. In some papers - much more.
But now the situation is different. There hasn't been such nervousness in the markets for a long time, not even a week goes by without bad news - either another aggravation with debts in the eurozone, or America's rating will be lowered. The economies of developed countries do not want to recover, and those of developing countries do not want to cool down. In such a situation, investors do not risk placing bets even three months ahead, let alone a year. They want to buy stocks in companies that are already doing well: production is growing, product prices are not subject to sharp fluctuations, debt levels are reasonable, and management and major shareholders are showing good quality management and fairly share profits with minority shareholders. As you can imagine, there are few such companies. Selling shares of a large number of "bad" cheap companies, investors make them even cheaper, while the shares of "good" companies show dynamics better than the market and sometimes start to look expensive.
Does it make sense to play against the market and start buying super-cheap companies? For example, Surgeneftegaz, which, following the latest correction, is worth almost the same as the cash on its balance sheet? I don't think it's time yet. High volatility in equity markets will continue at least until the end of this year, and we will see repeated sell-offs. I would use them as an opportunity to invest in those securities that may seem too expensive for now. They may fall more than others on profit-taking, but they will also be the first to buy back their market. In my opinion, this is more reasonable than running after super-cheap papers that run the risk of remaining so.
My three favorite ideas, which have already proven themselves several times this year, are gold, shares of the gas producer Novatek, and shares of the potash company Uralkali. In an environment where neither the dollar nor the euro are any more reliable currencies, further flight of investors into gold is inevitable, although it has risen in price by 24.2% since the beginning of the year. Gold Exchange Fund (ETF) with leverage UGL US yielded 46.2% since the beginning of the year against -9.9% on the RTS index (as of 12.08.11). As for Novatek and Uralkali, the Russian gas market, like the potash market, is much less volatile and less subject to speculative factors than, for example, the oil or metals market. A competent management and shareholders with a good relationship with the Russian authorities leave investors hopeful for positive surprises, from asset acquisitions to dividends. Since the beginning of the year, Uralkali and Novatek have outperformed the market, having risen in price by 19.8% and 8.4% respectively (as of 12.08.2011), and I believe that this trend will continue.
In general, a crisis is a time for expensive things and real relationships, so allow yourself the best. Real estate - in the world's financial centers, car - Ferrari, women - the most beautiful and smart. You should not spend money on cheap things, and time on golf partners, spend it with people who are really close to you. And buy stocks of really worthwhile companies in your portfolio before others do it for you.
In 2005, a girl, someone's acquaintance, came to the editorial office of the Medved magazine, where I worked, and said that she was a fashion designer. She wanted her things to participate in the filming. I still clearly remember my experiences. So I held this skirt in my hands and thought about the designer: “What, has she gone crazy?”
Not that the skirt was that awful. Regular skirt. It's just that the fabric is very bad, and it was sewn on by hand - with crooked strokes, large loops, without overcasting.
The girl was even a little embarrassed: they say, yes, she hasn’t quite finished it yet, but that’s okay.
Exactly the same "not quite finished" things could be seen at the Sunday Up Market at its beginning. You walk around and are amazed: well, you can’t offer things right for money that are crookedly cut, hastily sewn by hand and generally look like they weren’t sewn, but rather ripped apart.
There was also Chapurin. and Alena Akhmadullina. In the phase of Arkady Volk, her first manager husband.
Russian fashion then seemed completely hopeless.
And it is not clear how in ten years the situation has changed so much that now almost every one of us has things by Russian designers. Often good things. Sometimes average quality. But they are. They are bought. Sometimes it's even a business.
Since mid-2015, everyone has been writing about Russian fashion because it is "import substitution".
According to the new euro exchange rate, even the mass market does not seem so cheap.
A shopping weekend in Berlin, when you leave the COS store with ten bags of rags, you have to forget for two years in advance.
Russian clothes could be a good solution, but they still seem more expensive than we would like. We are used to buying a lot. Every Saturday. Bought, put on, forgot.
Only this moment is important, when you put on a new dress, you seem to yourself in it, too, very new and beautiful, and then you hang it in the closet and forget about it forever. After all, next Saturday you will again have shopping, you will need to update the dress you just bought - and so on endlessly.
We forgot that things are bought to be worn, not to encourage a market.
This is what the entire mass market is based on: collections are updated every two weeks, they stimulate the consumer with all sorts of collaborations with expensive brands, they constantly announce sales, they warm up the ideology of consumption with all sorts of must-haves and a constant change of trends. Already ridiculously: once every three months, a cage and guipure solemnly “return” to us. Poor cell. Poor guipure. They didn't go anywhere, but they all demand an encore.
The bottom line is that the mass market provokes us to buy and buy, and not really enjoying the clothes that we have. It is a trap.
It turned out that more expensive things are a completely different story. (Not those in, this is the same mass market, only for the rich.)
In any country there are designers that you will never see in such fashionable and large department stores as KDW, Galeries Lafayette, Nordstrom. These are small local brands, more expensive than the same COS, of course, but not as terrible in terms of prices as, for example, MaxMara. They are not designed for the mass market, for the average taste, so they can afford to be unusual. These are clothes (bags, scarves), sewn in small batches, from good fabrics (which, most likely, were bought in the same place as Prada fabrics, they just don’t wind up the price on them like that).
You buy a few things from such designers and then you cannot part with them, because they make your wardrobe. They have individuality.
You wear them all the time and at some point you realize that all these Zara pants that your closet is stuffed with are all nonsense. Disposable rags that you buy just to buy.
You accidentally walk into some very massive store, and you suddenly feel uncomfortable. You understand that any of your visits is immediately 5 thousand rubles. (for two T-shirts and some other nonsense that you won’t even remember). And for 10 thousand you will already buy a decent dress in the designer's atelier. And you think: why should I spend money on nonsense today (and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow) if I can buy for real good thing? And you crawl to the exit, covering your eyes with your hands, so that, out of habit and succumbing to the excitement, you don’t buy something stupid.
Interestingly, the crisis is forcing us to buy better things and thus save.
You buy one nice outfit, pay for it, say, 10 thousand, and this is instead of blowing twice as much every weekend for nothing.
True, Russia is a rather strange market. You need to know where to buy. In the store, the same thing from a Russian fashion designer will cost more. Well, if someone can afford it, but if not, you need to remember the brand, find it on the Internet and contact the designer personally. The price will be doubled. Shops without the slightest doubt can raise the price from 8 thousand to 20 thousand. They have their own customers who are satisfied with this.
You can also bargain with the designer, you can find out when there will be sales in his studio. This, in fact, is the beauty of local fashion: you can always find a person with whom bargaining is appropriate. In general, it is easier for a fashion designer to sell clothes directly: they first expect sales from the store, then payments, and they receive as much money as they would earn from the buyer directly.
There is also Lambada Market, where designers sell clothes themselves. It's also a bit more expensive there, because they have to pay rent. You can collect business cards and then contact the atelier. Or come on the last day of the market, when everyone drops prices or bargains more willingly.
You see, we were simply convinced that the larger the wardrobe, the happier we are.
But style, and even more so pleasure, is not determined by quantity. And how much it suits you personally, and how well, comfortable and pleasant you are in some clothes. How do you feel about yourself in it?
