I’ve been wearing the same Levi’s belt for 20+ years. No idea where I bought it but I didn’t have much money 20 years ago. With leather I find that if you pick it up off the store shelf and it feels like it’s broken in that’s the stuff that will last.

And for only 3x the cost of competitors!

Yeah your ability to spend more increases 1:1 with how much you make. I’m approaching 40 and I’ve been working in the oilfield for 15 years. I have no education but in my field experience is more important anyway, so I’ve worked my way up and make a pretty nice salary. Well what I’ve learned along the way is that your spending will naturally track with your income unless you make an effort to be aware of it and do something about it. My most recent misstep was about six months ago I traded in my pickup and bought a Mercedes with an $900 a month price tag. Sure I can afford it but I certainly didn’t need it. It’s $400 more a month than my pickup was and purely a vanity purchase. I’m not upset with myself, I love it but I’m aware that I didn’t need to spend that much on something that will one day go away without making my life any better in the long run. All I did was make retirement that much harder. And this translates into everything. Like you said it’s easy to spend $500 on food you could have spent half that. Same with entertainment. Same with silly travel upgrades like first class or the suite hotel room instead of the regular hotel room. Or the second vacation of the year. Or the new cell phone. Whatever it is. It’s very easy to spend $3k (or whatever) a month that you didn’t need to spend when your next paycheck is just a week away. Mercedes aside I caught myself in those habits years ago and curtailed them to the point that I am putting 15% of my salary into retirement and 5% into savings (just for vacations or whatever we might want to buy) I went from a 30 year to a 15 year mortgage, things like that. It’s just so easy to let it slip through your fingers especially as your salary starts to get what many people would call large. But the same thing applies to someone making $40k a year as it does to someone making $160k a year. It’s the biggest mistake younger folks make, it’s simply not realizing how much more you are spending on little things. It’s only $5! But it’s the aggregate that kills you.

I work on oil rigs and my red wings do just fine.

Red wings hands down.

Buying puts on the only tech to survive the slaughter because of something Elon is doing. Smooth brain AF.

Well we have two. One 10x12 that was $1,300 and one 10x8 that was $900. So it seems a bit steep but we bought ours on Etsy and they were likely not hand woven. I know the prices can go a lot higher than what we paid but we are very happy with what we got.

Pea coat. Especially army surplus pea coats. I’ve had mine since I was in the navy 20 years ago.

Start pointing that thing at Goldilocks planets.