Dru's Notes

I paid $150 for a chef's knife last week. A recent trip taught me what a good knife feels like.

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I paid $150 for a chef's knife last week. A recent trip taught me what a good knife feels like.

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Dru Riley
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What is Dru's Notes?

One mental model each day in a few minutes. Habits, business, building products and thinking clearly. From Dru Riley, founder of Trends.vc.

I paid $44 for earbuds last week.

They cost more than the $19 pair on the same shelf. I picked them anyway because I'll wear them for hours each day, for months. Maybe years.

That math changes the calculus. Cost per use drops with each wear. The $44 pair at one use per day for a year is twelve cents a day. The $19 pair that breaks in three months is twenty-one cents a day. The more expensive option is the cheaper one when you factor in time.

I call these long haul luxuries. Items you use daily or for extended stretches that justify spending toward the top of your range.

The category is specific:

- A jacket you wear each morning
- A chair you sit in eight hours a day
- A mattress you sleep on for a decade
- A backpack you carry across three continents

These are all long haul luxuries.

The opposite is useful too. A gadget you'll use twice is a short haul purchase. Spend at the floor or skip it entirely.

The frame helps me sort spending decisions fast. Before I buy, I ask one question: how often will I use this and for how long? If the answer is daily and for years, I spend toward the ceiling. If the answer is rarely, I spend at the floor.

Time is the multiplier that turns an expensive purchase into a cheap one.

What's one thing you use daily that you wish you'd spent more on?