Any thoughts for adding good TCO commercial grade things?
As an example, after I got upset throwing away my 5th coffee maker in a row, I found myself a Bunn pourover coffee maker on craigslist. They are made for huge duty cycles and every part is hard wearing, replaceable and easy to get ahold of via commercial coffee distributors.
Now every time I have something needing replacement I look at commercial options, but I'm never sure what the actual cost/lifespan/repairability is vs consumer options.
Coffee makers are some of the few devices where this makes sense. While commercial things can occasionally save money, they usually don't. Furthermore, the TCO calculation has to take into account what you would have done with the same amount of money. Let's pretend you buy a $2000 commercial grade widget instead of the $500 consumer grade widget. Over ten years of use, your commercial grade widget cost $100 in parts, running and maintenance costs, and depreciated to a value of $1800; during the same time, the consumer grade widget would have required about $50 in parts, running and maintenence but would have depreciated to a value of near zero.
So, you might think, your TCO of the commercial grade widget is $300 and the consumer grade is $550. Easy win for the commercial widget! But then factor in the potential uses of that extra $1500 upfront. Assuming you were earning an average of 3% on your cash during that period, you would have made $515 on 10 years' interest on $1500. Now, put your money into an index fund, and your returns would be (historically speaking) thousands of dollars.
(Before the inevitable comment, there are plenty of ways to earn a return on money that don't involve an index fund. Investing in your home, high interest savings accounts, Treasuries, paying down any debt, etc etc.)
So you can easily see that for most things - where maintenance is cheap - it's not worth it. This includes most white goods, almost all electronics, etc. Where maintenance is expensive, though, you can save a lot by buying commercial. The classical example is the Isuzu crew cab trucks: if you do need to haul a lot of stuff, they're far cheaper in every way than comparable consumer options.
To throw a confounding variable into your equation, I purchased the Bunn unit for $250CDN as a refurb unit from a commercial coffee dealer on my way through Vancouver and have needed to replace one switch (generic, which I had in a parts box) and one thermal sensor which was about $10 with shipping.
Commercial items are often available in classifieds, auctions and going out of business sales.
There is an element of luck in finding something worth buying (and some opportunity cost for the time I guess?), but being patient and relentless with a few well set up search filters has let me get a lot of things for pennies on the dollar.
I really want to do this with another item I seem to always be replacing, the microwave, but have found that a much more difficult thing to get ahold of at a reasonable price.
I like some of this argument. It reminds me of the story of Warren Buffet not wanting to buy a $20K car because he said with discount to present value the opportunity cost would make it cost him $100K.
On the other hand all things are not equal. Take laptops.
You might think that a cheap one that costs a quarter of an expensive model would mean that you change it more often for the same cost.
By the end of the upgrade cycle you'd probably have a faster cheap laptop than the original expensive one and that might be true but you'd also have to live with the cheap keyboard and the cheap screen and the cheap build quality of the case.
> On the other hand all things are not equal. Take laptops. You might think that a cheap one that costs a quarter of an expensive model would mean that you change it more often for the same cost.
> By the end of the upgrade cycle you'd probably have a faster cheap laptop than the original expensive one and that might be true but you'd also have to live with the cheap keyboard and the cheap screen and the cheap build quality of the case.
It isn't actually the case that the cheap laptop would be faster, unfortunately. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but my $1000 i5 MacBook Air from 2013 is still a snappier machine than a recent $250 Celeron Chromebook.
Well, yes and no. In the case of laptops, I have a top of the line souped up Lenovo C940 as a work laptop and a Thinkpad T440p as a personal laptop. The T440p cost 200 bucks refurbished, the c940 ten times as much new. The T440p is actually faster for a number of tasks. Sure, the screen is nicer, but is that worth $2k? And sure, the magnesium case of the thing is nice, but the build quality on my T440p isn't half bad.
But I know what you mean, sometimes the cheapest option really isn't. For cars especially, a $500 car in the long run may end up significantly more expensive than a $2000 car, and the boost in comfort, safety, features etc in the $2000 car may make the more expensive car a no brainer.
As an example, after I got upset throwing away my 5th coffee maker in a row, I found myself a Bunn pourover coffee maker on craigslist. They are made for huge duty cycles and every part is hard wearing, replaceable and easy to get ahold of via commercial coffee distributors.
Now every time I have something needing replacement I look at commercial options, but I'm never sure what the actual cost/lifespan/repairability is vs consumer options.