The Pillow
When I was in my mid-20s in the early 2000s, a friend of mine mentioned that she had purchased $800 frames for her glasses. Considering how incredibly frugal this friend was, I asked her what made her decide to pay that much. What she said has stayed with me to this day, and that was, “I wear these on my face EVERY DAY, It’s the face I put out into the world and so I want to buy the ones I want and the ones that are comfortable and look the best.”
Since then, I have often applied those parameters to my own life. While I like to save money, I try and save money in areas that don’t matter to me. But in areas that matter? SPEND!
Mr. Tucker has not been getting much sleep lately. He suspects that the cause is that his pillow has lost some of its firmness causing a restless sleep and a sore neck. So he has been researching pillows online. Ideally, he would like to go somewhere and actually physically hold the pillows but so many things have moved online during the pandemic that nothing he wanted to check out were available locally. It sucks but many places have great return policies so I’ve encouraged him to just buy them, try them and then return them.
What I soon discovered about his search though was that he was actively dismissing some pillows due to their cost. Now, usually I always search by price and then add in other parameters as I see fit. But I feel like Mr. Tucker actively was discounting ones that fit all of his criteria but that he considered too expensive. But it soon came to pass that there were no pillows that filled his needs so he either had to deal with buying a cheap but subpar pillow or spend more.
If this was a case between no name brand frozen peas and name brand frozen peas, this would be a no brainer (how do peas know if they are no name or name brand anyway?!). But we are talking about quality of sleep here. We spend ONE THIRD of our lives asleep and a good night’s sleep is one of the best predictors of overall health. In other words: don’t go cheap on your sleep! So I encouraged Mr. Tucker to find the best pillow for him and not worry too much about the cost of it. Even a $350 pillow that only lasts one year is still only a dollar a day!
Worth it.
So while I encourage people to always balance their spending, you should never cheapen out on things that will add to your quality of life. Mr. Tucker ended up buying (& returning) one pillow and just bought a 4-pack of Canadian-made pillows which we should get shortly. The hunt continues.