Too many time, I see people choosing a brand name product for something that can be bought for a lot cheaper price with a non-brand name one.

Back when I worked construction (for a year or 2), I remember another young construction worker telling me that I should buy a “Eastwing hammer”.  I never hear of it before, so after work, I went to check it out at a  hardware store.  I was shocked, it was almost twice as much as a traditional looking hammer that was right beside it.

So I picked up theEastWing  hammer, and it felt well-balanced well and had a good solid grip.  I have to admit, I did like it.  But there wasn’t any way that I was going to pay twice as much for a hammer with the “Eastwing” brand name.  And besides , I already had a hammer.  The ironic thing was an older construction worker told me the same thing as the younger contruction worker did, but I noticed when he was hammering that he wasn’ t using a “Eastwing” hammer.  Now this hammer is a good quality hammer and if you do construction work professionally, it might be worth it.  But then again, you have to remember that the older construction worker got along fine without one.

Another example was when I was with a buddy in the game section.  His wife wanted him to buy the board game called  Life, and we found it easily enough, but…  There were 3 of them. one was a cheap knockoff version, another was a traditional board game, and the third was a leather portable case to carry the game around in (price included the game too).  Instantly, he wanted to buy the most expensive version.  I flat out asked him why?  He tried to make excuses like “but it’s portable and has a case”.  I countered with get a rubber band and use it on the box that it came in.  Try as I may, he still decided to go with the fancier one that cost three times as much.  Later he told me I was right and that it wasn’t worth it (but I bet he would do it again :).

The point is, look and assess if it’s worth it paying 2, 3 or more times what the cheaper but sill highly functional version is selling for

This is a tricky area, because sometimes the more expensive product is the best solution!  But for some thing like a hammer that you won’t uses much, it’s a no brainer…