Carl Richards’ personal finance sketches on napkins explain the basic principle behind the idea that sometimes it’s worth your money to spend more on a good quality product that will last a long time.

In short this is what he says:

When we settle for stuff that we don’t really want, and instead buy stuff that will be fine for a while, it often costs more in the long run.

This is very true in my own experience and I’ve been caught a few times buying crap stuff only to realize that I just had to buy something to replace it once it broke or stopped working. In the end, I was spending more money than if I had just shelled out more at the get-go for the quality product.

Read Carl’s post on the case for spending more over at The New York Times.