What you seem to be forgetting is if you spend the time researching and ensuring you're buying a quality pen or book or utensils. You're also ensuring you don't

What you seem to be forgetting is if you spend the time researching and ensuring you're buying a quality pen or book or utensils. You're also ensuring you don't need to buy another one next week/month/year when the current one breaks or you realise its not suitable. That's also a bunch of wasted time saved. Whether or not it equates to the time you spend researching the quality item is probably debatable and likely related to the item itself.