"There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs." -Thomas Sowell

Every human action is a trade: you marry this person when you could have married someone else or stayed single. You exchange money to buy something. You choose to be a poor but fulfilled artist instead of a rich banker who hates his job.

Cheap, easy-to-get stuff is that way for a reason, same with expensive stuff. It may not be a good reason for you, but for enough people, it is.

Anything good you get in life, you're always paying!

Ideally you should be happy to pay, and be "rich" in whatever you're paying with. But you should understand that you're paying, and what you're paying.

I feel bad for people who don't understand the trade-offs they're making in life. Or, even worse, who don't even understand that they're making them!

Those people negotiate the worst deals for themselves, because they don't know that they're doing that in the first place.