The awning that lasts a summer

A shopkeeper on a busy street in Banha needs an awning over the front of his shoe shop.

The cheapest one on offer is thin fabric on a light frame. It looks fine for a month. By the end of summer it has faded to the colour of dust, one corner has torn in the wind, and the frame leans. He paid for an awning and has nothing to show for it. Every pound was lost, because the thing never got good enough to do its job.

At the other end sits a motorised one with a remote, imported fabric and a printed fringe. It costs several times as much and keeps the sun off the window no better than a sturdy, plain one would. The extra money buys features nobody on the pavement will ever notice.

Most purchases have this shape. There is a floor, below which you are not saving money, you are throwing it away. There is a ceiling, above which each extra pound buys less than the one before. Between them sits the range where spending actually works.

The floor is the more dangerous mistake, because it feels like prudence. Underpaying for a sign, a translation or a website rarely gets you a cheaper version of the thing. Often it gets you none of it. Paying slightly over the odds for something that works beats paying a little for something that fails.

The ceiling has its own trap: spending more to feel safe or to look serious, rather than to get more.

Nobody is born knowing where the floor and the ceiling are. You find out by buying, by noticing what lasted and what did not, and by paying attention while you do. That is most of what experience is for.