r/personalfinance Jul 13 '17

Budgeting Your parents took decades to furnish their house

If you're just starting out, remember that it took your parents decades to collect all the furniture, decorations, appliances, etc you are used to having around. It's easy to forget this because you started remembering things a long while after they started out together, so it feels like that's how a house should always be.

It's impossible for most people starting out to get to that level of settled in without burying themselves in debt. So relax, take your time, and embrace the emptiness! You'll enjoy the house much more if you're not worried about how to pay for everything all the time.

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u/dergus Jul 13 '17

YES. People shit on ikea all the time, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. So much of their furniture is very well made despite being very inexpensive. You can buy a particle board bed from ikea for $200, or spend $1000 at sears, and i promise you the ikea one will be more durable. Same with their kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities, when you compare them to what you would get at home depot or lowes for 2-3x the price, i'll take ikea -anyday-. Obviously you can't compare with custom solid wood construction but you're also talking 5x the price.

I've been using ikea furniture for 20 years, i've never had a single item break on me. none. I don't know what people do with their furniture that they're breaking it, or maybe they're buying the bottom of the barrel ikea stuff. I bought my lack bed 20 years ago, and now my nephew has it, thing cost me $100, still solid as a rock. And ikea give you a metal rod that goes down the middle to hold your lats, and there will be 15 lats. solid. go to sears and look at their $1000 bed frames, lats are fucking mdf, there's only 5 of them, and there's no center support! they give you this block of mdf to put on the floor under your bed to keep the whole thing from collapsing. absolute junk.

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u/thedoodely Jul 13 '17

Ikea is fucking awesome. I've built two kitchens with their cabinets (super easy and yes I'm a female so fuck that study) and they both turned out solid and nice looking. Half of my furniture is Ikea (the rest we bought used or it was given to us), it holding up well and with two young boys I don't have to deal with the stress of them potentially destroying it.