The most effective financial advice I ever got was from Terry Pratchett, in Men At Arms:

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

Spending the extra money for quality (not fashion or status, but real quality) is an investment, that keeps you from extra recurrence costs as well as the hidden costs of inadequate substitutes. Most of my clothing is more than 5 years old, my current shoes are only a year old but the ones they replaced were 6 years old. My cars are purchased with the intent of driving them a decade, I pay extra on oil changes to have them filled with full synthetic (which will only need to be replaced 1/3 as often and will do a better job of protecting against wear), and so on.

The 'Good Boots' approach to avoiding false economies is the best financial advice I ever received.

I do not actually own these boots, they were just the first result on a Google Images search for 'good boots'. But they look like a excellent pair of boots that would meet with Sam Vimes' approval, and keep my feet dry (for at least a decade), if I ever found myself employed by the Ankh-Morpork City Watch.

Edit: Almost 6 years later, these are the shoes I was talking about above:

Purchased for $110 on sale, this pair of Timberlands have nearly reached their end, but they still keep my feet dry. I've already purchased their replacement, a $150 pair of Danner boots that will probably outlive me.