buying hardware
Hardware became expensive these days, especially good hardware.
When building physical infrastructure, I often look for devices that are relatively compact. But in the world of computers, "compact", "cost", and "quality" sometimes point to different ends.
I decided to buy an extra SBC (Single Board Computer) the other day. A 8GB Raspberry Pi4 was almost $100 in the US, and these I would consider them as quality device because of their compact form factor and good compactability with a wide range of GNU/Linux distros. Its price is a little scary.
With similar price, if I were to go for a Intel bases SBC, I would make some comprises on the firmware side due to the vulberable Intel Management Engine. But I can get a lot more for RAM and storage as a tradeoff.