A few years ago I bought a lovely linen summer dress at a second hand store for about $20. I still like the dress but noticed that two seams were coming apart, which made it look a bit shabby. I brought it to the local alterations seamstress, a lady from Europe who does superb work, because fixing it entailed a bit more than simply going down the seam with the machine. She looked at it and said "Well, I don't want you to be surprised when you pick the dress up, but I have to undo both seems almost to the top, take the material in and then resew the seams, and it'll cost $60." I thought that was a lot.
Where do you draw the line? Some things do, unfortunately, boil down to money. I decided not to spend $60 to fix an old dress I bought for $20. But it's a shame that fixing something should cost so much more than buying something new (since I buy a lot of my clothes at thrift stores I'm not used to $200 dresses). When do you stop supporting your local business and watch out for your wallet? I have the same issue with our local independent bookstore. I support them however I can, but sometimes I just can't. When a book costs just a few dollars more I'll buy it there, even if they don't have it and need to order it. But what if I need to buy a bunch of books they don't have and would need to order, which would take at least a week, and their cost would be at least $30 more than if I ordered the books through a huge famous online store?
Where and how do you draw the line? It's a quandary.