I buy my phones refurbished and about 1 years old. I buy above minimum specs so that things last longer as I tend to hang on.

I can’t bring myself to buy a tablet, so I’m still printing papers and using 3-ring binders for my music. My desktop is due for an upgrade. My laptop is a boat anchor but I won’t replace it until it dies. I use an Epson Eco-tank printer which is awesome for ink cost.

Best is to not use newer technology :)
be careful of security updates duration and ban connected objects.
don’t do online subscribtions but go to your local library, media library or even store,

• laptop : still in use since 2011, just changed hard drive for SSD and added some RAM 5 years ago,
• smartphone : had to change last year my 2017 S7 (gave it to someone, still running perfectly) for a new one only because I needed an app on android 10, and mine stopped updates till 8.0… So I discovered that manufacturers garantee security updates for only 2-3 years, except for Apple, Google and High-end Samsung (5 years). Avoid Chinese brands (Redmi, Xiaomi, Honor…). I choose a used Xcover because of 5 years support, removable battery, and screen size that can fit in my pocket.

I do the same thing you do regarding phones and tablets. Getting a new-in-the-box iPhone that’s several generations older still feels like a step up, plus I’m saving hundreds.

It does everything I need it to. I don’t understand people who are so addicted to “newness” that they willingly pay much more than necessary. I wouldn’t do that even if I could afford to. It just doesn’t make sense.

I want to upgrade my basement TV which is now 15 years old but the picture quality is fine at 720p/1080i and it has no problems. Its a Samsung along with the 8 year old one in the living room. No smart features or internet connections.

I watch netflix on my ipad2

I do buy new tech occasionally but use it for a very long time. For example I bought the iPhone X when it was new, but am still using it and have no issues so no need to replace or upgrade it. I also built a Computer about a decade ago that I only just some months ago replaced with a new build, which I also plan to use for a long time (with the occasional opportune upgrade of course).

Besides that, I generally use my things until they break not just until they are no longer current gen tech. Most stuff works just fine even years later.

I’m currently using a refurb sub-400 Eur laptop (R5 3500U) I’ve bought in Poland as my daily driver portable machine, which I’ve done a good number of DIY upgrades to it: for example, even if the motherboard had a SATA Slimline port, it was completey unused (probably as a carry over from an older design) and the case had no accomodation an optical drive (the space normally reserved for an ODD was filled up with plastic reinforcements), yet I’ve managed to find a way to free up some space and use the PCB of a Slimline to full size SATA to install a SATA SSD I’ve had lying around from a dismissed computer.

Also, a few years ago I’ve built a very cheap hackintosh out of a Dell Optiplex 755 for my family, who was unsure whether to keep using PCs or switch to Macs at the time. The PC used a LGA 771 to 775 modded quad core Xeon x3363 as a CPU, a Nvidia GT 210 “GPU” (in quotes because we all know just how underpowered it was, but I’ve been able to get it essentially for free and I was only looking forward to use it as a display adapter as the onboard graphics was completely unsupported by macOS and that PC had no HDMI out otherwise anyway) and a DIY’d USB DAC salvaged from a broken pair of headphones a friend of mine was throwing away as its speaker out (all I did was desolder the headphones from it and solder a 3.5mm jack in their place - macOS had serious audio quality issues with the onboard audio on that chipset, so using a USB DAC instead was highly recommended). The final build was running High Sierra, which was a few releases behind at the time as Big Sur had just been announced, but it was surprisingly usable especially considering all the DYIng and how some of the components had 10+ years on their back!

If you want years of security updates, you might want to look into things like Fair Phones. They make repairing easy and promise more years of support than both apple and mainstream Android manufacturers.

I wait for deals and keep track of prices through price tracking sites. I might decide I want more ssd or nvme storage, and then I’ll wait. Then price starts to turn like it is now and suddenly I can get more TBs for the same amount of money.

Same for phones. I’ll decide I want to upgrade then wait for deals to pop up that hits my price range. Same for GPU. Same for TV. Same for games.

I don’t make impulse purchasing decisions. I make a decision then wait for the market to start shifting to a price I feel like paying. Sometimes I wait a year sometimes longer. I don’t feel like I intentionally go for a furgal low end or mid range option, since for me some things are worth paying more for. But, I avoid paying retail.

I have never paid full price for an Apple product. I’ve had 3 macbook pros and 5 iphones, all from work. Once I get a tech refresh for a new device, I hand the old one down to my wife. I pay 30% of the iphone price because my employer pays for the plan, and it’s unlocked after 3 months.

A somewhat wealthy relative was throwing out “junk” and giving away anything you’d be interested in. I found two 4TB external HDDs that were used for their home cctv, and an older “defective” magic mouse that ran on batteries. I cleaned the battery contacts and it worked again.

Stop buying battery-powered things when the wired version is perfectly fine. Might not work for all devices, but your mouse and keyboard will always rest on your desk… why the need to power it with batteries that will eventually fail? Let alone the added cost of batteries, and the bluetooth module that those devices would need to communicate.

I don’t do subscriptions.

I also stopped buying the latest flagship android phones, and no longer upgrade my computer every few years.

I have a Pixel 3a that has CalyxOS on it and it still gets updates. I see no need to replace it until that changes.

I simply live without most things. I have a ten year old laptop and a discount Android phone from about four years ago, and that’s it. No television, no console, no smart watch, no subscriptions to anything other than my internet connection which is also the slowest available.

I can stream YouTube, which I also use for music, I can do banking, I read the news. I don’t feel like I am missing out.

That’s exactly what I do as well. My laptop is an X280 I got off lease running Debian, and my phone is first gen iPhone SE I’ve been using for over seven years.