08/18/2026
Learn About It! 📚
Planned Obsolescence — understanding it helps you anticipate costs and manage your budget more effectively.
What is Planned Obsolescence?
It’s a deliberate industrial policy and design strategy where products are intentionally engineered with a limited useful life. Rather than maximizing durability, manufacturers design products to become unserviceable, outdated, or non-functional after a set period.
Why does this happen?
The primary goal is to drive repeat purchases — creating predictable, long-term revenue in markets that are already saturated.
A real example from my work:
At one multi-family property I renovate, we always used Sherwin Williams Agreeable Gray Eggshell (ProMar 200) for the walls between tenants. Last week, the store manager told me they’d discontinued and reformulated that product — meaning it won’t match the paint I purchased just two weeks earlier. So future touch-ups may only work for a short window before the formula changes again.
Why it matters to you:
Once you understand this pattern, budgeting becomes easier — you can plan ahead instead of getting blindsided. Unfortunately, this is how manufacturers operate because it generates more revenue, and it drives up costs across the board.
In this case, that means full repaints instead of simple touch-ups — which ultimately raises the cost (and price) of that apartment.
Multiply this cycle across every product and industry, and you start to see why prices keep climbing everywhere.
