A small purchase can carry the weight of someone’s carefully saved money.

The size of a price tells you nothing about what it cost the person paying. A modest purchase can be weeks of small economies, a decision made and remade, a thing chosen carefully because there would not be another one. From the outside it looks like an ordinary transaction, and inside it is a considerable event.

Be careful with jokes about what people buy, and careful with the phrase it is only. When someone shows you something they have saved for, treat it as significant, because it is. And when you can buy something without noticing, that is worth noticing.