Here's the thing: If you browse the internet long enough in the personal finance space, you will inevitably stumble upon pieces discussing renting or buying a house. And as much as it is an important decision, it's also a profound question. Especially when you can read too many articles regarding new generation not wanting to own anything.
So first of all, let's talk about housing. Housing is a prime need but you can satisfy your needs for roof over a head in city or outside in a flat or in a house. Unless you are trying to make a financial calculation, you should buy in three circumstances: 1) You do not want to move in a foreseeable future 2) Prices are unusually low compared to other things 3) Terms of lending are unusually favourable Actually only the first one is important, the other are more of a bonus.
Financial calculation is more complex, but still simple enough. When buying you need a portion of the price in cash and the rest will be financed via mortgage. Therefore you can run following scenario: You will be at this house for 5 years, you will pay €50000 of your own money and borrow €200000 at 5 % p.a (that's about €1000 a month for 30 year mortgage). There will be some maintenance costs of say €2500 a year and house prices rise 5 % every year. Or you can rent for say €900 which will rise every year by 3 % with inflation and invest your €50000 at 8% p.a. What's better?
Actually you can calculate it for yourself (use spreadsheet or SmartAsset's calculator), but buying should be cheaper in the 5 years or more horizon. Is it the right answer to the conundrum of renting vs buying? Not necessarily.
The same logic might apply to cars. If you plan on using the car for numerous years, buy it. Even if you have to finance it with a lease company (I appreciate that terminology gets confusing, certain kinds of leasing is just debt and obligation to buy at the end of the lease for premeditated price).
But does the same apply in other areas? Say software, literature, music...
With books, many people have strategy of buying only books they want to read more than once. It's a good strategy. You can go to library to find really nice books to read and to learn from, you can even rent books with Kindle subscription or with Everand (my main choice). But it gets trickier here. If you like the book, would you like to read it again? Or do you want to remember quotations, but not really care about the book? Or maybe you want to support the author, or show of as an intellectual... So many reasons to buy. Or not to buy. Maybe you know you will want to read it again in a year or two and are afraid that amazon might delete the book in the meantime.
Which is actually a big risk concerning music. Whereas I do not usually read books again, I listen to couple hundred songs on Spotify almost every journey. And it is not unusual that some songs or even artists become unavailable for some time. Perhaps it is a good idea to buy lest something happens with the service. (And they do not pay much to the artists for playing a song anyway). Bandcamp is a natural choice for artists using it (see my collection), there are e-shops which distribute flacs/mp3s and places. Just mojeek it 😏
I don't have yet a solution for buying and watching digital films versus just streaming on Netflix and such, but I try to use FLOS software and self-host. And sometimes send money to creators of free services I use (mstdn.social, search.marginalia.nu)