An educated rant: Why pentamelding is %@$&*!-backwards

[Jojoya]

Agree with most, that last line though oooof. I have never spent more than a few hundred K on Penta's at a time if I'm short on something, zero on my DoH/L. Materia is as easy as Gil to get

Someone who's got a lot of their time taken up by outside pursuits probably isn't generating much materia through active game play. On the other hand, they can throw up items on the MB that will yield gil while they're offline. When they've already got the gil, they can spend it to buy their materia and save the time they have available to play for other content.

Both methods work. It all depends on how much time you have to play and where your main interests lie.