The short answer
Spend on the concealer and the palette. Do not spend on mascara. Lipstick is a shade decision wearing a price tag.
Makeup is the category on this site where what you pay predicts least about what you get — and unlike most places that gets said, here there is a reason for it rather than a slogan.
What makeup is actually worth spending on?
The useful question is not which is dearest. It is which products get meaningfully better when someone spends more on developing them, and which are mostly a colour someone chose.
Look at what these five rate. The $16.77 mascara sits at 4.3 / 5. The $78.53 lipstick sits at 4.3 / 5 — the same number, for $61.76 more. The lowest-rated of the five is the $43.87 lipstick at 4.1 / 5. The two highest are the concealer and the palette, both at 4.6 / 5.
That is not random. It tracks how much of the result comes from formulation.
Worth it: the concealer
Concealer is the one where the formula does the work. A cheap full-matte concealer sets flat and the under-eye ends up looking drier and older than it did bare — that is a formulation limit, not a technique problem, and no amount of blending fixes it. A radiant, buildable formula keeps some light in the skin, which is the entire point of putting anything there.
The wand is worth a word: it picks up more than anyone needs. Tap it off before it reaches your face rather than trying to blend the excess away afterwards.
Worth it: the palette
Pigment load and binder quality are real and they are expensive to get right. Cheap shadow either has too little pigment, so it disappears, or too much binder, so it goes patchy and refuses to blend. That difference shows in the first thirty seconds of using it.
One honest caveat that has nothing to do with quality: twelve rose-toned neutrals is a narrower range than twelve shades sounds. If pink flatters you this is a wardrobe. If you suit warm gold, it is twelve versions of a shade you will not reach for, and a cheaper palette in your own family beats an excellent one in someone else's.
Not worth it: the mascara
Not because this one is cheap, but because mascara is the product where spending achieves least — and this one at $16.77 rating 4.3 / 5 is the evidence rather than the exception.
There is also a reason to actively prefer the cheap one. Mascara has the shortest life of anything in a makeup bag: the wand goes back into a wet tube after touching your lash line every day, and the sensible replacement window is around three months. Everything you spend above the cheap tier gets binned on that same schedule. A dear mascara is not a purchase, it is a subscription you did not agree to.
Its real limits are worth knowing and neither is about price: it builds length rather than volume, and it can smudge on oily lids by late afternoon.
A shade decision: the two lipsticks
These are the two lowest-rated products here, at 4.3 / 5 and 4.1 / 5, and they are $78.53 and $43.87. That is worth sitting with.
The $78.53 nude sells the way it does because the shade suits an unusually wide range of skin tones, which is a genuine achievement and also entirely about colour. It wants a smooth base to sit right, so if your lips are dry it is not going to rescue that.
The blue-red is a proper drying matte. That is why it holds through a meal without touching up, and it is why the rating is the lowest of the five: the wear is exactly what it promises and the comfort is exactly what a long-wear matte costs. Balm underneath, or pick a different finish.
Neither is a bad product. Both are a colour you either want or do not, and no amount of spending changes whether it suits you.
If you were buying two of the five
The concealer and the palette, for $103.97 together. Add the $16.77 mascara and you have a face for $120.74 — less than the two lipsticks cost between them, and rating higher than either.