Stop buying printer ink. Buy a laser printer and buy toner instead. It’s significantly cheaper.

For B&W text, sure. But the quality of laser required to print a decent colour photo is not cheap.

How often does the average person really need that, though?

Theres always ‘but sometimes’ arguments to everything, but the advice was general.

Shipping labels, concert tickets, sometimes train tickets and airline tickets (some companies don’t accept them just on the phone), contracts, NDAs, tax returns, etc.

Depends on where you live and how much you interact with other companies and government agencies.

Every single thing you’ve listed would be absolutely fine in B&W

Well OK yeah, for those you just need B&W. Color becomes useful when trying to impress. I’ve sent rent applications in color specifically because I know that the real estate agents are subjective. Some of the talks that I’ve held were helped out by coloring my notes while I was presenting. And some home crafts and activities (escape rooms with friends) were helped out several times by the color printer. Given that there isn’t a huge price gap in maintenance and initial costs, for me it was worth it.

Lol, the comment thread you replied to is literally talking about color printers. The person you replied to said “How often does the average person really need that” with the ‘that’ being in reference to printing in color. Then you listed a bunch of stuff that doesn’t need color