This! Don´t use a knife for anything else but cutting.Or if you do don´t expect it to hold up.

I carry an Ontario SP2 Pilot Survival knife when hiking and backpacking. While it's kind of heavy for those situations I use it as my cathole digger as well as a survival knife/mountain lion defense tool.

Yes, digging with it can be considered as abuse but... it's not expensive and the 20-year usage hasn't really damaged it in ways that couldn't be fixed with some time on a diamond stone. (I carry a small diamond rod in my pack to use when needed or when waiting out a rainstorm.) The paint is missing toward the point but the edge has been restored to very, very sharp.

It's a tool. I have many other much prettier knives that don't get out in the sunshine much.

"Abuse" would depend heavily upon the circumstances, the situation, and reasonable alternatives.....

It’s rare but there have been a couple occasions where I decided to never lend someone a blade again. Most memorably a knucklehead decided to dig out a screw head from a 4x4 post with a very sharp slicing blade.

Absolutely. I make knives and I do cringe when I see things like that.

I once had a cheap S&W HRT clipped to my pocket. Some guys had locked themselves out of their car and asked to borrow it. I said no. I was carrying a fixed blade I had made but I wasn't about to let them destroy my $13 work folder.

I am a knife USER, not collector. So, I mostly buy cheaper knives and just use them as circumstances dictate. They aren't even sharp enough to be classified as knives LOL, rather they resemble "sharpened prybars". Mostly used for prying, scraping ..etc. So I don't worry too much if they get scratched or even bent. Only once I got a multitool broken, and one knife tip broken off.

Even so, I don't like telling everyone that I carry a knife or multitool. Most of them do not qualify as "tool buddy".

So wy not buy a miniture prybar and use that instead and leave the knife for cutting tasks?

I do have two mini bars, but they sit in toolboxes, not in my pocket. A knife is always what I have on me, so I use it. After so many years of using tools and stuff, I figured that what I need is a knife that can do all jobs. So, a cheap, dull knife seems to suit my needs.

In the few times that I needed a razor-like sharp knife, there is a light utility or xacto knife in my bag. But that is about 1% of the time only. The dull knife does 99% of work.

One time I used the tip of the blade (part of the blade nearest to the knife tip) as a fine screwdriver to fix my wife's glasses. On another occasion, I saw an open telephone cabinet in the street and the door handle was broken, so I used the spine of my pocket knife as the tip of a large screwdriver to turn the remaining part to close the door.

Seems to me the pocket knife is more versatile than a mini bar, and will be in your pocket when you need it.

My point was that one should carry both, not one or the other.