they're not expensive if they're picked up used or passed down through the family. and they don't cost the same as clad-aluminum. In fact, anondized seems to cost about half of the clad-aluminum stainless steel:
I know that anodized isn't nearly as nice as stainless, when I cook at my girlfriend's I always use her nice all-clad stainless. It's really nice, makes excellent everything.
But anodized is fairly safe: aluminum-oxide core, "teflon" (which is inert at almost all stovetop temperature). And the hard anodization of the core means I'll likely never see the core; the teflon coating performs better when adhered to a higher quality core.
Also, everything is guaranteed to wear out eventually. But with similar performance to higher quality pans, and the lower price point, I think anodized could be the "better" pan for a lot of people over stainless and cast iron.