Rule of 3 is often correct, first time just do it, second consider if it'll very likely happen a third time and when the third time happens it's darn well time to do it!
HOWEVER, this only works if you have the agency at an organization to allocate time for doing something. Contrary to this when you are in an organization of management that doesn't understand technical debt (or is fine with it because it just means more consulting hours) then it's absolutely the correct choice to stall and/or fix things "prematurely" (iff you can see what product they are trying to create without knowing it) if you'll be holding the shit-can of duplicated crap down the line getting knuckled because things aren't going fast enough due to technical debt.
HOWEVER, this only works if you have the agency at an organization to allocate time for doing something. Contrary to this when you are in an organization of management that doesn't understand technical debt (or is fine with it because it just means more consulting hours) then it's absolutely the correct choice to stall and/or fix things "prematurely" (iff you can see what product they are trying to create without knowing it) if you'll be holding the shit-can of duplicated crap down the line getting knuckled because things aren't going fast enough due to technical debt.