"A great question to ask is, 'Will I need to access this variable more than once?' If so, than probably globally is the best choice."
... You're kidding right? Global is rarely the best choice, and I say that because never say never. 9999999 out of 10000000, global is not the right choice, just the easiest. You should consider learning how to leverage closures (or the modern import syntax) to better use variables in a scoped way.