Have you made a purchase which at the time seemed to be a no-big-deal but wound up being a really great choice? We have two of those.
In 2000, as we prepared to move from Virginia back to Jacksonville, we went to rent a trailer to move my husband’s motorcycle. Unfortunately, the only trailer the local rental place had was too small for his big bike. However, they did have a utility trailer for sale that was big enough and quite sturdy. We decided to go ahead and get it, even though the $800 price tag was quite a bit more than a one-way rental would have been.
Turns out, that trailer has been a lifesaver more than once. We not only took the motorcycle to Florida, but I dragged it back to Virginia and loaded it with things we didn’t want the movers to take. In Florida, my inlaws borrowed it several times when they moved from North Carolina to Ocala. We used it for lumber purchases and dump runs. On the return trip to Maryland over 2003 and 2004, I dragged at least 8 full trailerloads from Florida to our storage unit and to my parents’ house. After we bought our house and launched into our remodeling projects, that trailer went back and forth to Lowe’s for all kinds of stuff.
Definitely $800 well spent.
A smaller purchase was a $100 garden cart/wagon thingy. We’ve only had it a year, and already it’s more than paid for itself. We’ve used it to haul stuff around the yard, and from the garage to the basement and from one shed to another. Last week, I used it to collect branches from around the yard and haul them to the back where I’ll break them and cut them for kindling and firewood. So handy, and more than worth the $100 we spent.
How about you? What good buys did you make? Heck, if your ideas are good enough, I may have to go shopping…
Fairly mundane but I am very glad I spent $80 on my printer. Nothing special, just an Epson inkjet. I am a college student and did not have my own printer last semester, and it was a royal pain in the ass to seek out a way to print my papers. Now, when I invariably finish a paper at 4 in the morning (as I am prone to doing), I don’t have to wake up early to haul ass across campus to the library print the darn thing. Every time I wake up and print off whatever it is I need, I am really, really glad I spent that $80 (a small fortune for me right now).
Antidepressants. Back in early 2004 I realized my depression was making my life alot worse than it had to be. So I researched orthomolecular treatments (aka ‘all natural’) for depression and decided to start a B vitamin and trimethylglycine regimin. It made a huge difference in anxiety, outlook, stress, mood, etc. The drugs cost me about $3 a month but I’d rather feel the way I do now than be a billionaire and feel the way I used to.
$999 for my iBook. No this is not another evangelist story…this was the first laptop I could truely call my own and I’ve pushed more bits through it than any other computer I’ve had over the last 20 years.
I spent 70 bucks on a “quik shade” tent for use during my summer feild work. That work was basically being in gas station parking lots 12 hours a day supervising a drill rig crew and dealing with soil samples. It seemed like no big deal at first, but after 2 1/2 straight months of doing this… definitly “the best 70 bucks I ever spent”
I also found out it is also waterproof… very handy for our July freak thunderstorm/heavy downpour season… just had to bungee cord it to the tie down loops in the truck bed to keep it from blowing away in strong winds.
Small plastic handles that allow you to carry heavy bags of groceries without cutting off your fingers. I bought three pairs about 15 years ago for the princely sum of $0.20 per pair. They’re one of the most useful things I’ve ever bought.
Steve Packey’s skateboard wheels, eight in all, for $10.
I bought them in 1980 for my roller skates, which I still have and use frequently. The shoes on the skates were also a nice find: Nike turquoise suede high top basketball shoes, the last in the store around 1983 for $20. Still going.
The ridiculous amount we spent on our two Alienware Notebooks. One for him, one for me. A bit pricey, but now we can both use the computer at the same time, and play EQ2 together (at high resolution!), as well. (And Guild Wars, City of Heroes, and soon, very soon, City of Villians)
$35 for an iTrip radio transmitter for my iPod. Got it only days before a 3-hour driving trip with a friend of mine who turned out to be very upset over romantic troubles that day. She needed a constant supply of happy music for the entire trip. I barely had enough. Getting through that day alone was well worth the money, not to mention all the time I’ve used it since.
4 million Turkish lira for a cheap woolly beanie in the unexpected snows of a Cappadocian winter. Paid for itself the first day, and it’s still going strong a year later. That’s about $3 USD.
I had a chance to buy a First Edition of To Kill A Mockingbird. Since it was pricey and yet my favorite book, I decided to take a chance. It has gone up in value a little bit.
As a guitar player, I thought I was dialed-in to what a good guitar could feel like. However, I decided to take a chance, after a lot of research, on not only buying a completely different type of guitar - switching from a Fender Stratocaster to a Gibson Les Paul - but trying a replica, this hand-made Japanese version of a Gibson. Plays like a dream - blows the real deal away. Completely changed how I think about and play guitars. What a gift.
It’s really stupid, but I paid $15 for three bookweights. I gave one to my sister and kept two (I should give the second one away too). But they’re awesome. Because I read so much, but have very little leisure time, the bookweight holds a book open for me to read while I brush my teeth, dry my hair, eat dinner, etc. I figure it gives me an additional half hour of reading a day, because I can read while I do other things. My sister agrees – she says the bookweight is so much better than the tube of toothpaste she used to use to hold the book open!
