What items or services have you purchased that turned out to be worth well beyond what you paid for them? I’m particularly interested in anything you bought where the price initially gave you pause, but the thing turned out to be so awesome that you would recommend it to anyone. Please describe why the thing is awesome.
My contributions:
Kindle Paperwhite - I felt a little foolish rushing out to buy this only a year after I bought my beloved Kindle Touch, but in this case I’m glad I was foolish! The best feature IMO is that you can read in so many different situations - dark room, dim room, bright room, outdoors - it’s become something of a running household joke that I can read ‘‘in any lighting conditions.’’ The new leather cover is pretty snazzy, too - much more form-fitting and lighter than the clunky ones, and it puts my Kindle to sleep when I close the lid so I no longer have to turn it on or off. And the battery life lasts about a month. And… and… If my house were on the fire I’d grab my cat with one hand and my Kindle with the other! (And kick down the door, I suppose.)
**FitBit Zip Pedometer **- $60 for a little piece of plastic you clip to your clothing. It counts steps, distance, and estimated calories burned. The best part about it is the software it comes with - it syncs with your computer and includes a really nice set-up that tracks your data over time and includes food/weight/activity trackers as well. I’ve owned it for less than one month and aiming for 10,000 steps a day, I have lost 5 pounds. That is one powerful little gadget.
You Need a Budget (YNAB): Last I knew, this budgeting software cost about $60 and is worth every penny. It does everything most finance software does, but it also allows you to assign budget categories to all of your purchases and track your spending as you go in each category. It’s a super big deal if you want to know where your money is going. It also comes with unlimited free webinars to help you get the most out of your software (which I highly recommend because YNAB can do things you would never have imagined.) I also love that it syncs to my phone so I can enter in purchases on the go. It also syncs to multiple computers so my husband and I can input our data at the same time. Since we started using YNAB regularly, we have actually increased our net worth despite the fact that **Sr. Weasel **is still in graduate school.
Heating Pad purchased for $30 and had proved more useful in re-leaving back pain than back pills, yoga lessons, an inversion table, and massage therapy combined.
Vitamix. If it wasn’t for the inheritance we bought it with, I would have never in a million years spent $500 on a frickin’ blender. But not a day goes by that we don’t use that appliance. It’s resulted in the whole family consuming significantly more fresh fruits and vegetables and my husband actually having breakfast in the morning (a protein fruit shake) rather than just a cup of coffee. Though it was ridiculously expensive, what it contributes to our health and happiness is far more valuable than we anticipated.
Given the company’s reputation and that it can be repaired, I expect that it will be a very long time before we purchase another blender.
REI Down Sleeping Bag: $20 at a garage sale for a practically new, but used once sleeping bag worth at ten times that. I washed it and it’s in perfect condition. Much nicer than my old sleeping back that was purchased new for a lot more.
Cash-wise, most of my Legos are worth more than I paid.
But to stay in the spirit of the thread- kitchen gadgets. A mini deep fryer, a rice cooker, stuff like that.
Cheap enough that it seems like junk- until you get it home and have the best rice you’ve ever eaten.
OMG I love my car so much! I paid $21k for it 10 years ago, including interest and stuff. Huge purchase but I love driving it, my dog loves riding in it. I love going for trips in it. I love that I rarely need to have it fixed. I love taking care of it to make sure it doesn’t need fixed. I have hauled so much stuff in it. I love that it’s dirty as heck!
It’s nothing special - a 2004 Ford Escape. But damn - what a car!
I also think my dog is worth about 100000000x what I paid for her, 11 years ago ($300).
Two 2x3 inch pictures, 5 cents each at a rummage sale, that caught my attention because of the exceptionally high quality of the wood in the frames. Upon closer inspection, they appeared to be quite old, so I took them to an antique store for appraisal. They are lithographs from the 1920s and are worth about $30 each.
On the same trip was a “Peter Rabbit” book from the 1950s, in near-mint condition, and had movable (although not pop-up) pictures. I probably paid less than $1 for it, and it’s worth about $50.
Last weekend, I bought a random box of stuff at an estate sale, and found this in it. It’s in mint condition, and I don’t think it’s a replica either.
My Dyson. DC24 Blueprint Edition. Because of the way it looks, I call it my R2Dyson. I bought it on Woot for something crazy like $189.00, or $229.00- something like that. It was daunting, spending that much on a vacuum. But I got it for a couple hundred dollars less than it normally costs. It works on every single floor type I’ve lived on. I vacuumed my KITCHEN earlier today! It’s a beautiful thing, because I hate hate hate brooming. Kills my back.
A well-fitted high quality bra. In my size, they don’t come cheap ($70+), but the difference, not only in quality of life, but in the longevity of the bra (because it’s not being twisted or pulled out of shape on me) is simply unbelievable. (Oh, yuck, I see they’ve “improved” it. That sucks…)
$5 torque wrench from the used tool store. It’s in great condition and a very high quality tool, easily worth over $100 new. It just needed a bit of cleaning and lubrication.
Obviously all kinds of electronic devices: everyone here remembers such devices they bought 10-20 years ago–but which were substantially more expensive then and/or had much fewer capabilities–yet we were quite happy with the value of those older devices then–so the newer versions are worth much more than we paid.
We’ve gotten about 10,000X entertainment from our bird feeder. We have a perfect location to hang it outside the dining room window, where it’s too high for squirrels and vermin but as visible as an ant farm. Between the top seed feeder, middle hummingbird feeder and bottom suet-block feeder, we can sit and watch 2-10 birds of every kind be beautiful and silly and entertaining any time we stop for coffee, lunch or dinner.
I have a plastic spaghetti server that probably cost me 79 cents and has given unflinching service for more than 20 years, even with one missing and one melted tine. Ditto for a very thin flat hickory spatula.
I bought a complete set of Burton’s Thousand Nights and a Night for $75. It’s only one of the late “Burton Club” reprints but it was mint and still quite beautiful - it attracts more attention than the many Burton firsts on the shelf below it. I had a much older and finer numbered edition I finally sold for a nice profit because I didn’t need two.
I have many automotive tools, mostly mid-line Craftsman, that have quietly paid their way through years and years of service.
My garage. Put off building it for the first six years I owned my house. Never regretted it, it gets cold up here in the winter.
A pair of Allen Edmonds shoes. After years of Wal-Mart specials, there is no going back. Worth 10x what they cost.
All my weight lifting equipment. It seemed so expensive when I bought it, but it really isn’t. Buy quality gear once and it will outlast you. Also, no more gym membership to pay for.
I’m not scared to get lost anymore - I know I can press a button, and *it will get me home. *. The amount of stress and hyperfocus about getting proper directions, following them, and worrying about just when the next turn will happen vanished when I bought it. Plus, I’ve actually felt free to explore new routes to do thing, because I know if I get hopelessly lost, I can just pull out the GPS, and it will get me there.
One mush kitten. Fifty bucks to adopt from the shelter. A hundred and fifty for neutering and shots. He purrs on command, chases mice, tolerates the little one pulling his hair all the time and comes running to me for a petting session at the slightest hint.
I also have a treasured pair of Danskos. Three bucks at a yard sale several years ago and still in perfect shape.
Lead and copper prices are much higher than they were when I amassed all that ammunition almost ten years ago.
Even worse is the panic buying that is still occurring. Classic supply and demand. Ammunition of every caliber is much higher than it would be in a rational market.
I have so much ammunition not out of fear of bans or possession limits, but out of the observation a decade ago that the prices of the raw materials for ammunition production kept going up. Being an active shooter, it made sense to buy in bulk. Big bulk.
My George Foreman grill. It was one of the very first ones and I bought it in the mid-1990’s. We use it several times a week and it’s still going strong.
