This thing (5-in-1 painter’s tool). It’s the single most useful tool in all of home improvement.
Slide Rule, believe it or not. I bought it with a $20 bill I found on the road, and used it through high school and my first two years of college before electronic calculators came down enough in price for me to get one (at ten times the cost of my slide rule). I got through my first two years at MIT on a slide rule*
*I borrowed a calculator when the problem set required better than three-place accuracy.
I bought a huge square coffee table at the Salvation Army about 10 years ago for $20. Unfortunately it wouldn’t fit into my car, so I left it behind when I left school. Otherwise I’d still be using it!
This stool from IKEA. The bathtub in the place we recently moved into has a floor that is about four inches higher than the bathroom floor. I’m short and have been suffering from a lot of knee pain lately. Getting out of the tub was awkward at best and, with my bum knees, somewhat scary. Now I’m able to almost hop out of the tub. This little step stool has made a world of difference for me.
I think my handcart cost about $20 at Home Depot years ago. On the “labor saved per dollar spent” scale it’s way up there, I have moved tons (literally) of stuff with it over the years, things I could not otherwise handle myself. I think I’ve had to put air in the tires once.
I got a rug at IKEA for our little hallway that cost $14. It’s not ugly and it has a rubber backing, even. I was so pleased with it that I went back the next time I was in Charlotte and bought three more, because we’ve got a baby on the way and I figure we’re going to want rugs that we are not emotionally attached to.
We put two together under our bed to replace the one we tried washing and don’t really like anymore and that kept slipping - such an improvement!
A field guide to the Birds of North America. I think my first pair of binoculars was only about $20, too.
I’m still wearing the leather belt I bought 30 years ago, for probably about $5. Swiss Army Knife is good, too.
I’ve paid under $20 for virtually everything I own, from thrift shops, yard sales, etc. Furniture, appliances, clothing, even some of my early computers. Even some things I bought new were under $20, like my landline phone.
My reusable “K cups”, similar to these. I now get single serve convenience without paying more for the coffee. My wife and I use these on a daily basis.
Skis. I have 3 pair that I’ve used over the last 15 years that cost me a total of $4. Rough estimate is about 6 million vertical feet between them.
A neighbor gave me a car that I still use daily.
I bought a Peavey EQ for $2 at a church garage sale, and have never turned it off since I hooked it up.
I’m actually just a real cheap bastard.
I have a pair of folding canvas picnic type chairs, the kind that fold into a rough cylinder and slide into a sleeve. We got them because the older kid was doing soccer that year and it beat sitting in the grass. In the years since, they’ve largely stayed in the trunk and it’s been surprising how often an extra pair of chairs comes in handy when they’re available. Each time I bust them out, I remark on how they were a great $20 for the pair (then my wife rolls her eyes).
The computer chair I’m sitting in right now has served that purpose for 8 years, it is a plastic stackable patio chair, $6 at WalMart.
A Ford Model A coupe with a rumble seat for $15 from one of my high school teachers. I drove it for a long time and really enjoyed it until the bottom of the transmission fell off leaving me with only 3rd gear and reverse. Finally had to sell it for $10. That was back in 1955.
When I was 18, I left home and took a Greyhound to NYC, to start a new life. I got a minimum-wage job on my first day. I had barely enough cash on me to survive until my first pay day.
The Greyhound ticket was $17.
It clips onto the headstock of a guitar or bass (or pretty much any stringed, brass, or woodwind instrument) and senses the vibrations from the instrument itself. Which means it can tune an electric guitar, onstage, silently, without being distracted by other stage noise. It also means it doesn’t sit in my signal chain and affect my tone. Oh, and it runs off a watch battery, for about two years without needing a replacement.
If you had come to me in 1987, the year I started playing guitar, and told me that this device would be available during my lifetime for $12, I would have told you to get back in your Delorean, Futureboy.
Lol!
Ha! Ha! Ha! We have one, too, but the system breaks down because I don’t live alone. Sigh.
Wife.
A laptop lock, which allowed me to safely and conveniently use my laptop in public places.
A squirter bottle which allowed me to irrigate my stuffy nose everynight with salt water improving my sleep and hearing
An inexpensive digital calipers. I had owned a really cheap vernier calipers until I got a job where I had to take accurate measurements ten or eleven times an hour. Since it took about a minute for me to read the vernier set I bought the digital calipers my second day at Harbor Freight. I now own a nice set but oh boy, did those first ones save me.
Talk about practical! Thank you RobDog.