I’m curious, what’s an item, tool, or purchase you own that you feel has completely justified its cost over time? Could be anything from a gadget to a piece of furniture or even software. What made it worth it for you?
I’m going to say my $50 charcoal grill. I’ve had more propane grills fail on me in 5 years, and charcoal grill keeps going. I know its terrible for the environment.
Your little grill is hardly terrible for the environment. Maybe for your lungs, but that’s why you don’t inhale the charcoal.
A bicycle. No gas to pay, no parking fees, no insurance, and I can do most of the maintenance.
Used Wacom Cintiq 21UX I got off FB marketplace for like $300 (new MSRP goes for $1500+) about 5 years ago. No new drivers are being updated or released for it because it’s so old, but it still works great. I’ve likely made back what I paid for it in art commissions since then.
My Casio A 168 - I like watches and typically I would opt for more expensive ones but I still marvel at the amount of watch you get for this kind of money. The design is great, very comfortable to wear, very precise and has a very good battery lifetime and background light.
Someone else already mentioned a safety Razor.
My iron pan - much healthier, more ecological and will last longer than I will ever live.
Obviously my bike. Saved so much money on it. Although I still need to figure out what I should do with my very rusty chain. Should I replace it?
Yes replace it! It feels good to help your bike after all you’ve been through. Spent more than my bike is worth on repairs lol
I bought a big pack of eneloop rechargeable batteries a decade ago and they are just within the last year or so starting to fail.
My radar detector (Valentine V1 Gen2) literally paid for itself the first time it alerted me of a speed trap ahead. I am guessing it has since saved me 10’s of thousands of dollars.
Camping hammock, it’s what I sleep in most nights. My body complains when I have to use a mattress
- Epson Ecotank Printer
Has ink tanks so money isn’t wasted on cartridges and the printer is actually initially expensive unlike those printers that make money back on ink catriges
- Hammer Drill with the proper bits
Makes it easier to mount shit to bricks, goes in brick like butter if you’re using the right drill and bits
I recomend Ryobi Hammer Drill & Bits
- Air Fryer
I’ve stopped using my oven and only use it rarely for things that I don’t want blown apart thst I can weigh down with a fork or spoon like Pizza for example
- Refillable Japanese brand pens and mechanical pencil
I recently got these to aid in Japanese study and refillable pens are more economical in the long run
And Japanese brands go hard on the quality of stationary and I got introduced into the cult of stationary obsession with this
I’ll edit my comment if I can think of anything else
Make sure you use that printer once a month. I let mine sit and the ink dried on its nozzels or somewhere and now it won’t work. I’ve attempted to fix it with no luck. Was a great printer until that happened.
When you are replacing a water heater, always get the biggest one possible. Nothing is worse than being the second person showering, and you run out of hot water halfway through. It used to happen to me every day.
Then we had to replace it, and a bigger one wasn’t that much more. I asked myself if it was worth $100 to never have a cold shower again, and then got an even bigger one than that.
Haven’t had a cold shower since.
Gas here.
Its instant, no storage.
I mean, it depends, I wouldn’t say always go for the biggest one you can, because the bigger the volume, the more it will cost to heat up and keep hot. E.g. we have a 50 liter water heater that’s enough for three people, and in the worst case scenario, it only takes like 20 minutes for it to go from cold to hot.
Everyone has to decide if the additional expense of buying and maintaining a larger hot water heater is worth it, but I know that I’ve never regretted it. I know that if my shower went cold every day, I would regret not spending the money, EVERY DAY.
Fair
- A pinecil. It was like $30, and has paid for itself within the first two things I did with it (repaired a good computer mouse which just had a USB connector lift from the board, and fashioned a DIY solar connector). I have repaired/made countless other small things in the few years I’ve owned it.
- Our bicycles, I guess? Financially speaking, they were dirt cheap (~$80 for both), we’ve sold our Prius since we bought them ($5000), we’re not paying for gas for trips within the city (~$30/mo), we’re not paying insurance or parking or maintenance or any of that crap (~$20-30/mo or so). So they have paid off within the first couple of weeks. And there’s so much more: both of us lost some weight, city errands are sometimes faster, and usually more pleasant now (no being stuck in traffic ever), and we’re not wasting space on a useless hunk of metal or polluting the air we breathe.
I had never heard of the pinecil before, thank you! I’ll keep that saved for when I want to upgrade my dinky little iron
Battery charger.
I’d bet that selfhosting jellyfin and running sunshine/moonlight has saved me close to $800 on comparable services since I learned to do it last year. So I’d have to say my GPU, which is used mostly for those purposes.
Only problem there for me was that it went off the rails for me, i got some 100TB of storage and I’ve been collecting old movies and shows that can’t be found anywhere on Netflix type services. II spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours by now
First thing that comes to m8nd is my Pitbull head shaver. I s(h)aved several hundred euros on simple head shaves, 2 minutes a time.
How short does it cut? I use a razor, which I assume is closer? But I wonder how close they are.
50ft electric plumbing snake. Cost $60 and saved me $200+ bill first time I used it. I’ve used it for friends and family as well, making its value well over 10x in savings, not just my own.
House insulation.
I live in Australia where the minimum insulation required by law is a long way below inadequate, and many cheap contractors go below the minimum because it’s so hard to prosecute them.
I already had solar and a house battery, so the next obvious step was replacing the insulation. With my already very low electricity bills I cant say that it literally paid for itself (although it would have without the solar and battery), but it has made the house so much more comfortable. On some summer days, the AC would be using 7kW and barely keeping the inside temperature down to 30°C/85°F. Now it uses 3-5kW and the whole house stays comfortable.
Also, finding and patching the massive gaps from the previous “landlord special” house extension made a huge difference to the temperature of that room, and explained how lizards had managed to get inside.
