What can I purchase with $100 that will be the best thing I can buy to make my life better?
I've decided to budget some regular money to improving my life each month. I'd like to start with low hanging fruit for obvious reasons - but when I sat down to think of improvements, I found myself thinking of the same old things I'd already been planning to do anyway... and I'd like out of that rut.
Constraints/more info:
be concrete. I know - "spend money on experiences" is a good idea - but what experiences are the best option to purchase *first*
"better" is deliberately left vague - choose how you would define it, so that I'm not constrained just by ways of "being better" that I'd have thought of myself.
please assume that I have all my basic needs met (eg food, clothing, shelter) and that I have budgeted separately for things like investing for my financial future and for charity.
apart from the above, assume nothing - Especially don't try and tailor solutions to anything you might know and/or guess about me specifically, because I think this would be a useful resource for others who might have just begun.
don't constrain yourself to exactly $100 - I could buy 2-3 things for that, or I could save up over a couple of months and buy something more expensive... I picked $100 because it's a round number and easy to imagine.
it's ok to add "dumb" things - they can help spur great ideas, or just get rid of an elephant in the room.
try thinking of your top-ten before reading any comments, in order not to bias your initial thinking. Then come back and add ten more once you've been inspired by what everyone else came up with.
Background:
This is a question I recently posed to my local Less Wrong group and we came up with a few good ideas, so I thought I'd share the discussion with the wider community and see what we can come up with. I'll add the list we came up with later on in the comments...
It'd be great to have a repository of low-hanging fruit for things that can be solved with (relatively affordable) amounts of money. I'd personally like to go through the list - look at candidates that sound like they'd be really useful to me and then make a prioritised list of what to work on first.
one-on-one cooking tutoring (get s/o who's good at household cooking to teach you to shop, knife skills, expand recipe repertoire)
take a level in badassery (lockpicking lesson, car repair, archery class -- anything that will give you a frisson of pleasure when you think - yeah, I know how to X)
trip to unusual/disciplined environment (Ignatian retreat, etc)
throw strange, themed party that your friends will remember and discuss for a long time
fix whatever egronomic thing annoys you most, at present (standing desk?)
pay s/o to reorganize messy thing in way that makes it easier for you to maintain the tidiness going forward w/o ugh of doing the initial clean-up yourself
Having basic car repair skills is an amazingly empowering thing. Pick up an aftermarket guide ($25-30) for your car and watch some youtube videos for specific repairs.
Agree. For some people it may be useful to spend the money on gifts, if they can see an increase in quality of relationship which is to them important.
4Curiouskid
Tutoring is a general one. I was just talking to somebody the other day who independently was excited by the idea of paying a PhD student to privately tutor them in advanced math.
What can I purchase with $100 that will be the best thing I can buy to make my life better?
I've decided to budget some regular money to improving my life each month. I'd like to start with low hanging fruit for obvious reasons - but when I sat down to think of improvements, I found myself thinking of the same old things I'd already been planning to do anyway... and I'd like out of that rut.
Constraints/more info:
Background:
This is a question I recently posed to my local Less Wrong group and we came up with a few good ideas, so I thought I'd share the discussion with the wider community and see what we can come up with. I'll add the list we came up with later on in the comments...
It'd be great to have a repository of low-hanging fruit for things that can be solved with (relatively affordable) amounts of money. I'd personally like to go through the list - look at candidates that sound like they'd be really useful to me and then make a prioritised list of what to work on first.