It seems like most of the big ideas have been covered, so here's a small one.
Rock climbing equipment (shoes and harness) and membership to a climbing gym. It's different, fun, gets you exercise and exposure to more/different people.
Do most climbing gyms have walls (or whatever) that can be climbed without a belaying partner? Or is it usually pretty easy to find a just-for-that-day partner among whoever happens to be at the gym when you are?
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.