An alternative to 3 that doesn't leave you out of pocket would be to say "this is my mug that I bought, it's nice isn't it - if you like it so much, why don't you give me $X for it (which is how much I paid) and I'll buy another one for me."
I think that's going to make you seem weird, unless you work as like a bond trader or something. Normal people don't do that sort of thing. And the GP's post was about being worried about expending social capital.
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.