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.
Amusement park - the kind with roller coasters and the like. Super dumb and childish, but I really enjoy it.
High-end restaurant. Specifics will depend on where you live; I just went by what was recommended in a newspaper.
Spa day. I'm not super fond of the massagey side of it, but just going to a nice building and spending a day cycling between sauna / swimming pool / hot tub was very nice.
Higher-quality bed sheets. Also clothes, but bed sheets are probably the more money-efficient place to start.
Contemporary artsy things - gallery openings and the like. Modern circus, if there's one in your town. These are very hit-and-miss, but you can buy a bunch of them for $100, and even if you don't like it you get to feel enriched and snobby.
Classical music concerts. Protip: listen to the music a few times before you see it live - you appreciate it more when it's something you know. At least, I do.
Commissioned art on deviantart or similar. I think I enjoy the "feel like a rich big-shot" effect more than the piece itself.
Elephant in the room: drugs and hookers. Plenty of cached thoughts against them, but I suspect rationally they're worth trying at some stage.
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.