Sure, that's true.
But if someone asks about "buying a better life", then, I'm going to point out what seems obvious to me: maybe a better life lies in other direction.
Maybe it was bit hyperbolic, but the basic intent was to shock someone into appreciating what they already have. That the desire to have "a better life" has nothing to do with material goods. This could be a desire for a nonmaterial fulfillment being expressed that resorts to the materialist method we've been trained to use.
I never said that the things I had to buy were goods... experiences and services work too, and better than many goods :) Also - I never said that it was the only way to a better life...
In fact - it was precisely to fight against the "I'm sad, I'll buy another Thing" idea that I started this process... because I wanted to make sure that if I were buying things that it wasn't "just another thing", but something that would be a strict improvement of my life, rather than just something that I'd discard without much use.
ie - we are in agree...
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.