We’ve all bought dumb things from time to time. We’ve also probably bought things we really love, that enhance our lives in certain ways. But hindsight is 20/20, and things don’t always go as planned. Here are some of my best and worst purchases of 2019, with reflections on what went wrong and what went right, and how much cash am I out, and was it worth it?
Top 5 Best Purchases
5. I bought a bread machine from goodwill for less than $5 on one of their “half off” days. It was made by Zojirushi, probably the top bread machine company, though it is an older model from the late 2000s and doesn’t have the fancy options. I’ve made about 10 loaves of wheat bread with it, and have found homemade bread to be much more filling and energizing than store-bought bread. For $5, you can’t beat this thing.
4. Television/soundbar/stand. I found the stand at a garage sale and paid $30 for it. The downside was that the television mount was missing the brackets that connect to the TV, but I was very fortunate, after much research, to find a cheap wall mount online with the exact size of brackets I needed. So after an additional $25, I had what was originally a $300 stand.
The television cost around $300, but was mountable, very thin, and of much clearer quality than my friend’s older television I had been borrowing since it wasn’t needed at the time.
The soundbar was about $200, but I was tired of crappy audio quality. The overall setup has been very nice, and considering it all cost less than $600, when you can easily pay more just for a TV, was sweet. As long as I keep it dusted, it looks great in the front room.
3. Osprey 24 backpack. I bought this on sale early in the year, I think for around $100 or possibly less, when it usually sells for around $150 (supposedly). It was to replace the dinky hydration pack I used so much. Finally my backpack has space! It is my go-to backpack for hiking and snowshoeing. Sometimes upgrading is worth it. I ditched that hydration pack and have never looked back.
2. Hiking boots. I used to think that my old pair of Danner’s were the best ever, but that’s because I thought blisters were normal. They’d survived for nearly 8 years and I started to become legitimately concerned they would simply fall apart on me mid-hike. Realizing I was finally in a place in life to afford some higher end boots that might be more comfortable, I started perusing some more expensive boots. I bought and had to return a few pairs. One felt so great just hiking, but didn’t hold my heel properly, and I would get terrible blisters on it when snowshoeing. Another pair were tough as nails and just hurt my whole foot. Finally, I found a wonderful pair at the higher end ($260). It’s possible I could have gone cheaper, but I have never worn a more comfortable hiking boot, and after testing them out, I said, “Screw it, if these are as good as they feel right now, it’ll be worth it.” It has been.
1. Bookshelf. This isn’t just any bookshelf, this is one of the most colorful, beautiful, and fun bookshelves I’ve ever seen. Made in India, and intricately designed, it the most colorful item in my room, aside perhaps from all the Legos sitting on it. In fact, this finally allowed me to display many of those Legos, which I can’t believe used to basically sit on a box or otherwise clutter the floor in the corner (not all of them, of course, I have several containers I store them in). It cost me around $350, is kind of on the small side, and I love it. I don’t want it to get sun-damaged, but when I’m home on a lazy weekend, I love watching the sunlight shift across my wall and really light it up. You just don’t see designs like this any more, and this bookshelf really makes me happy. It’s something I enjoy and appreciate on a daily basis.
Top 5 Worse Purchases
5. MSR Windburner Stove. Hey, whoa. Whoa! Hear me out on this. The Windburner is one of the best hiking/backpacking stoves out there. The problem is that I paid $150 for this thing and almost a year later, I have yet to even use it. They are sold in almost every outdoor store you can find, so why I felt I needed to buy this before specific plans to use it is beyond me. I could have just NOT bought it and waited around until I really needed to make the 15-minute drive to an outdoor store. It’s entirely possible it will be obsoleted and a better model released in the interim, but that’d be too bad because I decided I really “needed” this one, when I apparently really, really didn’t. And it’s not that I don’t still plan to use it, it’s that actions speak louder than words and your worst purchases are typically the ones you never use.
4. Baking sheets. I very, very rarely make cookies because I don’t have great self-control around sweets, and some of the fittest people I know don’t either. Should a crack addict keep some cocaine on hand, just in case? No. Neither do I make a habit of baking cookies. But after a failed batch on another pan, I got stupid and decided I needed a baking sheet specifically for cookies.
I went to a popular supermarket/retail store and figured they’d have some cheap, generic baking sheets. But this is where they often get you. They know they have a reputation for this sort of thing, so sometimes they will slyly limit their options so there is only one, and it is more costly than you expect because you have nothing to compare it to, but you’ll still buy it. I paid around $15 for these two, stupid, “air” whatever baking pans, that I didn’t even realize were special. I used them that weekend and haven’t used them since, and they are really dumb, but now I’m caving in to the “sunk cost fallacy” and keeping them because I hope to someday “get my money’s worth”, but I know I won’t. Rage.
3. Tap and die set, large sizes. Once upon a time, I was changing a control arm on my mom’s car, and one of the bolts had a hard time being reinstalled. My dad and I had to shop around to find the correct die size to clean it up, but it didn’t work out as expected, and we got the wrong diameter at least once. I decided that I needed a tap and die set with larger sizes just in case I needed them when doing suspension components. I had some extra money earlier in the year and bought a bunch of tools I had wanted for a long time. Sadly Fortunately (what am I thinking?!), I haven’t needed to use them. Which makes me wonder why I bought the set, and didn’t just decide to walk 15 minutes to the parts store and pay $10 the next time I REALLY need that ONE tap or die, and call that good, but nooooo, I had to drop $90 to feel cool. Granted, having tools around for those SHTF moments is smart, but heck if you need to buy a set like this. It’ll probably just rot in the garage and cause not-minimalism. Oh, well. At least it’ll “be there” when I “need it”.
2. Inner tie rod tool. This goes along with #3. I have changed quite a few pairs of inner tie rods over time, some on my old car, some on my parents’ cars. Every time, I’ve been able to rent an inner tie rod tool from a parts store, do the job, then return the tool and get my full money back. Last time I was changing an outer tie rod, the locknut seized and I began to fear I may need to change the inner tie rod at the same time. I didn’t, a little PB-Blaster and patience go a long way, but then I decided I needed that tool just in case, bought it with the others, and fortunately haven’t needed to use it. It would have been useful if I had bought it ten years ago (oh, heck, it would have really gotten some use!), and it looks super cool (it’s green!), but unlike the tap and die set, you can rent it for free. $70 there, for another tool that may someday be useful. Ah, well.
1. Subscription Services. I don’t know that this necessarily belongs as #1, but they annoy the heck out of me. My Playstation Plus subscription auto-renewed for way more than I originally purchased (curse those initial-sign-up discounts!), despite the fact that the only real multi-player game I have is Black Ops 4, and I haven’t touched that in a long time. I usually just get pissed off when I play it because how do you compete with 14-year-old kids who have nothing better to do with their time? I think the charge was like $80, for a service I really don’t use when I can just as easily watch YouTube without it.
Also, I bought an expensive GPS unit with an SOS feature. I like having this because I’ve gotten myself into some sketchy situations in the backcountry, and really needed it for my epic mining ruins trek last Fall. The problem is that it charges $16 per month just for that feature to be active, which makes me squirm because that is for fancy satellite messaging. I just need a button I can jam if I’m in a jam (hehe), and even though I bought into the plan where I can cancel mid-year and reactivate when needed, I haven’t done that, so I’ve burned some money in my off-season. I feel like the subscription is holding me ransom. The GPS unit isn’t on the worst purchase list, but I do have mixed feelings about it. The thing is, the alternatives aren’t great. You can pay $350 for an SOS device that can’t be recharged and lasts about 5 years…but I guess it’s simple and doesn’t have a subscription fee. My device was much more expensive, but it has GPS and can, of course, be recharged. But that stupid service fee! I think the GPS industry is hurting badly.
Burned some money on Pluralsight, fortunately you can cancel whenever, so I only had that for maybe half the year. It did help me learn a lot, but $30/month for an educational service seems a bit high. Its only redeeming feature is that the content quality is pretty high and you can cancel and re-activate on an as-needed basis.
I just really hate subscription services. Some are necessary evils, others are just a clever marketing tactics. I don’t like feeling that my budget is being held hostage by such obligations.
Conclusion
So what are the patterns in all this? Your worst purchases are the ones you never use. After all, we buy things to enhance our lives, right? But if those things aren’t actually enhancing our lives, then they’re wasted money. There may be hope we use something eventually, but sadly, this is very rarely the story.
I see people all over who have garages so full of things that they can’t fit their car inside. I recently saw this on a major road nearby in one of the older areas, where the yards had more space and the houses were more spacious. Dude had his garage open. Garage was filled to the brim. It doesn’t have to be like that!
We fight these things in little battles here and there. I’m not necessarily going to dump all my bad purchases, but heck if I don’t learn from them. Buying things is not bad, just make sure you are buying the things that truly improve your life. Those are fun. Those are worth it.