There’s 3 things that really stand out for me that I would say made a massive difference to my life:
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Cordless screw driver. Bought the day after building a flat pack bed with a crappy screw.driver that just shredded my hand. Thought it was frivolous at the time, but I’ve used it so much since. It’s light, small enough to fit in my pocket and good for 90% of DIY tasks.
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Tassimo coffee machine. Bought it 9 years ago, use it every day. Nice quick easy coffee. What’s not to like.
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My first DSLR camera. It was a Nikon D50 back in 2005/6 and it sparked my interest in photography to this day. It gave me a hobby I can take lots of places and do it alone or with others. I never loved the D50 camera itself, but I did get some really nice shots with it
I bought a 97 Ford Taurus off a friend for $800 back in 2008. Her dad thought it was on its last legs at 155k miles so he wanted to sell it. I drove it for four years. It was running fine until someone blasted it out in front of my girlfriend’s house and drove off. At the time it had 206k miles. 50k miles for $800 was certainly one of my best purchases.
All my cars have been sub-$5k rust buckets or on their last legs.
$600 - 1993 Honda civic
$1300 - 1994 Volkswagen Golf
$3000 - 2003 Mazda 3
$1000 - 2007 ford escape
$2000 - 2012 Kia Rio
$3000 - 1994 Chevrolet s10
$4000 - 2009 Volkswagen rabbit
$4000 - 2009 Toyota Yaris
Almost all of them sold for what I bought it for. Im mechanically inept so probably could have kept them longer if I was good at that.
Good purchases, some adventures, but cheap cars that work out and are in that sweet spot of not dead but still cheap are great.