I’m curious, what’s an item, tool, or purchase you own that you feel has completely justified its cost over time? Could be anything from a gadget to a piece of furniture or even software. What made it worth it for you?
I have two 10,000 liter water tanks in my basement that I use to harvest rainwater, and another 2,000 liter tank on my roof. From October to around May I close the city water and use only rainwater. I’ve been doing that for a bit more than 10 years now, and it paid for the installation cost in about 4 or 5 years. I also have solar water heaters, but it’s hard to tell how long they took to pay for themselves because I also have on-grid photovoltaic panels for energy generation. My energy bill is about 1/6 of my neighbors’, and the photovoltaic panels paid for themselves in about 5 years as well.
Wow. Thats very cool. I’m planning on getting a solar system installed this winter too (costs less in the winter). Here power supply is not reliable but solar is fairly cheap thanks to China. Infact I’m pretty sure we have a very impressive solar system for a country of our status. (Pakistan)
It’s been more than a decade since I installed mine, so there are probably more options today, but when I did, you were either on-grid or off-grid. On-grid means you “sell” your energy production to the energy company, but if the city power goes out, so does yours. Off-grid means you don’t use city energy at all, but it was much more expensive because it required batteries for storing energy… however, I remember recently reading about people using their electric car batteries to power their houses when the electricity was out, and I’m sure batteries are much more affordable nowadays because of how much electric car technology has developed.
I’ve got a 5kw battery/solar system for my little off the grid trailer home. Batteries were at $1000 a piece, at 2.5 kw a piece, last year. They are currently $800 each so prices are dropping year over year
Bit different here. You can be on grid or off grid too. But the government has limits. They don’t want to buy all the power lol. Despite the fact that they don’t produce enough themselves.
You are put on a waitlist first. Now we do have one side of the house under solar already for a year. But thats my uncles side, and they are on grid by now plus have have batteries. And yep batteries are the expensive part here too. But you can manage a combination too.
You drink the rainwater?
Not directly, but I probably could. I have nets in my gutters so insects and leaves don’t fall on it and I have another filter before the tanks in my basement. I regularly do tests to check levels of pH, chlorine and other stuff. The chlorine tablets I use says it’s used to make water drinkable, and I use the rainwater to cook and make coffee (so I only consume rainwater that was treated and boiled).
My city is in the middle of mountains and it rains a lot and it also has tons of public water fountains, so every weekend I just go to a natural water spring at the bottom of a mountain and fill some bottles to drink through the week - the city’s water company do weekly tests on the fountains and every fountain has a QR code for you to check that fountain status.
When you say "I close city water’, sounds like you are also drinking that water? Sounds like a cool idea that I too have been thinking about. That water needs disinfection though
I’m not a native speaker. I just mean I use the city water supply when it’s not raining season, and when it starts raining (about half of the year here) I stop using (and paying for) it and use only rainwater. As I wrote in another comment here, my city has a lot of natural springs and I get water for drinking there.
Boring answer but my hair clippers.
Ain’t been to the professionals for years.
I do look like the wild man of the woods though
My system goes like this:
Summer arrives and it’s hot, time to clean shave my head and beard and look like a nazi skinhead.
By the time winter comes I’m looking like a hobo but my hair is nicely covering my ears and my face and neck are protected by my beard so I don’t feel so cold.
Summer arrives again, time to clean shave again.Good answer - pays for itself in less than a year.
Hadn’t even though of this. I don’t think I’ve seen a barber in 2 years. I’m glad my partner had experience shaving their dad’s head though, they do a nice job
A cargo ebike. No insurance (very cheap anti-theft insurance if you want), no registration fees, $20/year in electricity. I can get anywhere in the city as fast as driving but that’s no longer stressful. Instead of being stuck in traffic and dealing with road raging drivers, I get to zoom along nature paths with the strength of an Olympic athlete. My commute feels liberating instead of like the first and final insult of my day. It’s the first thing I’ve purchased since a smartphone that feels like it’s a foundational 21st century technology. Most of my problems with 20th century development go out the window with it.
Ebikes can be incredibly liberating. Since switching that up as my commuter vehicle, I don’t stress at all before or after work.
A book. Teach yourself Perl in 30 days. (Edit - may have been 21 days)
I bought it around 25-30 years ago. I have dyslexia and autism and have had problems learning from books in the past, but something about the way that was written just clicked for me.
It allowed me to write some pretty cool software, including a huge system that ran a large animal charity for a very long time, tons of automation software and scripts, and several full webuis. Indirectly it led me to a new career where I write perl every day.
(I can write in many other languages now, but that was the keystone of everything for me)
I bought a big pack of eneloop rechargeable batteries a decade ago and they are just within the last year or so starting to fail.
My bike is the only thing I can say for certain has paid for itself. If I had paid $1 for each trip I’ve taken on it, I would have spent far more than it cost me.
I bought an expensive e-bike exactly 2 years ago. Here the public transport costs 70 €/month. The bike hasn’t quite paid for itself yet, but it’s getting close!
My job pays for a public transit pass for me and get a business discount or something on top of an annual subscription discount vs month-to-month payments, so I have unlimited free public transit in my city. I’m hankering for an ebike to spend less time on the bus but damn if the scales aren’t tilted.
I’m still riding the bike my parents got me when I was a teenager, and these last couple of years I’ve easily put several hundred miles on it. Heck I’ll probably ride it in about an hour to go pick up my kids from school. For school pickups and dropoffs over calculated a conservative $10 a week saved in gas consumption by biking instead of driving, plus I start my day envigerated rather than annoyed about school traffic
My solar panels have. Literally.
I guess my bike? Have saved loads of money on bus tickets and it’s much more reliable too.
Sewing machine pays for itself quite quickly as paying a tailor to repair your clothes is like 1/3 the cost of a brand new sewing machine, so just repair like 3 items of clothing to get your money back.
Robot vacuum. We have pets and children and our floors used to be disgusting all the time. But then my partner had the smarts to buy a cheap robot vacuum and now our floors are mostly clean most of the time.
Cheap Chinese diamond grindstones. I can have razor sharp knives any time I want now, it makes cooking so much more enjoyable.
Safety razor
Blades are extremely cheap and always gives a great shave.
Elliptical and dumbbells
Gym memberships add up quick so went with a cheaper elliptical and a nice set of adjustable dumbbells.
Kobo ereader
As I get more into reading I’ve come to appreciate that this one allows loading my own ebooks from my PC which can save a ton depending on use case.
Stainless steel cookware. Spend the extra money to avoid shitty non-stick and aluminum. Steel heats evenly and maintains temperature. My food has improved a lot just with this change
Related: a good knife. Get a good santoku and you’ll be prepared for the vast majority of kitchen tasks.
Related: Scotch Brite pads for scrubbing stainless steel
I’ll vouch for this, though. After trying ask the best anti stick nonsense, I finally gave up and switched to stainless steel and have been content with the switch
My radar detector (Valentine V1 Gen2) literally paid for itself the first time it alerted me of a speed trap ahead. I am guessing it has since saved me 10’s of thousands of dollars.
Instant pot is a game changer appliance in my kitchen. On days where I’m too tired to cook I can throw whatever in there for 15 minutes and get a meal out of it. Makes yogurt, hydrates dry beans, cooks an entire chicken in 20 minutes.
Okay so this is a little awkward because I’m a big advocate for using cars as little as possible and fighting to remove car dependant infrastructure. However, I have a truck that’s as old as I am, its the only car I’ve ever owned and its stunning how well it is chugging along. It’s seen around 300,000 miles, both coasts of the US, immense hail storms, a small tornado, a multi-car pileup, a few bullets, and multiple hurricanes. It leaks just about every fluid, its hood is a different color because I pulled it from a junkyard, and the trunk has a large bloodstain. Yet the fucker refuses to die, its never even broken down and left me stranded. Every major issue was cheap and fixable at home. I must be immensely lucky because I do not treat it kindly. I didn’t personally buy it but its served my entire family for over 2 decades so I’d hope it had payed itself off by now.
Agreed 100%. Would give up driving daily if we had better public transit, but my 90s truck is comfy without being oversized, stupid easy to repair, and free of spying gadgets. Also paid in full with cash, so no monthly loan payments.
No kidding, must have some Hilux in its heritage
- A pinecil. It was like $30, and has paid for itself within the first two things I did with it (repaired a good computer mouse which just had a USB connector lift from the board, and fashioned a DIY solar connector). I have repaired/made countless other small things in the few years I’ve owned it.
- Our bicycles, I guess? Financially speaking, they were dirt cheap (~$80 for both), we’ve sold our Prius since we bought them ($5000), we’re not paying for gas for trips within the city (~$30/mo), we’re not paying insurance or parking or maintenance or any of that crap (~$20-30/mo or so). So they have paid off within the first couple of weeks. And there’s so much more: both of us lost some weight, city errands are sometimes faster, and usually more pleasant now (no being stuck in traffic ever), and we’re not wasting space on a useless hunk of metal or polluting the air we breathe.
I had never heard of the pinecil before, thank you! I’ll keep that saved for when I want to upgrade my dinky little iron
