Impulse purchases are something we all make, but not all purchases are just a waste of money. Sometimes that impulse buy turns out to be the most useful thing you own.
Reddit user YokoDice asked:
"What ended up being the best purchase of your life?"
Googley Eyes
"Self adhesive googley eyes. I carry them in my purse everywhere and passively vandalize things. Foil star stickers are a close second, putting them on the bottoms of salt shakers and backs of rollercoasters."
"Edit: proof of my adventures in an HEB grocery store https://imgur.com/gallery/a9mPTXv"
Adoption Fees
"The adoption fees for my evil cats. And the cost to fly them to the US with me."
Roadster
"I accidentally bought a roadster on eBay. I bid an auction up to the reserve price and then waited for the 50+ bids like I'd seen on other auctions. Nobody else bid and I had to buy the thing."
"A roadster is like driving an amped up go-kart everywhere. It makes even trips to the store fun. And they're very cheap since you can usually sell them for not much less than you paid - mine ended up costing me less than a grand a year for as long as I owned it."
Plastic Cups
"Plastic cups."
"When I first started college, I bought a four pack of cups for my first apartment. I'm down to two now and I protect them. They are the perfect size. They hold just as much liquid as I would ever want in a drinking vessel."
"They aren't the most exciting purchase I've made, but time and time again, whenever I want water, they're the cups I go for.
They're good cups."
Fitness
"Fitbit. Bought it to track sleep but turns out that the HR tracking has taught me a lot about my habits- eg, it goes up w alcohol but lower than average the day after drinking, up before period, straight slope down after period, up when angry, etc."
Yacht
"I bought a 30ft yacht on not much more than a whim. Lived on it for 5 years, would still be except slight health issues atm. Should be back onboard in 6 months or so. $16k usd."
Dishwasher
"Buying a dishwasher literally saved my marriage."
"My wife and I sublimated all our smaller, pettier problems with each other into a daily WAR over who would do the damn dishes. Finally, my dad suggested that we purchase a dishwasher, which we did. That reduced the warfare and forced us to reckon with the littler things. We made peace with those, and now we're good. Thanks, Kenmore."
Ticket
Giphy"A train ticket to visit my dad while he was battling cancer. I managed to spend my dad's last few months with him re-establishing our relationship and giving him closure on lots of things he wished he'd done better when he split with my mother."
"Extra added bonus was that I met my partner while caring for Dad and we have been together now for almost 25 years."
Minecraft
"I bought minecraft when I was very little and my parents thought it was a waste of money. Still playing it 8 years later."
Home
"My home. It's small, but every day I get to come home and be reminded of my accomplishments in life."
Tees
"50 identical black t-shirts."
"They're comfy, durable, have no logo on them and they fit really well. I hate buying clothes and picking out clothes in the morning. That time could be spent on more important things, like staring at the wall in the shower."
"Added bonus: i pretty much have to stay thin or they won't fit anymore."
"Since i'm getting the same questions over and over again, i'll just answer them here."
"Yes, i'm a cartoon character."
"Yes, i'm a minimalist."
"Brand is called Lower East. Got them on Amazon a long, long time ago when there was a sale for a whole bunch of them. No idea if they're still selling the exact ones i have."
"50 is really not that much to store away, when they're neatly folded."
""Why 50? Because finding really well fitting shirts as a really tall skinny man is hard. S is often times too small (arm length) and M is like a tent. Basically like this: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/shirts_fit.
"I'm also outdoors a lot, so stuff happens to them. Just last week i was riding my bicycle through the woods when a tree attacked me and ripped some holes in one of the shirts."
Giphy"Yeah except Gaston ate 4 dozen eggs every morning to help him get large when he was but a child."
"That's 48 eggs."
"Now that he's grown he eats 5 dozen eggs, which is 60 eggs, and this allows him to be roughly the size of a barge."
"You're 2 dozen eggs short of a full Gaston."
Tickets
"A ticket to see "The Room." The ticket taker was also a fan, and we chatted briefly about Tommy Wiseau. After the movie ended, my crappy old car wouldn't start. The ticket taker noticed me struggling in the parking lot. He offered me a ride home, I ended up asking him out, fast forward a few years and we're married now!"
"Our first dance was "I Will" which is a gorgeous song if you can get the image of Tommy Wiseau's naked butt out of your mind's eye. So yeah, that movie ticket was absolutely the best purchase of my life."
Washer
Giphy"Recently my husband and I bought a portable washer. We live in a tiny apartment and the building's machines are disgusting and cost five bucks to wash and dry (barely) a couple shirts. We got a hundred dollar gift card for a wedding gift and the washer was $130 on Amazon. I kid you not I did about thirteen loads of laundry the day it came because we had only been able to afford to wash the essentials and it all piled up. Highly recommend for people in small apartments, dorms, trailers, etc."
Travel
"Bought a one way ticket to New Zealand and got a holiday visa when I was nineteen and wanted to move out of my parents for the first time. That one purchase changed my life."
Headphones
"Noise Cancelling headphones. And not the cheap ones. No. I paid the full 500 and have not looked back since. I've used them for 3 years now, almost daily, and the pleasure of hearing nothing but your music is next level. They work great on planes, public, anything. For those wondering, I have the Sony MDR-1000X model."
These all turned out to be great investments. Do you have similar stories? Please share them below.
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Redditor r3tr0gam3r83 wanted to hear about which realizations in life have left people SHOOK, so they asked:
"What is something that blew your mind once you realized it?"
Avocados are not vegetables.
They're fruits, berries to be exact.
Like what?!?!
Colleagues
GIF by Bud LightGiphy"Sometimes it is more important to like your colleagues than the actual job."
"I had shi**y jobs with the most amazing colleagues and had shi**y colleagues and the most amazing job. I'd pick the first every time."
chr989
Star Trekking
"That you could legitimately travel at warp speed through the center of galaxies and never run any real risk of hitting a star. That’s how spread out space really is."
justanotherguyhere16
"Also, galaxies, stars, and even the Universe is constantly moving. I think time travel has been invented, but they can’t figure out the 'space' part of it.
"Yes, they can travel back in time, but relatively speaking, they can’t figure out how to navigate to the part of the planet they want to reach. So when they travel back in time, it’s relative to where they currently are, and end up not moving through space, thus ending up in the middle of an empty vacuum."
theknights-whosay-Ni
Jaws is Old
"That sharks predated the rings of Saturn."
BeardedDominant
"Sharks also developed the immune system that ended up in both dinosaurs/birds and mammals."
csiz
"We don’t know that. We can’t say for certain that the rings are only 100 million years old. It’s still debated."
The_Kek_5000
"I'm pretty sure that sharks are older than trees."
Cayderent
From the Trees
"One day I sat on a tram, passing a river. There was a duck in a tree. I realized I'd never seen ducks in trees. No one else seemed to notice, but I was puzzled. Now whenever I come across something that seems intuitive but I have never considered I call it a duck in a tree."
Ol_Pasta
"This realization happened to me this past year. We apparently have a family of wood ducks in one of the big trees in our yard. Our neighbor said she has seen a duck walking around on a branch. I made it 37 years without knowing some ducks can roost in trees. My wife caught a video of the mama leading like eight ducks into the field next to our house. We aren't even near water."
jwbourne
Artistic Timeline
Confused Eminem GIFGiphy"Pablo Picasso and Eminem were both alive at the same time."
leebon427
"I’d bet a lot of people think Picasso is a Renaissance artist."
editormatt
I admit it. I'm one of those people. Pablo and Marshall, in one lifetime.
New facts are fun.
The New World
Design Loop GIF by xponentialdesignGiphy"They were colonizing the Wild West at the same time as they were building skyscrapers in Manhattan. I always think of them taking place eighty to a hundred years apart. It's wild."
Emilayday
Oh the Power
"Nuclear power plants are just steam power plants that use nuclear reactions to heat the water. There's no fancy magic extracting energy directly from nuclear material. They just boil water and spin a turbine."
RenaKunisaki
"Most electrical generation is spinning a turbine. Photovoltaic solar power is pretty much the only exception, and it's not the only form of solar power. There's solar thermal power, which uses mirrors or lenses to concentrate the heat of the sun to make steam and turn a turbine."
Brawndo91
The Empire
"The Roman Empire fully fell less than 50 years before the discovery of the new world."
South-by-north
"The Romans also had copper wire, magnets, and battery acid. They could have invented electricity hundreds of years before it was actually discovered. But they didn't. The wire was used for jewelry, the magnets as lodestones, and the battery acid was used to clean the rust off of swords."
Kahzgul
"RIP Byzantine Empire. 1453 never forget."
crossbowman44
The Witness
"Owl‘s silent flight. I mean I always knew that but a while ago was the first time I actually witnessed it. Owl came flying towards me and landed only a few feet away and you couldn‘t hear anything. Crazy."
Zealousideal-You-324
"I saw a barn owl swoop down and catch a mouse while hiking at night, and the whole thing happened in complete silence. It gave me a deep sense of unease because it was literally like someone hit the mute button on life."
VulcanVisions
Bad Kermit
Kermit The Frog Meme GIF by IdentityGiphy"Poison dart frogs aren't poisonous in captivity."
"I own 5 of them and anytime I tell someone I own some I always get 'Do you ever lick them' or 'Can you go kill someone with them.' But yeah they get their poison from what they eat, and all I give them is fruit flies."
JMfury
Poison frogs?
That sounds like something Rose would have a story about on 'The Golden Girls.'
Redditor rentinghappiness wanted to hear about the things everyone really didn't know anything about until it happened to them, so they asked:
"What is something you used to think people were over-exaggerating about until you experienced it yourself?"
We never really know anything about anything until we try it for ourselves.
Mouth Issues
Dentist GIFGiphy"Dentist chiming in… tooth pain. I knew academically how painful they could be until it happened to me."
juneburger
"You know the pain is serious when you start looking forward to the inevitable root canal."
HailMari248
Wonders of Nature
"Giant sequoia trees. When I finally saw them in person, they looked fake. I could not comprehend a tree of that size."
schaefer001
"And we may have lost 15-20% of the remaining trees during some big fires in 2020 and 2021. A 2011 estimate puts it that there were only 80,000 remainings. They truly are wondrous organisms that I feel like everyone should have the chance to experience if they can."
"I'm a big believer in doing everything we can to protect and preserve these silent giants. It's really sad that so many were cut down by loggers when the wood is such poor quality for human purposes, to begin with. Such an utter and sad waste."
this_is_poorly_done
Just Me
"Loneliness."
Fried__SoapI
"I'm with you. Put all my cards into a girl who went suddenly cold and dark on me. Now I'm alone at rock bottom figuring out my next moves. You know, the smartest people in the world and also the happiest people in the world can be the loneliest?"
"I was only recently informed it's okay to talk to myself and hype myself. Enjoy my own company. I'm absolutely going to learn to do that. I'm thinking of painting, walking, and weekend trips out on a bus. Would be nice if you could have joined me even if we sat in silence."
Roofdragon
The Years Gone By...
"The physical pain of getting older. Damn."
marklikeadawg
"The emotional pain too. I get so nostalgic and teary over the past and how much has changed. It's a weird grieving process over losing your youth and the way things were."
heethersmeether
"On my 35th birthday, my wife woke me up with a cupcake and a candle, sang me 'Happy Birthday' and then congratulated me on being '15 from 50'... that really hit me hard. The other day I turned 45 and she said '5 from 50' and that hit me so hard, I just wanted to stay in bed all day. I still feel like an irresponsible teen but I'm pushing 50. Insane."
Opa_Kalaka
It's Hazy
Confused Always Sunny GIF by It's Always Sunny in PhiladelphiaGiphy"Brain fog. I had an alcohol withdrawal seizure in March. My short-term memory and sense of time are absolutely sh*t right now. On the plus side, I haven't had a drink in over 90 days and I don't want one."
Sideshow_Bob_Ross
Oh the wonders of the brain.
What a mess.
Scorched
Menopause Hot Flashes GIF by Kino LorberGiphy"Hot Flashes. I didn’t think they were this bad. I’m a 31-year-old man who took Wellbutrin for the past month and hot flashes are a side effect."
"I thought you just thought you were hot. No motherf**ker you are. You’re super hot legitimately, and you have to do something about it or you’ll go insane. It’s not in your head. It’s your brain raising your temps until you can’t focus on anything else."
_PswayZ_
Everlasting
"Chronic illness, there is absolutely no way you can truly understand the impact unless you experience it."
Disastrous-Phase-979
"Just that idea of always being sick and you will NEVER not be sick again."
"AND you're expected to participate in society just the same as everyone else. It's deeply f**ked up."
Farisr9k
"I like the part where I've been in pain for 25 years so I can kind of still function even when it's really bad."
"And then I try to get an ambulance guy or an admin assistant in a hospital to believe that I'm having an emergency and they're like 'You seem fine, take some Tylenol and go home' until I finally get a blood test, and then the doctor goes 'Holy crap, you're about to die, why didn't you come to the ER sooner.'"
"Like, listen up MF, I had to take a go**amn Uber to get here and then argue with reception for an hour."
BlahBlahILoveToast
Stoned
"How much a kidney stone hurts."
SpiritusSanctu
"Most people expect it to hurt the most when passing a stone through the urethra. Nothing prepared me for the pain as it passed through my kidney/ureter."
"One second I would be fine, carrying on conversations, prancing around nimbly-nimbly. The next second I would be keeled over, crying in agony, losing my lunch due to the sudden onset of crippling pain. 0/10 ... Would not recommend it."
King_of_Lunch223
Close Your Eyes
"Insomnia."
Successful_Fall7801
"Oh, what I would give to not have insomnia! I go through periods of sleeping more or less normal, and then for seemingly no reason, I’ll have weeks on end where a good night of sleep is IMPOSSIBLE. I’ll get 2-4 hours of sleep despite pills, tea, baths, white noise, meditation - everything."
"I’ll spend my days so deeply, utterly exhausted that I can barely think, and my whole body feels heavy, lifeless. It’s hard to feel any kind of emotion, let alone happiness or contentedness. Just existing as a human-shaped puddle until the time when I can go to bed and hope to god that tonight will be different for some unknown reason."
"Insomnia is a real bi*ch. It will tank your mental health and send you spiraling really fast."
thesmallshadows
Beep
Meme Reaction GIF by TravisGiphy"Tinnitus. It’s torture."
DissidentBliss
"I don't mind it much 'cause I've had it since I was born. That means I don't know what proper silence is."
77x5ghost
"Me too, they thought I had hearing issues when I was young because I couldn’t really hear some of the beeps well because they matched the pitch of the ringing."
ehter13
Don't judge another until you lace up their shoes and walk a mile in them!
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