Sometimes the cheapest things end up being the best investments. Seriously, the dollar store has pretty much everything you could ever need, and there are bargains everywhere from Ebay to thrift shops. It all just depends on where you look.
u/MrAnimeFanime asked: What was a sketchy cheap buy, that ended up being one of your best purchases?
A solid investment.
Seed packets from the dollar store. While in college my boyfriend and I were broke. Really broke. But I still wanted to do something to celebrate spring. We were getting a few cheap things at the dollar store when I noticed they were selling these seeds packets from a big old bin that you had to dig thru. 4 for $1. No tax. I immediately begged to buy one despite our strict budget.
Boyfriend was incredulous I'd want to buy sketchy seeds but dutifully handed me a quarter. I ended up picking out tomatoes.
Well we got home and I carefully placed about 3 seeds in washed out cans. I watered them and watched them sprout. I loved tending to my little garden. I ended up with 3 beautiful HUGE tomato plants. It was a bumper crop. More than we could eat.
I sold the extra produce to my classmates. Made like $25. Good seeds!
Thanks, Sanrio!
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I was traveling in Japan and needed nail clippers. All I could find is this cheap pink Hello Kitty grooming kit.
These clippers are the best I ever owned. They have stayed sharp and functional for 20 years. I'm very protective of them. Everyone in the house knows, you don't touch Dad's pink Hello Kitty nail clippers.
We love a good flannel.
Dad bought me a flannel jacket for $2 (from the equivalent of a dollar store) in 1994. Wore it for everything you can think of. Wore it yesterday. Still going strong after 25 years
Edit: pic taken today by request. The jacket https://imgur.com/gallery/2gFBZKc
Nice of them to give him advice.
Guy said there were a bunch of bricks in his back yard he wanted to get rid of. $5 for all of them if you'd come pick them up because they were "larger than regular bricks and were very heavy."
I grabbed a friend and headed out because I needed some cheap brick for the edging of my garden.
Guys house was across the river and in some really run down looking neighborhood...really glad I grabbed my friend at this point. We pull up and the guy is waiting outside, and he looks like he's 80 but I know he must have been a 35 year old guy who just smoked 10 packs a day... So the guy takes us to his back yard and shows up the pile of bricks, which turn out to be 50+ antique Louisville Fire Bricks.
So I look at the guy and tell him, "I'll take half of them...and as payment I'll give you $20 and some advice." And of course the guy is looking at me like I'm an idiot, but he accepts my money and helps me and my friend load up about 30 bricks. After I close my truck and get in the car to drive off I tell him to google the antique fire bricks and adjust his craigslist listing...
I went back to look at the listing a few days later, and he had changed the price from $5 for the whole pile, to $5 PER BRICK, which was the going rate at the time. Nowadays they go for $20/brick...
BEST BUY EVER!
Meow Factory!
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Bought my kitty for 20 bucks on Craigslist from a druggie. I had never had a cat before and this little meow factory has been my best friend ever since.
$5 bras are the best bras.
I was traveling from a different city straight into work, where my uniform was a white shirt, with a conspicuously black bra. Wasn't stopping home, so I did stop on the first corner store I found and bought a five-dollar white bra that looked roughly my size as they had nowhere to try them on. Just to wear one night.
10/10, comfiest bra I ever owned, wore it every day of my life for about a year. It gave in at some point - it was still a 5 dollar bra. But damn, I dream of the day when all my bras fit that well.
That's a super lucky Lyft ride.
I was giving these college aged young women a Lyft ride. One asks how "that Craigslist thing went" so my ears perked up. The other says something like "he complained it went back too far, just don't put it back so far, duh."
Eventually I deduce they are talking about a recliner - which I've been looking for one for some time now. I interject and ask about it. Lady has a Laz-E-Boy electric recliner she just wants 20 bucks for. I'm like, "listen I know it's sketchy but if you've got Craigslist rando's in your house Lyft at least gave me a background check."
We pull up, I end the ride, and follow these ladies into their house. I knew I wanted it as soon as I laid eyes on it.
So, this college chick is helping me stuff a recliner into my back seat and all I can think is this is how Buffalo Bill kidnapped that girl in Silence of the Lambs.
Twenty dollars for a recliner so lazy it reclines for me.
RIP sunglasses.
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At the end of a long road trip with some mates, I bought a $20 pair of sunglasses in a gas station just outside Chicago. They fit me better than any pair of sunglasses ever did, or ever will, and they made me look awesome. For years I constantly received compliments about them and was asked where I got them.
I lost them after 5 long years and have hated myself for it every since. They were so no-name they didn't even have a brand name on them at all, so I have no idea who made them. I have no way of finding that gas station, either. I've literally spent hundreds of dollars trying to find sunglasses that come close to that same perfect fit/style, but I can't.
Definitely cursed.
The Bra of Mystery.
First strike: I bought it from a grocery store.
Second strike: It was marked down to $2, and plastered with stickers reading, "Final sale!", "No returns!", "We're not liable if this kills you!", "I'm sure there are people who love you!" and the like.
Third strike: Upon ringing it through, the cashier did a double-take at the screen, looked at me with great concern, and asked if I was sure I wanted to buy it.
After failing to self-combust and send me straight to hell, it wound up being one of the nicest bras I ever had. Wore it for two years before the inevitable underwire tit-shanking.
I still wonder what they thought was wrong with it.
A nice surprise.
I randomly found a wedding videographer online and booked him for a very affordable rate for my wedding assuming it wouldn't be very good quality. Two weeks after the wedding, he emails me a high quality, well-edited video. He had a drone I hadn't noticed because he was outside of the venue getting b-roll with it before I even started getting ready for the big day. I was floored and now I recommend him to everyone who ever plans to get married ever.
Edit: He has definitely upped his prices since then (he did the videography for my wedding last summer) and rightfully so, because he does great work.
What a steal.
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Traded a kid in middle school a sandwich size ziploc bag of lego pieces for a ps1 and thought I got best deal ever. But when I got home it didn't work at all.
My dad opened it and found a couple broken pieces stuck inside and fixed it up and it worked perfectly after that. Made me learn how easily a deal could be too good, but at least that kid felt stupid after I told him how easy it got fixed.
Wish
I buy things off Wish that are a serious gamble. For those who are unfamiliar, wish is an app where you can buy things for seriously cheap, and sometimes they're just that — cheap. I once bought a long line trench coat for $4. Either it was going to be shitty, or it was going to be a great $4 well spent. 2 years later I still wear it during the fall and I still get compliments on it! I love wish sometimes!!
Matchbox car
I bought a 1970s matchbox car for my father's birthday from ebay. It was a very old car and description said it was used. The pictures of car were quite blurry. It was 15 dollars and 4.33 for shipping. I bought it. The box came and I opened it to find the car in mint condition. The box it was in hadn't even been opened or scratched even.
Apparently the guy inherited a complete matchbox car collection with cars in their original boxes and was selling them off for cheap prices like 15 dollars. I checked online people were selling this car for $250. The lowest I found was $95.
Good deal.
I had been searching for a sofa bed for less than $100 for months to put in my music/multi-purpose room when I finally found an old, kind of worn-in looking one for $50. I was psyched, it fit the aesthetic of the room perfectly, so I brought my buddy with who offered the kind lady $30 for the thing. She said, "How about you give me $50 and take anything else you want in this garage!"
We ended up making out of there with the comfiest rocking-style chair, throw pillows, and a coffee table. We only stopped there because the bed of the truck was full. She also let us take pictures of the Toyota Camry she is selling, so I've been in contact with her about picking that up on the cheapy cheap, too. I've met some awesome people by trying to buy s**t cheap on Craigslist.
Quality blanket.
When my Dad was stationed in Mexico in 85-86, he bought a Mexican blanket for a couple of bucks. To this day we still use it as a beach blanket and the colors haven't faded at all. He's had that blanket longer than he's known my Mom.
Considering the quality of that blanket I'm surprised it wasn't worth more.
Real life contains the scariest horrors you could ask for. So aren't we all living in a horror movie, in a way? At least, these people sure freakin' were.
MisterSnowman69 asked: What was a moment in your life that felt like a horror movie scene?
In the words of the legendary Mary Vivian Pierce in the film Pink Flamingos, “Murder merely relieves tension”. I’m sure the following Redditors felt differently.
Nothing scarier than the woods at night.
Went into a real deep woods hike for only the second time in my life.
My gps broke and had to rely on my compass. Got turned around a few times because I couldn't remember the direction I came from, and it was getting dark. Lost the trail way.
But the woods are weirdly silent in the dark and alone.
It was around 2am by the time I found the trailhead.
Darn foxes.
the simpsons react GIFGiphyMy friend and I got lost late on one foggy night in the Italian countryside. There were rats all over and every once in a while we heard someone scream.
I've never been more sure I was about to get murdered than I was that night.
It was probably a red fox that was screaming.
Could've also been a lynx, but they are much rarer in Italy.
At least she wasn’t speaking in tongues.
My mom is quite the sleep talker, but it's usually pretty short and incoherent when it happens. One night as a teenager, I woke up to her scream-yelling the Hail Mary prayer (my bedroom was across the house and upstairs).
Difficult to get back to sleep after that one.
Sometimes scary sh*t ends up just being funny coincidences. Super funny. Right?
Don’t give them any ideas.
I was exploring an abandoned mental asylum and then got the scare of my life when a scary looking person inside one of the rooms was just staring at me without moving. Turns out some joker had left a cardboard cutout there.
And now I have plans this weekend... Just need to find a couple of cardboard cutouts and to break into the local abandoned asylum.
Don’t you hate when that happens?
Evil Dead Horror GIF by Coolidge Corner TheatreGiphyI was driving home on backcountry roads at midnight in heavy fog. Like can't see 10 feet in front of you thick. Suddenly I see an all-white silhouette running in front of the car. Every hair on my body stood up. I immediately think "oh god, oh f*ck, it's a f*cking woman in white, I'm gonna f*cking die"
Nope just a drunk who dove into the ditch.
Gotta love paranoia.
When I was about 12, my parents went out for dinner leaving me home alone. We lived out in the country, on a private road with only three other houses, surrounded by cow fields and wooded areas.
I went into the the kitchen and glanced out the window towards the trees and there in the fading light I could see a person walking slowly through the woods. They were wearing all black, moving slowly and appeared to pause behind trees. My heart started pounding so hard in my ears I couldn't hear anything else and I was weak and shaky from fear. I froze and just watched them. Would they come to the house? Where were they going?
This was before cell phones but I suddenly remembered my mom had left the number of the restaurant by the living room phone. Slowly, I made my way towards the living room, trying to watch this stranger in the woods.
Just as I entered the living room, all the lights in the entire house went out. By this time it was nearly dark outside. I started openly sobbing and in the dark I heard a weird boom like noise. That was it, I ran to my parents room, hid under their bed and sobbed. That's where my mom found me hours later (it felt like).
Well, turns out the stranger in the woods was a stupid cow that had busted through a fence, the lights going out was from an accident a few miles away (hit the power line) and the boom was the pilot light in the gas stove. Man, I have never been that scared in my life though!
I have a lot of questions.
A naked man who was covered in blood chased me across a park at 2 in the morning. I was totally alone. He just wanted money for a bus (????) and luckily nothing bad happened but I thought I was going to die.
But of course, the genuine horrors do exist. And they aren’t scary in a fun horror movie way, they’re actually terrifying because they can happen to anyone.
A scary few seconds.
car chase GIF by Mayans M.C.GiphyI am a "baby" in a car seat in between cousins in backseat. Dad is driving. This is in the 80s and it is my aunt's insistence that I am in this seat even though I am like 5.
A sleeping semi driver is coming over into our lane and there is a cliff on other side. Basically my dad did some amazing driving but semi blew us up. I am uninjured sitting in the seat swinging my legs while everyone is unconscious. They all wake groaning. Dad doesnt wake up.
Long story short just minor scrapes and dad has broken leg. But the crunch of metal and those few seconds/minute of being the only "alive" person was quite fear inducing.
Glad they’re all ok now.
Two days after my now boyfriend told me he liked me he fell from a zip line and broke his back. Almost died. 6 months later he got into a car wreck from a drunk driver - almost died. 6 months after that, he passed out and had to have emergency brain surgery, again, almost died. I now have severe anxiety/separation anxiety/and ptsd. That whole year was a f*cking nightmare
Edit: we're both okay now, the brain injury was almost a year ago. But TBIs take a while to heal so he still has side effects. Thankfully our relationship is still strong; he's physically getting better and I'm healing emotionally too. Lucky for him, the trauma of the injuries has caused him to forget the majority of the pain and memories of those incidents.
ALWAYS wear a helmet.
Driving home from work at 23, listening to my favorite song.
I pull up to a red light, and see this guy on a motorcycle coming up next to me in the other lane. I rolled down my window to compliment his bike when he stops. He doesn't, and runs the red light. He hits a car going at least 55mph. His motorcycle shatters apart, he goes flying, hits the hood of another car, and lands on the ground and rolls into the curb (no helmet). The car he hit with his motorcycle was totaled. I had to step over his body to talk to the police. He was still alive when they got there. I regret not holding his hand. It was just a normal day, and all of a sudden it felt like the rug was pulled from out beneath me. He was only 18.
Edit: The song was Sunny by Boney M., for those curious
What did we learn today, kids? Foxes scream like humans, shadowy figures are usually cows or drunken rednecks, and once again, PLEASE WEAR A HELMET WHEN YOU RIDE ANY KIND OF BIKE.
Scary sh*t surrounds us. But where there is horror, there are heroes. So next time you think you see a scary figure in the woods, know that Bruce Campbell is probably right around the corner
Hypocrisy is everywhere; it's like a disease. And sadly everyone does it. Some of us indulge in smaller doses than others. But some people live their life by it. Like how can you support civil servants, like police, firefighters, etc... yet try to find ways to hide money in order to not pay taxes? Tell me... I'll wait.
Manga...
Hungry Night Court GIF by LaffGiphyItalian moms that say you're too fat then say I'm making grandma cry by not finishing my pasta.
Asian moms too! Not only that if you try to not eat, they make to go containers for you. Oh, sorry I have to leave, RUNS AT LEAST HAVE SOME FRUIT.
Phonies...
Celebrities positioning themselves as champions for social justice while launching a clothing line with no comment on the labor conditions their garments are made in.
Sexy Times...
The Porn Industry
Why is prostitution considered a crime, but it becomes perfectly legal once a camera is put beside them?
I think the first amendment helps with that one. There's been many a supreme-court case about whether porn is protected speech.
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...
You can get away with WAY more crap, in general, when you're attractive.
But we all kind of aspire to attractiveness and it's not like it's attractive people's fault, exactly. So what is there to be done?
So true. Money and beauty are treated like virtues and they aren't. They're luck of the draw. It probably helps you to be a better person if people assume that you are gentle and clever just by looking at your face or wallet.
KIDS
GIF by MOODMANGiphyPeople screaming at you if you don't want Kids and Kids are the greatest thing in the World and then turn around and whine how expensive they are and how annoying yadda yadda.
Yeah see... humans are a mess. And too often then not, personal conviction and dignity are just a myth, or a punchline. Double standards have always been a way of life. And many of us have begrudgingly learned to navigate.
Fashion
Fashion Model GIF by NYFW: The ShowsGiphyIf a skinny person wears something out of the ordinary, it's a fashion statement and awesome. It can even just be something like a crop top or overalls.
But God forbid a fat person wear the same thing.
Distractions
The hypocrisy hypocrisy. People love to call it out but rarely notice it on themselves and if they notice it then it's something completely different or a distraction.
That's the worst. I hate that I have to hate that. But if I don't hate it, then the hate will just continue. So, really, my hate comes from my love of an end to hate. So anyone who hates my hate hates love. And we must hate anyone who hates love!
My Morality
My own personal hypocrisy; When I was a lot less well off financially, delivering pizzas trying to get through college, I kept a cup of coins in my car. When a homeless person would approach me for spare change, I gave them the cup. Most of the time it was nearly full, so there was probably 20-30 dollars in there.
Now that I have a good salaried job, even if I've got a few bucks in my wallet, I tend to not even make eye contact anymore. I know it's awful, I know it makes me crappy, but the last 4-5 years have made me a jaded craphead towards people in general. I used to be so hopeful and I wanted to help everyone, and tried to live a life that reflected that.
Now, while my general and political morality is pretty much the same, my personal morality has gotten more grey. I'd jaded, I hate people, I assume the worst of people I used to assume the best of. I don't really care about the strangers around me like I used to, but I still expect everyone else to.
Placing Blame
Victim mentality.
It's so freaking frustrating when it becomes entrenched. "You did this, it's your fault" "you should've known to do x, its your fault" Yeah bro your problems aren't my problems and if all you do is make excuses and blame me for them, it's not going to be my fault when you don't develop as a person and accomplish your dreams. I'm sure they'll find someone to blame though.
In D.C.
Donald Trump Reaction GIF by Election 2016GiphyPoliticians work part time, are given free housing, education, and health care, and exempt from the everyday violence we experience, but refuse to lift a finger to help us.
At this points most people running for a position in the government are only in it for the benefits of being a politician and the amount of money they can embezzle. Well in my country at least.
Just speak a truth and live it. Yes, it maybe hard. But what part of life isn't? Hypocrisy is just lying. Plain and simple. And it's a sin to lie.
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