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Ask HN: What do you spend money on that greatly increases your quality of life

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Re: Ask HN: What do you spend money on that greatly increases your quality of life

#51

Post by Lramseyer »

Honestly, in hindsight, I am really bad at seeing the implications of my quality of life at the time of purchase. Part of it is due to changes in personal habits that I don't always foresee. For example, I play significantly fewer video games than when I was in college. But it's also due to my perception of what it should cost versus how much I use it. An example of that would be some of the nice clothing I own that I paid extra for. I wear it enough to justify the cost. Then there are the non-tangible things like vacations which have given me some amazing stories that I would not have imagined.

Though that speaks more to the concern over the quality of what I get, or whether I should own or rent something. In practice, as a young, single, physically active engineer who lives in the Bay area, (aside from clothes, food, shelter, and transportation,) I get my 80% value out of the following:

Running shoes, a bike, a good backpack, a gym membership, Spotify premium, a good computer or two, a good smartphone, and the more than occasional airline reservation.

Re: Ask HN: What do you spend money on that greatly increases your quality of life

#52

Post by rich335z »

The occasional piece of music gear...

Once upon a time, I tried to be a rock star, and that didn't work out, so I pursued a career in a secondary passion... IT. That pretty much worked out, and I'm now comfortable.

Music remains my primary passion, though. I'm not particularly good at it, but I find the acts of creating arrangements, writing lyrics, and engineering mixes therapeutic and quite satisfying.

So although I remain pretty frugal with it (it is just a hobby at this point, after all), the occasional piece of "gear": a new audio interface, midi controller, VST, instrument, sample bank, etc... is rewarding and helps to keep me sane and happy.

Re: Ask HN: What do you spend money on that greatly increases your quality of life

#54

Post by shoo »

Here are some things I've stopped spending money on lately, without decreasing my quality of life:

* Stopped spending money on public transport. Now I just ride my bike everywhere. positive financial ROI within a few months (even including the occasional expensive bike repair) + benefits to mental and physical health.

* Stopped spending money buying books, now I just borrow and read books from public libraries. It's free.

* I only eat out about 10% as often as a few years ago. Just need to spend a bit of time on weekends for meal prep and being a bit more organised.

With a longer-term time horizon, if you have surplus money, you can choose to spend some of it on investments that will give you a source of income decoupled from the time you need to spend at work. That doesn't do anything for your quality of life in the short term (if anything it will make it worse if you are working to save now for the future) but that's traded off against expected improvements in quality of life in the future (e.g. you can retire or switch to doing contract work for half the year and whatever you like for the rest).

Re: Ask HN: What do you spend money on that greatly increases your quality of life

#56

Post by pm215 »

hdi wrote: post #42
pm215 wrote: post #28

Working four days a week. Effectively I pay 20% of my salary to buy an extra non-working day every week. This is a massive QoL improvement (a) because it keeps my RSI from being unbearable and (b) because of all the fun stuff you can do with that extra day...

How did you negotiate that with your employer, and also are you doing contract/constancy work where an arrangement like that is slightly more realistic?

No, I'm doing what I would classify as "normal" developer work. Negotiation: I have had (on a sample size of 1) no luck getting this at initial employment, but I have managed (sample size of 2) to arrange it after working somewhere for a couple of years and building up trust and a reputation as an employee worth hanging on to. At that point I was able to get 4-day working set up following an RSI episode bad enough that I had to be signed off work for a few months and then got a medical recommendation for reduced hours, which my employer accepted.

Incidentally, this kind of thing is why I'm definitely not in the "job hop every year or two" camp.

Re: Ask HN: What do you spend money on that greatly increases your quality of life

#57

Post by dstryr »

Travel. Every experience feels like a hard reset on my perceptions of how things should be, even in cultures similar to my own.

Sometimes I'll miss the way things are back home. Other times I'll wish that we'd adopt some of their values, but either way, it opens up the conversation about these ideas and how things can be approached differently.

Re: Ask HN: What do you spend money on that greatly increases your quality of life

#58

Post by velzevur »

chrismcb wrote: post #34
velzevur wrote: post #32

I measure my quality of life in experiences, so there are 2 issues here: good health and knowing what makes you happy. I'm going to focus on the first one because it is more generic. It depends on what you're doing. I spend most of my day sitting in front of a computer: around 9 hours with some small breaks. Another good portion of my time goes to sleeping, so a great bed, pillow, chair and desk are a must. If you ma…

How do you find a good chair? I personally want to try a chair it before buying it. But I find all the local stores have cheap chairs that last a year or so.

The chair is some sort of easy to try: you just go and try it. Choosing a bed and pillow is not that easy - I've thrown away a couple of pillows that seemed fine in at the beggining but were actually unbearable to sleep on. As for the cheap chairs - you get exactly what you've paid for

Re: Ask HN: What do you spend money on that greatly increases your quality of life

#59

Post by velzevur »

stoatom wrote: post #35
chrismcb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you find a good chair? I personally want to try a chair it before buying it. But I find all the local stores have cheap chairs that last a year or so.

For office work: http://www.hermanmiller.com/products/seating/performance-wor... For relaxation: http://www.hermanmiller.com/products/seating/lounge-seating/... disclaimer: I have the first, I want the second ;-)

I've been using Herman Miller for the past 5-6 years or so and they're just great. I also have the first one and now having seen the second - I want it, too.

Re: Ask HN: What do you spend money on that greatly increases your quality of life

#60

Post by throwaway2016a »

I spend money on (that has a good ROI in terms of quality of life for me):

- Good wireless speakers (Sonos) and a Spotify subscription

- Audio books (Audible)

- Golf. Not only is it good exercise, gets me outside away from a computer, and fun but also has some tangible business benefits (at least in the US, not sure about elsewhere)

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