A smartwatch. As a formerly fat guy with insomnia, the sleep and fitness tracking have been life changing.

Replaced all the screens in the house with 4K 144Hz HDR OLEDs. Once you go true black, you don’t go back.

A 4090. Stayed up for the midnight launch so I could snag one at MSRP. People mocked me for spending $1600 on a GPU, but given recent events, turns out that I actually got a good deal instead. This GPU will easily last me a decade; hopefully long enough to ride out all this tariff and inflation bullshit before I have to build a new PC again.

My noise cancelling headphones make me forget my disability sometimes, especially during bus rides, which used to induce migraines and leave me burnt out to a crisp when getting home from work. A mechanical keyboard made working so much more enjoyable, too

A dog. They need feeding, visits to the vets that get more expensive as they get older, they make holidays more expensive if they go with you or not, they need toys and time. But despite all that, they like any good pet, make life worth living.

A steam deck!

Wireless noise cancelling headphones.

Larry, I’m on ducktales.

My espresso machine nearly 10 years ago. I think it was nearly $500.

I made drip at home and purchased lattes on the road. I bought the machine to make them myself in the morning and load up a tumbler with essentially 2 large lattes.

It definitely paid for itself within 2 years and I switched to work from home so I’m glad I have it today.

Besides using only distilled water in it I do basic maintenance of running coffee cleaner through it every 3 months or so. Never had a issue with it and it still works great.

Best purchase ever. Only downside is I make better “coffee” than most carry out places. I hunt for good coffee when I’m out. Found two shops locally that make great espresso drinks and pastries. I go a few times a year.

Good coffee is a dark black hole to get sucked into.

My Toto Washlet bidet. Heated water and fan, multiple settings for strength and position, this thing is amazing.

I paid a bit more for a bike than I expected. Nothing compared to a Dutch person’s weekend bike from what I hear. I got it used but the parts are all high quality, I think.

My life changed to being much more bike centric and I’m really happy with the purchase. The frame is carbon and I carry it up and down 5 flights of stairs 2-3 times a week.

Dinner at a Michelin starred restaurant. It was an incredible experience and one I frequently look back on with fondness.

The back story: for our 25th wedding anniversary, nearly a decade ago now, my wife found a B&B deal at this wonderful hotel which was simply too good to pass up; the only catch was we’d have to pay separately for our evening meal. Well, how expensive could that be, I wondered, especially if we were careful. Reader, we were not careful!

It was wonderful, from the petit-fours, amuse-bouche and starter (a salad, the likes of which I’ve never eaten before or since), into the main course (“how did they do that to a carrot?”) through to dessert and the cheese trolley (“please have as much as you like!” we were told), and finally the petit fours, coffee and port from an ancient dusty bottle. The wine (we chose the second cheapest from the massive wine list, not that this saved us much) was similarly fantastic. I enjoyed every bite and happily signed off the bill with a smile using our emergency credit card.

It was a once in a lifetime treat but one I’ve never regretted.

Split airco in spring last year. I live top floor, flat roof with the living room facing south. Summers get real hot nowadays here, so last year was the first comfortable summer in our apartment in years. In winter we paid a fraction for heating as well. Best purchase in a long time.

The first thing that comes to mind is my computer mouse. Shelled out a bit more than I usually would for a more fancy mouse with multiple buttons and it has lasted 10+ years. The middle mouse button died pretty early but I just remapped that to another button close by and it feels awkward and wrong pressing the scroll wheel on any other mouse now. Although it is finally coming to the end of its days now and doing random disconnects and shit.

Also, just in general, shoes are pretty much always worth forking out a bit more cash for. Especially as someone that does a lot of walking, if you buy cheap shoes, you’re going to be buying another pair every 6 months.

Other than that, haven’t made a purchase that’s good for the soul in a while. And I’m envious of your £200 picture lol. It really sounds like you’re taking a lot of steps to make yourself happy, however big or small and that’s awesome. Hopefully in about a year from now, I’ll be able to answer this same question with some cool shit.

Beyerdynamic DT-770 through Custom Cans (v3 acoustic mod and detachable cable). It’s the best pair of closed-back headphones I’ve ever owned both in terms of audio and build quality.

On the flip side is the AKG K240. I bought it because of its legendary status as a neutral open-back, but the bass and low-mids are crushed. The cheap knock-off Samson SR-850 smashes it to bits. Then I learned that Samsung bought and then murdered the original AKG in 2016 and use the brand name to peddle their cheap landwaste products. Fuck you, Samsung.

Probably my two nicer guitars. They aren’t especially fancy models, but they were pretty big purchases for me when I got them and have brought me heaps of joy since. Since the experience of playing a musical instrument tends to revolve so heavily around how tiny little details feel, like the strings of a guitar being a little higher or lower above the fretboard or the neck being a little more or less flexible, taking the time and money to find the ones that felt right to me made a big difference (and then adjusting the setup of them further to suit me more)

The two nice ones are an Epiphone Swingster and a PRS SE 24 7-string. The PRS is just fun. It’s very versatile in sound, quite happy to do genres other than the metal that 7-strings are normally associated with but absolutely capable of getting angry when I want it to. The extra range of both the seventh string at the low end and the full 24 frets (the most that you’ll see on a guitar without getting something very unusual) gives me loads of options to play things how I want. The Epiphone is a little bit beaten up after a fair bit of stage usage, but it still sounds so smooth and I absolutely love how it feels like it’s coming alive when played loud. It’s hollow like an acoustic guitar is, so when the amp is loud enough it resonates with its own output from the amp far more easily than normal electric guitars. This is how you end up with the feedback whine sound associated with classic rock acts leaving their instruments on stage at the end of a set, but when you’re holding the instrument and controlling the feedback you can feel the entire thing vibrating and every sound you make with it can last for ages if you want it to

Edit: I feel like should add my dad’s version of this. He has been playing guitar since he was a child and is a big fan of classic rock, so he had a couple of guitars around the house and would sometimes play along whe he was singing songs for me and my siblings as kids. The only electric ome he had was one he bought whe he was a teenager, and while it was functional it was definitely more valuable sentimentally than for quality, and being a busy working dad he just wasn’t playing guitar enough to justify spending a lot of money on a new one. He started playing a bit more when I began to learn, we’d sit dow and jam when I was around, but still didn’t replace the electric.

One day he was rushed to hospital after a heart attack - a relatively minor one, and thankfully one he recovered from fully, but a heart attack nonetheless. This turned out to be enough for a small payout from his life insurance; money he didn’t need by thatpoint in his life aftsr decades of a fairly successful career, an not enough to really do anything big with. So, since he had some unexpected momey and was quite justifiably feeling a bit sorry for himself, he went out to get his dream guitar he had wanted since he was a teenager listening to Dire Straits records trying to figure out how to play them, a Fender Stratocaster

It’s not to my personal tastes as an instrument but I can’t argue with the quality of the thing, it is really nice

New car. You remember those infomercials with the grey unhappy “before” video followed by a colored and cheerful “after” ? Yup, that’s pretty much me nowadays.

My old car was durable as hell, easy to maintain and all that. But my new car has so many creature comforts that I cannot imagine myself without them anymore.

Plus with 7 seats and AWD the entire household finally fits inside, and the mountainous terrain where we live is no longer a problem when the roads start icing up 8n the winter.