Ask HN: What life changing thing have you bought for less than $100? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What life changing thing have you bought for less than $100?

12 pointsdaolf14 comments

A few things:

- A slow cooker. It makes cooking meals completely effortless: just add ingredients and come back 8-10 hours later.

- Sleep eye cover. Particularly a black/dark one that completely blocks out light. It really improves the quality of your sleep.

- Coffee grinder. Freshly ground beans are leaps and bounds better than pre-ground stuff. It's akin to the difference between Taco Bell and an authentic Mission burrito.

- A Kindle (I think they're less than $100?). I end up reading much more long-form content.

I'll repeat one of keiferski's responses and add another related to food:

- Slow cooker

- Instant pot

Between the slow cooker and instant pot it's harder to make an excuse not to cook dinner even when we're really busy. Cooking with these we have also gotten better about buying raw ingredients to cook with, versus packaged or pre-made foods. This has led to much healthier eating in our home and improved health for both me and my wife.

Non-food:

- YNAB. I was reasonably disciplined about money before getting it, but definitely improved after. And with getting married, my wife and I have very different approaches to money, it's helped us to stay on the same page. We've resolved our differences by throwing a chunk of money at a generic pot for her to use more freely, but still within a reasonable limit.

- TRX. Not normally under $100, but I got a good deal on it via a sale. Made body weight exercising much more interesting than what I'd been doing before, and scalable (especially useful after a shoulder injury where I couldn't do a regular push-up for a few months). You can make your own version cheaply.

- Merrill Barefoot series running shoes. These hover around $100, but when I got them and started running in them I had no shinsplints compared to previous running shoes. I had never been able to run for fitness before I got these, and then I went on to run a half-marathon in them. You do have to ease into it though, and if you have bad form (how you land on your foot) you will probably injure yourself.

Can an instant pot not operate as a slow cooker? I have a non instant pot electric pressure cooker, and it slow cooks great!

Second your running shoes as well, much less ankle pain for me compared to more cushioned shoes. I think that because they punish you more for bad form, you learn to run more naturally, at least that’s what happened for me!

It can be used as a slow cooker, but I’ve often used both at the same time. If you can only pick one, I’d get the instant pot.

How are these shoes different?

Essentially just a Thin robust, Rubber sole. No padding, no shock absorbing. It’s pretty close to walking barefoot.

I switched to minimalist shoes 3 years ago and it has dramatically improved my life.

Ditto YNAB and minimalist shoes. I like my Merrill’s. But I think they look silly. I tried Xero first. They were great but Swedish quality. I’m thinking I’d trying Lems next.

A kettlebell and a "Simple and Sinister" [1] book by Pavel Tsatsouline. Great (and relatively safe) way to get your fitness on the next level.

[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Kettlebell-Simple-Sinister-Revised-Up...

Micropore tape so I can tape my mouth shut overnight and avoid sleeping through the mouth.

Sounds weird but I don’t have to wake up in the middle of the night to drink water anymore and I also don’t wake up with my mouth/throat super dry.

I've tried that as an experiment during the lockdown, after reading "Oxygen Advantage". For the first few days I was waking up without a tape, but got used to it.

I eventually ditched it because I didn't see any improvements.

Halo sleep sacks for a infant were a life saver. Other than that usually under 100 it’s just stuff that does the job of a 10-20_$ tool just does it really well.

Kindle.

Really good rice cooker.

Good books like Herman Hesse's.

Nutribullet.

Aeropress.

Quality running shoes.

Weed

Reply on news.ycombinator.com