Author Topic: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now  (Read 7408 times)

Tjat

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20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« on: September 30, 2015, 08:22:10 AM »
http://time.com/money/4037386/what-to-do-with-1000/

Some of these are reasonable (buy a bike for daily travel/commute), but Non-Mustachian highlights include

  • Buy new clothes
  • Go on vacation
  • Buy luxury jewelry
  • Buy a new laptop
  • Buy an odd assortment of 'smart home' devices
  • Upgrade your home office
  • Begin a wine collection

nereo

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Re: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« Reply #1 on: September 30, 2015, 08:42:04 AM »
Reminds me of an article I saw in Money magazine several years ago while waiting for a doctor's appointment.  The title was something like "great ways to spend a $10,000 windfall".  One suggestion:  plant a tree.  No, not a normal tree that will take several years to grow, but for $10k you can plant a truly massive hardwood.  Price was mostly for the excavator and shipping (which is sizable on a 50' tree, ya know?)

ever since I've kind of looked at landscaping like I do with compound interest - be patient and have a plan and in a few decades you'll have something normally obtainable only by the very wealthy.

nobodyspecial

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Re: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« Reply #2 on: September 30, 2015, 09:30:57 AM »
  plant a tree.  .. Price was mostly for the excavator and shipping (which is sizable on a 50' tree, ya know?)
Might be worth it depending on where you can plant it.
There are a couple of bits of freeway near me that would benefit from a 50' tree appearing in the middle of them overnight


nereo

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Re: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« Reply #3 on: September 30, 2015, 09:47:29 AM »
  plant a tree.  .. Price was mostly for the excavator and shipping (which is sizable on a 50' tree, ya know?)
Might be worth it depending on where you can plant it.
There are a couple of bits of freeway near me that would benefit from a 50' tree appearing in the middle of them overnight

Meh, I'm still going to say it's a sub-optimal use of money.  Last I checked my local nursery sold good, fast growing conifers that were already 6-8' tall for under $100 each.  Why plant one large tree for $10k when you could plant two dozen in a double-row for about $2k.  You could even put in a privacy fence for a few years until your 'living fence' grew and filled in.
To each their own.  If you have $10k to spend on a single tree, go for it.  But until you're completely FI it seems a stupid use of money... btu that's just me.

nobodyspecial

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Re: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« Reply #4 on: September 30, 2015, 11:26:02 AM »
Depends on the tree. I spend a lot of time pulling up conifers because I live in the PNW and they seed hundreds of 6" high seedlings all over the place (enough to remove the house if they were all allowed to grow) every summer.

But a house with a full grown impressive Oak, Maple, etc or a row of mature apple trees that have taken 30years to grow might be worth $x more than it's neighbor . If you are willing to spend $x to add a deck or a pool then spending the same on a magnificent tree isn't totally stupid.



MrMoogle

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Re: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« Reply #5 on: October 02, 2015, 12:06:18 PM »
Those 20 ideas were fun!  Now that I just spent $20k, how else can I spend money to make it go a long way?

Gone Fishing

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Re: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« Reply #6 on: October 02, 2015, 12:43:54 PM »
Wine collections, ha!  Having drank some truly exceptional wine (once), I can be certain that if I had a cellar full of it, it would not remain a "collection" for long!

MgoSam

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Re: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« Reply #7 on: October 02, 2015, 01:46:53 PM »
Wine collections, ha!  Having drank some truly exceptional wine (once), I can be certain that if I had a cellar full of it, it would not remain a "collection" for long!

Yeah I'm kind the same way. My neighbor dropped off a good bottle of wine and a frozen steak (from a cow share) as a housewarming gift. He asked about it the other day and I told him that I was saving the wine for when I grilled the steak, and he smiled. I'm proud I was able to wait this long. I'm going to need to bust it out on Sunday or before it gets too cold to grill.

Proud Foot

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Re: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« Reply #8 on: October 02, 2015, 02:42:54 PM »
Those 20 ideas were fun!  Now that I just spent $20k, how else can I spend money to make it go a long way?

Well in the article list to the left of the page there was a headline for "What to do with $100,000 now". That might give you some ideas!

nereo

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Re: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« Reply #9 on: October 02, 2015, 02:43:53 PM »
Wine collections, ha!  Having drank some truly exceptional wine (once), I can be certain that if I had a cellar full of it, it would not remain a "collection" for long!

Yeah I'm kind the same way. My neighbor dropped off a good bottle of wine and a frozen steak (from a cow share) as a housewarming gift. He asked about it the other day and I told him that I was saving the wine for when I grilled the steak, and he smiled. I'm proud I was able to wait this long. I'm going to need to bust it out on Sunday or before it gets too cold to grill.

Huh - we have the exact opposite problem.  We love finding good cheap bottles of wine at the NH state liquor store (~$6-7) and drink those rapidly.  Occasionally I'll get a very nice bottle ($25-40) from my sister in California wine country or my parents or from someone else. We can't bring ourselves to open those except very rarely, and so they accumulate in  our "wine cellar" (which looks remarkably like the back of our closet).

LoneWolfstache

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Re: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« Reply #10 on: October 02, 2015, 03:35:54 PM »
The only kind of trees I'd plant are the one's you can smoke.......now that's a return on investment

jollygreen23

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Re: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« Reply #11 on: October 03, 2015, 06:25:57 PM »
  plant a tree.  .. Price was mostly for the excavator and shipping (which is sizable on a 50' tree, ya know?)
Might be worth it depending on where you can plant it.
There are a couple of bits of freeway near me that would benefit from a 50' tree appearing in the middle of them overnight

I've been toying with the idea of building a food forest in our yard-- a few peach trees, a few figs, blueberry bushes, a pear tree or two, an apple tree, strawberries, etc...

I wasn't going to go over $400...

maco

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Re: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« Reply #12 on: October 05, 2015, 08:20:20 AM »
http://time.com/money/4037386/what-to-do-with-1000/

Some of these are reasonable (buy a bike for daily travel/commute), but Non-Mustachian highlights include

  • Buy new clothes

I just got a windfall (didn't expect to get my year-end bonus from the company I quit two months ago), and one thing I did do was spend way more money on a pair of shoes than I ever have before. They're ones recommended by r/BuyItForLife and r/GoodyearWelt. If they last 5 years or longer, I come out ahead, and they have a reputation for lasting decades. But ouch, that was a big up-front layout. Otherwise, I'd have been setting aside a little each month so as not to decrease my investment & mortgage payoff rate, even though my old shoes have made walking painful for the last month.

(No, they did not cost the entire windfall or even $1000, but they did take a chunk out)

Vertical Mode

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Re: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« Reply #13 on: October 06, 2015, 07:08:34 AM »
Reminds me of an article I saw in Money magazine several years ago while waiting for a doctor's appointment.  The title was something like "great ways to spend a $10,000 windfall".  One suggestion:  plant a tree.  No, not a normal tree that will take several years to grow, but for $10k you can plant a truly massive hardwood.  Price was mostly for the excavator and shipping (which is sizable on a 50' tree, ya know?)

ever since I've kind of looked at landscaping like I do with compound interest - be patient and have a plan and in a few decades you'll have something normally obtainable only by the very wealthy.

As an added bonus, planting younger and smaller trees/shrubs reduces transplant shock, and increases the odds of survival. Larger trees tend to have a greater portion of their roots clipped off during commercial harvesting (unless you get them bare-root with hydrogel) and are generally much more difficult to transplant. There is a balance to be struck between cost/difficulty of installation and initial impact of landscape improvement (a good reason to go for larger trees).

+1 to having a plan. Composition is everything.

UniquePleasure7

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Re: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« Reply #14 on: October 06, 2015, 08:22:32 AM »
http://time.com/money/4037386/what-to-do-with-1000/

Some of these are reasonable (buy a bike for daily travel/commute), but Non-Mustachian highlights include

  • Buy new clothes

I just got a windfall (didn't expect to get my year-end bonus from the company I quit two months ago), and one thing I did do was spend way more money on a pair of shoes than I ever have before. They're ones recommended by r/BuyItForLife and r/GoodyearWelt. If they last 5 years or longer, I come out ahead, and they have a reputation for lasting decades. But ouch, that was a big up-front layout. Otherwise, I'd have been setting aside a little each month so as not to decrease my investment & mortgage payoff rate, even though my old shoes have made walking painful for the last month.

(No, they did not cost the entire windfall or even $1000, but they did take a chunk out)

I'm curious, what did you get?

maco

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Re: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« Reply #15 on: October 06, 2015, 09:43:20 AM »
http://time.com/money/4037386/what-to-do-with-1000/

Some of these are reasonable (buy a bike for daily travel/commute), but Non-Mustachian highlights include

  • Buy new clothes

I just got a windfall (didn't expect to get my year-end bonus from the company I quit two months ago), and one thing I did do was spend way more money on a pair of shoes than I ever have before. They're ones recommended by r/BuyItForLife and r/GoodyearWelt. If they last 5 years or longer, I come out ahead, and they have a reputation for lasting decades. But ouch, that was a big up-front layout. Otherwise, I'd have been setting aside a little each month so as not to decrease my investment & mortgage payoff rate, even though my old shoes have made walking painful for the last month.

(No, they did not cost the entire windfall or even $1000, but they did take a chunk out)

I'm curious, what did you get?
Wolverine 1000 Miles

AlanStache

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Re: 20 Really Smart Things to Do with $1,000 Now
« Reply #16 on: October 06, 2015, 11:09:09 AM »
The Keen is a neat idea but not sure is solving a problem I (or most mustachians) have and is a bit expensive (90$ per vent and 40$ base unit). 

http://www.keenhome.io/

At first I thought it was some auto-vent/fan thing to the outside but it needs your central unit to be running.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!