5 Fabulous Purchases

Here are some of the purchases I have made in the past couple of weeks, all of which were well worth the money!

1. Skullcandy wireless headphones.  I often watch YouTube videos while hubby and I are sitting on the sofa in the evening.  He is playing poker online and the TV is on in the background and I am usually reading, redditing, or watching YouTube videos on a wide range of topics.  The problem with YouTube videos is, of course, the sound.  I usually use my wired earbuds so hubby doesn't have to listen to both the TV and my video sounds and this system works OK but being tethered to the laptop means I've yanked the earbuds out of my ears a few times when I forgot I was physically attached to my computer.  Then I found a set of $25 wireless headphones at Ross.  These sound great, don't keep me tethered to the laptop (I can walk all over the downstairs of the house and still hear my video), and were a very inexpensive way to see if I even liked wireless headphones (I do--they are great!).  So while I don't see myself spending $300+ on wireless headphones like many techies do, this cheap option works way better than expected! 
   
2. A portable car battery jump starter.  Hubby has a van.  It is very old and the air conditioner is shot and the book value of the thing is $500 but he loves his van and doesn't want to get rid of it.  Needless to say we don't drive it at all during the summer because of the lack of air conditioning but when he went out to start it for his weekly check to make sure it was still operable, the battery was dead.  The thing with batteries is that ANY battery in a car in Las Vegas has a lifespan of about two years because of the high heat.  So we needed to jump start the battery and could have used cables and waited until the car parked in front of it was moved so we could get our other car in line to jump it but we decided to check out the new battery jump starters which are so popular now.  The reason they are so popular is that you don't need jumper cables or another car.  Just hook up the battery jump starter and crank the car and "ta da" your car will start.  What a great invention!  We went to Walmart and bought a cheap $40 jump starter, plugged it in to fully charge it when we got home, then jumped the car and it started on the first try!  I think this jumper starter is well worth the $40 price because not only does it quickly and easily jump cars, it also has an air compressor on it to put air in tires (or basketballs, bicycle tires, etc), and you can also charge any UBS device like a cell phone or tablet through the machine. 
   
3. A new Samsung Galaxy S8 cell phone.  I've been looking for a new cell phone for a while.  Hubby has my hand-me-down Galaxy Note 4 phone from 2014 which is an eon ago in tech time.  I wanted to get a new cell phone so he could upgrade to my hand-me-down Galaxy S8+ phone (it's big and beautiful and fast and still quite current technologically speaking).  When I checked out the ads today I saw that Best Buy had the Galaxy S8 (identical but smaller than the S8+) phone on sale for $350 (regularly $499).  Deciding I could easily use a smaller phone, I jumped on this sale.  Most new phones are going for $900+ these days but since I hardly use my phone (mostly just for texting hubby) I can't justify spending $900+ on a cell phone with five cameras and 5g and all of that fancy stuff.  I need to text and take photos and that's about it.  Now hubby and I both have great phones for much less than I had anticipated paying.
4. A couple of Kipling bags.  I love Kipling bags but I can never pay full price for them.  Needless to say, unless I can get a Kipling bag at a 50%+ discount, I won't buy it.  I found these cute bags on sale for $10 (regularly $35 each) and didn't have a use for them but I bought them anyway (this brand makes excellent gifts for friends in Japan).  I had them sitting around for a week then I found a great use for them...  
   
5. Emergency supplies.  Last week when I was at work hubby called me to say they were having a big earthquake at the casino he was at.  Fortunately it rolled and shook the building a bit but it wasn't a major quake.  But the idea of hubby being stuck away from me in a disaster situation was pretty scary.  He usually has his lunch and a drink with him and that's about it.  So I used the Kipling bags to make each of us small emergency (EDC--everyday carry) bags.  They are still a work in progress and I will do a separate post about every item I put in them, but these bags include everything from hubby's medications and spare hearing aid batteries to a written list of emergency contacts in case cell service goes down, a granola bar, matches, Wet Wipes, a pocket knife, an emergency whistle, a small flashlight, etc.

While I don't shop a lot, I do like spending my money on useful, highly discounted, stuff!