Best Buys of 2020

As I com­pile all of my finan­cial stats for this weird and messed up year, I find myself rem­i­nisc­ing on some of the best pur­chas­es I made in 2020.

Now, best is sub­jec­tive. Was it the best deal? Was it the pur­chase that pro­vid­ed the most joy? The one that proved most use­ful? In this case, best is some com­bi­na­tion of all of those. The ones that I deem the best for the whole year were great deals, pro­vid­ed a lot of joy or sat­is­fac­tion or eas­ing of anx­i­ety, and were used frequently.

Also of note.…. in years past, I don’t think I would’ve done a best pur­chase roundup of the year post, sim­ply because I was­n’t buy­ing a whole lot of things. I gave myself per­mis­sion to break free of the “must save every dol­lar and spend lit­tle to retire as ear­ly as pos­si­ble” mind­set this year, and what a gift that was. Now, I’m not going crazy, but my dif­fer­ent spend­ing habits have been not­ed enough times by friends to give me the label of being a “spendy­pants” and I’m 100% A‑OK with that.

Ok, let’s go!

1. My new car!

I went into exhaus­tive detail about it in the post I wrote at the time. I have had Car­men for 3 months now and I love her dear­ly. She dri­ves like a dream, is fun to dri­ve, responds effort­less­ly, is very com­fort­able with my heat­ed seats, able to haul things around, and the music sounds great through the Blue­tooth con­nec­tion. I’m also no longer wor­ried about being strand­ed some­where around town like I was as part after part start­ed to fail on my old car. I ago­nized and delayed on buy­ing a new­er car for over 5 years, so to actu­al­ly have the new car now feels won­der­ful. Delayed grat­i­fi­ca­tion at it’s finest!

So far I have paid off over $3,000 on the loan and have got­ten the bal­ance below 5 fig­ures. My stim­u­lus check will go towards pay­ing down the loan. Yay for being a respon­si­ble adult.…

2. DeLonghi Magnifica Espresso Machine.

My fam­i­ly and clos­est friends were sur­prised to hear I bought a cof­fee machine. I have been very vocal about not lik­ing cof­fee in the past. It’s bit­ter bean water that lies to you. It smells sooooo good and tastes absolute­ly noth­ing like it smells. Gross.

How­ev­er.…. I dis­cov­ered that I did like lattes. Add enough milk and fla­vor­ing to cof­fee (to the point it bare­ly tastes like cof­fee) and I LOVE IT. So yum­my. As long as it’s decaf because caf­feine makes me hyper and jittery.

But with Covid hap­pen­ing, sud­den­ly I was­n’t at the office cof­fee bar every day get­ting a lat­te. Sud­den­ly I could­n’t sit in the local cof­fee shop and write a blog post while sip­ping on a tasty warm drink. Sud­den­ly the local shop closed down for a while as they tried to fig­ure out a new strat­e­gy while com­ply­ing with local regulations.

So I bought an espres­so machine from a guy on Craigslist for $300. This machine retails for $700 so I saved $400 right off the bat. I esti­mate with as many lattes and drinks made with this machine that I’ve already bro­ken even on all the mon­ey not spent on hav­ing some­one else make it for me. Plus, I don’t need to tip myself when I make myself a lat­te. I’ve been able to exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent fla­vor­ings, cream­ers, and milks. So far, I’m a big fan of caramel lattes made with Lac­taid milk. I think I’m becom­ing intol­er­ant to lac­tose so this helps my body with­out sac­ri­fic­ing any taste.

Hav­ing such a fan­cy machine does mean I need to do upkeep on it. While that’s a pain, I feel like it’s worth it to have as many lattes as I want. I have to descale the machine every so often, emp­ty out the puck col­lec­tor, and run steam through the froth­ing wand to make sure there’s no milk chill­ing in there try­ing to spoil. I am not the best at chores to begin with, but the incen­tive is strong to keep this machine run­ning in tip-top shape.

2B. A relat­ed best pur­chase would be those clear orga­niz­ers next to the machine. The top of the cart was a con­stant mess but now things are easy to find! And by things, I mean I have a place to store my tea col­lec­tion while also being able to access the cof­fee stuff eas­i­ly. Can you tell I watched The Home Edit on Net­flix like every­one else this sum­mer? The orga­niz­ers cost me $70 after I stacked a few 20% coupons on it and man, has that been valu­able. Coun­ter­top space in my kitchen is incred­i­bly lim­it­ed so the more use I can get out of each sq ft, the better.

3. My new road bike!

I had a 2012 Can­non­dale Quick that I bought new from a bike store. I had rid­den that bike a ton — com­mut­ing back and forth to work in 3 dif­fer­ent states, char­i­ty rides, and group rides in dif­fer­ent cities with friends. She served me well. But as I got more into doing longer bike rides and more into the cycling com­mu­ni­ty, I real­ized I was rid­ing the wrong sized bike frame. The geom­e­try on the bike was all wrong for me, even after grow­ing an inch in 2017. I was rid­ing a medi­um-sized frame and need­ed a small frame. So off I went to find a small bicy­cle on var­i­ous Face­book swap groups, Craigslist, and Offer­Up. The com­pe­ti­tion was fierce and I missed out on a few bikes by being sev­er­al min­utes too late to com­ment on a post.

How­ev­er, I did final­ly man­age to get a bike. I end­ed up with a Liv Avail 1, which is a bike spe­cial­ly built for wom­en’s bod­ies by Giant. The bike was sold to me as a Liv Avail 3. The dif­fer­ence between the 1 and 3 was about $600 worth of com­po­nents so I end­ed up with an $1100 bike for $400. The peo­ple I bought it from had used it a few times before she decid­ed she want­ed a hybrid and did­n’t like the drop han­dles on the road bike. So I got a near­ly new bicy­cle for a song! My new bike is so light and easy to move. I’ve prob­a­bly put between 50 and 75 miles on her since I’ve got­ten her and feel great. Or I did until it got crazy hot here in St Louis and I stopped rid­ing reg­u­lar­ly. I’m ready to get back on the bike and slim down again. Sit­ting all day every day has not been great for me.

Honorable Mentions

Since I did­n’t buy these but still got a ton of val­ue from them, I want­ed to include a few gifts my fam­i­ly gave me that have proved incred­i­bly clutch this year. My fam­i­ly got me a heat­ed mat­tress pad for Christ­mas last year and it has made a ton of dif­fer­ence. My back enjoys the extend­ed heat appli­ca­tion and I can keep the apart­ment a lit­tle cold­er at night with extra help from the bed. Get­ting into a pre-warmed bed is lit­er­al­ly heav­en. It’s like a hot water bot­tle, but EVERYWHERE. (The only prob­lem is my cat enjoys it as well and that means my side of the bed is his pre­ferred sleep spot. It’s a bat­tle every night for my foot space!)

My fam­i­ly also gift­ed me a new con­vec­tion toast­er oven. My old toast­er was $10 from a thrift store last year in DC. The catch to hold the lever down broke, so if I want­ed to toast some­thing I had to hold it down. Not the most effi­cient way of toast­ing any­thing on busy work­day morn­ings. It’s also prob­a­bly a fire haz­ard or some­thing. I’m excit­ed I can toast all the things and make easy things like tater tots, melts, and chick­en nuggets with­out hav­ing to wait for my ancient slow gas oven to kick in and heat up. I’m incred­i­bly grate­ful for my fam­i­ly and make sure to send them updates on how awe­some said thing is when I get par­tic­u­lar­ly tick­led with it.

It will be inter­est­ing to look back on this post 365 days from now. I have a strong feel­ing my best buys for next year will be things like a dish­wash­er, robot vac­u­um clean­er, and water sen­sors for pipes. Buy­ing a house changes your def­i­n­i­tion of best, for sure.

What was your best buy this year? Any­thing you want to espouse the virtues of? Sound off in the com­ments below!