Best And Worst Purchase of 2013
I ran across an awesome post over at KNS Financial about their best and worst purchase of 2013. I thought it would be a great idea to mirror that post and give my own thoughts on the best and worst purchase we made of 2013.
Best And Worst Purchase of 2013 – Boiling it Down
Well, I had a pretty good idea of what our best purchase of 2013 was (we use it practically every day). But, it was a little bit of a struggle to identify exactly what we our worst purchase of 2013 was. We don’t buy a lot of stuff, so we had to dig a little deep here.
Best And Worst Purchase of 2013 – Best Purchase
I’ll start with the best purchase of 2013 first since I’m in a good mood today 🙂 Drum roll please…..
Best Purchase of 2013 is: the Sonos – Play:5
A little before Christmas, I spent a little bit of time searching for a wireless speaker system to pair up with Spotify. I had narrowed this list down to the Sonos – Play:5 and some Bose Bluetooth speaker system. At the end of the day, I decided to ask for the Sonos because it used its own wireless transmitter; therefore, it wouldn’t drain the battery of a cell phone or ipad while running like the Bose speaker system would.
Fast forward to Christmas day, and I was pleased to find that “Santa” had brought me the Sonos – Play:5. Now, I guess I had done a pretty crappy job researching this thing all together, because I thought it was going to be five SEPARATE speakers that you could locate around the house. It turns out that it is just ONE wireless speaker unit with five tiny speakers housed in the unit…. 🙁 I felt like a real dumb-ass for making this mistake. So there I was, $400 for one wireless speaker. How’s that for saving money?
Well, the Sonos – Play:5 was so cool that I asked for the Sonos – Connect for my birthday. We use both of these together almost every day to listen to music and have “dance parties” with the kids. The Sonos systems really shine when you combine multiple of them together to envelope yourself in sound. We really love it, and we’ve enjoyed hundreds of hours of music together as a family. Yes, it’s ridiculously expensive! But, the mistake of thinking I’d get five speakers turned out OK in the end 🙂
Best And Worst Purchase of 2013 – Worst Purchase
Now, this one was a small amount of money (less than $20), but I felt completely and utterly ripped off.
We recently added on a couple days to a trip so that we could see New York City for the first time. One of the things we wanted to check out was Times Square. The only real fly in the ointment was our timing – it snowed eight inches and felt like ~5F outside when we were walking around.
One day after we had lunch, we planned to walk about around Times Square with our two kids. It was so cold, it made it a little hard for the kids and us to really enjoy the sights. My wife made the suggestion that we head over to the Cake Boss cafe to have a little dessert. Apparently, this is some sort of hit TLC TV show. We don’t have cable, so I didn’t know anything about it. “That sounds good,” I said(anything to get out of the cold), but I had a little voice in my head telling me it would be tourist trap crap.
We finally made it over to the Cake Boss cafe, and got inside the semi-warmth. It was packed! My wife took a number and proceeded to wait about 20 minutes before her number was called. The kids and I were able to find a seat at a table after waiting about 5 minutes (apparently we got pretty lucky here).
Eventually, my wife ventured to our table with the reward. Two nice looking cupcakes. There weren’t enough seats for everyone, so I stood up. Everything was fine with me until I made the mistake of asking how much the cupcakes cost.
Cake Boss – New York
Now, as you can imagine, just about everything in New York is expensive. That’s just how things are, and I’m OK with that. But, guess how much two normal sized cupcakes from Cake Boss cost us? FOURTEEN FRICKEN DOLLARS!!! FOR TWO CUPCAKES!!!
They weren’t bad, but needless to say, this was easily the worst purchase of 2013 for me!
Best And Worst Purchase of 2013 – Final Thoughts
After writing this post, I think it’s kinda funny that the best purchase ended up being extremely expensive and the worse purchase (in the grand scheme of things) was pretty small. So, what was your best and worst purchase of 2013?
I had a bad purchase just over the weekend as my family and I were on a mid-winter vacation to a place that has huge indoor water parks. We went on vacation with a couple other families, and we stayed in a condo where we had a full kitchen. Each family made a meal or two so we saved a ton in food cost. One day for lunch we decided to eat lunch at the water park. It cost us close to $50 for 4 people (me, my wife, my son and his friend that we brought along) and the food was TERRIBLE. won’t make that mistake again!
Brock @cleverdude recently posted…Stuck In a Snow Storm – What Would You Do?
Ah, the infamous indoor waterpark 🙂 I remember we went to a Great Wolf Lodge a couple years back. There all-you-can-eat bar was like $27 a person or something insane like that. They really have you cornered as the hotel is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, so you’re forced to take the abuse. I feel your pain 🙂
It is a good blog to share you good and worst experiences … So i am now here and i done a good purchase the last year . I bought a blue tooth speaker and it is really nice . I always enjoy it to play on bike , yard , pool , beach anywhere .. Love to own it.