Where are you getting your money's worth?

An obvious one, but Spotify. They've solved so many problems in the music-listening experience, it's amazing.

I remember having to manage so many folders of mp3s, manually syncing them to devices. And paying $.99 a song meant a very limited selection. I often relied on free iTunes playlists to find new music, because I couldn't afford to buy new music at the time.

They've eliminated all of these problems. Pay $10-15 a month, and you can listen to whatever you want, wherever and whenever.

I say this purely from the consumer's perspective, though - I'm not super familiar with what artists' experience is like. On one hand I'm sure Spotify broadens your audience quite a bit, but I wouldn't be surprised if artists run into issues similar to creators on other platforms (e.g. YouTube).

Enterprise-grade home wifi and networking paired with a generous (1gig) ISP connection we don't really need but is never slow.

High-end espresso machine that makes coffee in one button but with all the settings configurable (grind, volume, temperature, etc)

Canon M50 SLR camera permanently mounted for Zoom calls - got the Mk1 open box, looks amazing on calls, wasn't insanely expensive (~$500).

Tesla Model 3P. We just got a flat at home, they came out and swapped the tire for a temp one within 2hrs and then came to the home the next day to repair/replace the flat. Sadly needed replacing but all we paid for the whole experience in the end was the cost of the tire and that was cheaper than local SF places (which are $$). There's so many other great things about Tesla: it's practically maintenance free, the P edition is faster than a Lambo off the line, it's super safe in a crash, carbon neutral when paired with renewable power source, etc. Might be out of scope for this Ask HN but I just feel it's worth every $ I paid for it, and it's apparently only lost about 5% of it's value in 2.5 years which is unheard of in the car industry.

Games. Minecraft: 1 cent per hour, 10+ years of free content updates. Satisfactory: 1.4 cents per hour. Factorio: 1.8 cents per hour. Elder Scrolls Online: 10 cents per hour. Bannerlord: 8 cents per hour. Shenzhen IO: 15 cents per hour.

All of the major streaming services. I rotate amongst them depending on what I want to watch. Unbelievably cheap relative to the amount I binge.

Cheap newspaper subscriptions. WSJ, Washington Post both had very low cost introductory subscription plans for 6 or 12 months, and I have a couple of local papers too. Sure, there's workarounds via archive or incognito, but at these prices (WP is currently running a $10 / year deal), might as well just pay the small amount.

Digital services/products:

- Last.fm

- Spotify

- Cloud storage

- Figma for teams

- Managed hosting

- Fiber-optic broadband

Physical things:

- Audio gear

- A good bike

- Food and drink

- Anything for my dog

- Computer + phone

- Home gym, paid for itself after two years

- Experiences

- BIFL quality items, like clothing from brands that will happily repair stuff if it breaks or send you replacement items if you can fix it yourself.

- Skilled laborers/consultants of any kind. Plumbers, electricians, financial advisors, lawyers or specialized health personnel like manual therapists.

I will happily spend hours just to do that initial research, to find a brand that is less likely to disappoint or fall short of my expectations.

If I can maintain and service it myself I will gladly pay a premium price. Examples could be a leather belt or shoes, hardwood flooring or anything that can be repaired and serviced like tools and knives.

There are some things that has tremendous value to me but are offered for free.

A few months ago, I found out about https://endmyopia.org/ and have been following their principles to improve my eyes. I've since learned about how my eyes works and went from -2.75 to -2.25.

If I could have paid a service to heal my eyes naturally without lasik, I would have done it, but the site offered everything for free.

A good pair of wireless earbuds. I bought a pair of Galaxy Buds+ a few years back on Black Friday sale (think I paid 90 bucks or so), and I've enjoyed them so much, I didn't feel the need to upgrade them for the later models.

I bought my girlfriend a pair of Airpods to upgrade over her cheap Bluetooth earbuds, and it's a massive improvement as well. So I don't recommend any particular brand. Just get a good pair that works well with your phone, has decent battery life (at least eight hours between charges), and provides either ANC or good passive noise cancellation.

It's a real quality of life improvement for me to have these things that can be in my pocket all the time and can pull out any time I need a distraction for whatever I'm doing.

A good microphone on them is also a plus, as it allows people to hear me through my mask.

An "America the Beautiful" annual pass from the parks service. $80 for unlimited day-use to all national land, including National Parks, National Forest, and BLM land.

YouTube premium, to watch videos without ads. As a bonus you get Google's music streaming (YouTube Music) for free.

Hoppy.network, so I can give the Raspberry Pi running in my closet a real IPv4 address.

Monthly donations to Ardour.org, my favorite DAW.

Jetbrains IDEs (Rider for me) and the Xbox Game Pass have already been mentioned here, they are totally worth the money.

Hetzner is my favourite VPS provider. Performance and great quality of service for a little price, I've never looked back since I switched from OVH to them a few years ago.

I also use Hetzner for my NextCloud instance[0]. Price for storage is worth it, you own your own data, and it removes the hassle of maintaining your NextCloud yourself.

[0] https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share

Fishing & Hunting licenses and excise taxes. The US has 640 million acres of public land, most of which is available for anybody to enjoy.

Youtube premium. $12 CAD/month. No ads + videos can play in the background.

On the other hand it wasn't worth for us to spend time/money on Netflix/Amazon prime (streaming stuff) so we just killed the subscription and channeled it to Youtube.

JetBrains IDEs, Hetzner servers, mobifone (3GB LTE for $3 monthly), PCB prototypes, good food :) Samsung SSDs

Spotify. The ads haven't gotten jarring enough that it makes sense.

DigitalOcean. While I'm sure it's not the MOST affordable option, I think the value is pretty good. (If anyone has more affordable option please throw it out there!)

Minecraft. Bought the windows 10 version to play with some friends and check out the new world generation. Infinite creativity for ~20 bucks.

Seedbox. $15/mo for 2TB storage + 5TB/mo outgoing bandwidth. Super fast network connection. One click install for Jellyfin so I can share my library via streaming with all my friends. Plus it's a regular Linux box so I can ssh in and keep an IRC session up via tmux.

Really happy with recently moving from DigitalOcean (I had been using DO for eight years or so) to Hetzner's new US datacenter. DigitalOcean's value proposition was already fine by me, and what I'm getting with Hetzner is just that much better (my sense is that I'm getting around 2x the value with Hetzner, give or take). I last used Hetzner roughly a decade ago, and had been waiting for them to open up a location in the US. Their service interface has improved a lot (vs what I had used previously) and is quite smooth and easy to use.

Aldi has come to town. DigitalOcean has a serious challenge on their hands.

Rider IDE for C# development, my god is it a dream compared to using visual studio

YouTube Premium was already mentioned. Definitely that. The YouTube Music it comes with isn’t as good app-wise as the alternatives, but the recommendations are aight.

I’ll add: Mint Mobile in the US. $15/mo (paid in larger chunks, I pay annually) for 4GB data, unlimited voice/text. With working from home it’s really quite enough for me.

Factorio. Cost me $30, played around 1500 hours.

AWS EC2 Spot Instances at about 0.004 cents per hour. For personal use, I only need to use them for a day or two at a time. I have some Terraform code that can quickly spin one up and then destroy it when I am finished.

https://github.com/jftuga/terraform_ec2_spot_instance

As far as subscription go - nothing. Although I will say that Steam is my preferable place to shop for games because they spend actual effort fixing other people's shit. From joypads and AMD GPUs to wine/proton updates.

Yes, gog doesn't have DRM but also expect me to use windows.

I wasn't a huge fan of Valve until MS pushed them into this direction about a decade ago

A quality mountain bike and road bike. Quality hiking/backpacking gear. A stand up paddle board and camper van to lug it all in. Solid hiking shoes, a great foot insole and trekking poles.

Outside of that, over the ear wired headphones are used everyday. Mine are 10 years old and work and sound fantastic.

Jura espresso machine. Use it every day, one push button, easy to maintain. In 14 years have had two issues, once they did a complete refurbishment at no cost, the other they gave 30% off a new machine. With great beans, anything at coffee place tastes awful by comparison.

In no particular order. Spotify. Lululemon sportswear. Casual wear from Club Monaco. Uniqlo hoodies. Contact lenses. Good coffee. Netflix. Chocolate. Accountant. Gifts to people I love. Travel to see the people I love. Favourite restaurants and bakeries.

Xbox Game pass - Gives bang for the buck

Books - Teaches you variety of stuff that will save you money

Apart from some of the services already mentioned, I can definitely recommend Stratechery newsletter and Instapaper.

I generally try to live a decluttered life and minimize the number of "things" to deal with as I value my time above anything else.

That said, here are some things I value:

- Spotify. At ~$10/month, a great deal that makes listening and discovering music really easy. Have a shared account with my wife.

- Gaming. While gaming hardware isn't cheap these days (~$2k for a decent build) games have incredible value. Playing competitive online games once a week with friends kept me sane through the pandemic. Incredibly immersive experience.

- Guitar and Rocksmith. At ~$300, let's you hook up an electric guitar to your computer and learn how to play the guitar in a fun way. Really elevating experience.

- Electric Bike. These aren't cheap either ($2k+), but this purchase made commuting by bike exclusively (pre-pandemic) practical (cutting down my commute from ~55min by regular bike to about ~35min).

- Climbing gym membership. About $70/month. Such a fun way to stay in shape and socialize while doing so.

- Wired headphones that work well while biking. Let me keep in touch with aging parents on daily basis. Never need to worry about charging.

- Relatedly, Pixel 4a. Comparatively cheap ($400) phone with a headphone jack. Camera is great. It's very light which makes reading before sleep pleasant.

- Books. Unbelievable value. Authors' life's insights distilled into something you can buy for ~$10. The hard part is finding good ones, but lots of good recommendations on HN.

- Good food.

Other things that I don't have yet, but am considering:

- Mail forwarding service (~$30/month). We've been moving around a bit since the pandemic started. These services let you maintain a permanent address, scan or forward mail if needed. Still deciding which one to get since it's not an easily reversible decision.

- Fiber. Not offered yet where we live, but would get it in a heartbeat.

This may sound cliche, but luckily some of the greatest things in life are free (spending time with family and friends, playing volleyball on the beach, going for hikes in nature and all the great content online such as on HN).

1. pernos.co: Time travel debugging with a beautiful, online interface. Simply record a bug locally, then upload it to this website, and you can travel through the execution forwards and backwards (with source file labeling and other views at each step).

2. Wolfram One: Symbolic computation for everything. A high-level shell which can run almost any basic computation with great visuals and natural language input.

[1] Top quality laptops (high spec XPS13s running Linux) rather than cheap ones. [2] A good (non-electric) bike in my small flat town. [3] SailfishOS rather than a surveillance or walled garden phone. [4] Intel Synology NAS with maxxed out RAM and storage. [5] Brix laptop bag. [6] Standing desk and wobble board.

Fastmail. Excellent features, fast performance, and very reliable

Audible helps me go to bed on time and that is worth at least 10x what they charge.

Goodwill Industries - They have liberated me from all the crap I'd acquired.

* Pet insurance. Saved my ass several times. I would've found a way to pay for my cats' emergency treatment regardless, but it was nice not to get stuck with a sudden several-thousand-dollar bill after emergency surgery.

* AWS S3 - nice, cheap hosting for my personal site.

* HBO Max, especially after I took advantage of their new member deal after they phased our HBO Nordic recently.

* Polyver boots. So warm. So comfortable. So ugly, but so worth it.

* Patagonia Insulated Prairie Dawn parka. I've had this thing for years and it's held up really well and gotten me through several Nordic winters.

Last year I invested in upgrading my home office after working from home for several months messing with USB-C dongles without enough ports, don't always work and interfere with the WiFi signal.

I expected to go back to the office after getting vaccinated. But that much took longer than expected, and now again we're stuck in a lockdown waiting for booster vaccines to become available.

Keyboard: Keychron K1 mechanical keyboard. Slim enough so that no additional wrist support is needed but still feels great to type on.

Screen: Dell 27" U2720Q 4K screen. Good quality screen, charges the laptop with one cable and connects keyboard mouse etc. with built in USB hub. But the best feature is the optional soundbar with built in microphones and noise cancelling like a teleconference unit you find in a meeting room. It allows me to talk to people without having to plug things in my ears all the time which was a giant bother before.

Patagonia clothes, they last so long

1. Alfred Powerpack - clipboard manager, snippets, workflows

2. Chase Sapphire Preferred - rental car insurance, free memberships for Doordash (12 months), Instacart (6 months) etc

3. IWI multivitamins

Our nanny. Best money I’ve ever spent besides our EVs.

App subscriptions to worthwhile products made by individuals and small teams. Podcast Addict, Rain Alarm, Before Launcher, AllTrails.

Gasoline for my motorcycle.

Educational subscriptions.

I used to be a huge miser and resent the idea of paying for, well, anything digital or knowledge based.

Now I realise that, well, I'd spend £5 on a pint in a pub, what's £10 a month? Even if there's only a 1% chance I actually learn XYZ that's better than nothing.

Tower, Postico, Arq, 1Password, M1 MacBook Air, Hetzner servers, HHKB Hybrid Type-S, eero WiFi Systems

Netflix. When I first got it there wasn’t a lot of content and I’d spend an inordinate amount of time looking for something to watch, but nowadays it’s a lot better. I need to remind myself to not watch too much!

Well worth the $12/month or whatever I’m paying.

Not a service

My Fujifilm x100v (or most of the previous x100 models), it’s been a fantastic family camera. I try to just leave it around the house for moments with the kids.

The coloring is superb and makes it seem like I know what I’m doing when I certainly do not.

Backup using rsync.net special Borg pricing 100GB for <$20/year

https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html

https://www.lowendstock.com/ (I pay $10/year for my VPS') ... and I think I have better uptime then Amazon.

Spotify. Steam.

Dev tools:

GitKraken. Linqpad. Sublime Text.

An account at musicbrainz.org for easier tagging and organization for my music library - 4$ p. month.

I also value my Digital Ocean nodes, but they get torn up and down based on what I am doing.

I actually think HBO Now is a super great value for the price

Streaming tv.

We pay for a handful of inexpensive channels, get an incredible array of shows for a fraction of the price we used to pay for basic dish. It's awesome.

Good military grade clothing - someone designed them to be robust, well fitting and usable. It's like good software:

* HAIX P3 Shoes - best shoes I ever had.

* UFPro P40 Pants

* Eberlestock F3F FAC

GCP E2-micro compute instance- GCP gives it to you for free and is an excellent place to throw things up for which you don't expect much load.

Gigabit internet

The money I spent to upgrade home WIFI and have Ethernet for my desk

Lexus

The money I pay to book Tennis court every week

Donations

All my ergo equipments (chair, monitors, standing desk, lighting, keyboard, mouse ...)

Patagonia. Money-back guarantee, super high quality. Completely committed to the environment.

Certain publications (Economist) and Substacks.

Flighty - far and away the best app for flights, not even close. The plus subscription is worth every cent.

Bottomless - my internet connected coffee scale, I love this thing.

Stratechery - probably the best tech/software newsletter available.

Sam Harris, Persuasion, and Astral Codex Ten - writers and podcasts I like a lot.

YouTube Premium - I’ll pay for a no ads version of any service I use that allows me to.

Gigabit internet, ubiquiti networking hardware, T-Mobile cellular (actually super fast now compared to Verizon with 5Guc - I can get 600mbps and it doesn’t require being a foot from the access point).

YouTube Premium Google Fi Fairfax Connector bus service ($1 as a senior) WMATA (non-rush-hour service, or )

Hah, my example is exactly the example you listed. A single cpu, 2gb ram, fixed ip VPS for $30USD per year.

Hyatt loyalty program and credit card

VPN that lets me torrent anything I want without dealing with a million different platforms.

Anything that isn't a "subscription" for no good reason other than greed.

Software: Directory Opus, Connectify, PTFB Pro, DisplayFusion, ClipboardFusion

Happy I paid money to: Fastmail Backblaze Synology

Not happy I paid money to: Sonos Samsung tv

Setapp.com is awesome for Mac users Soyoustart for fair priced bare metal

Poweramp Equalizer app (much more bang per buck than any headphones)

SmoothScroll app on mac.

Donations to Signal.

Tinder Platinum.

Cheaper than bars and clubs, way better results.

Whatever is on sale this month at Costco.

Surfboards

AoPS and Beast Academy.

USB flash drives.

iCloud.

Deezer, concerts, Family pack of Office 365. Cheap home gym. Illegal techno parties in the forest. MDMA pills at 10 euros vs overpriced alchool in Paris. Traveling in central / south america for suoer cheap.

There are a lot of smart good plans in life if you care looking for it. Is there a subreddit ?