08 Jan 2026 The Best Thing I Bought In 2025
Here’s a simple exercise for you to try annually: Look back at the prior year and do an honest inventory of what you purchased, asking one simple question: Of all the things I spent my money on, what ended up being the thing or experience that made me happiest?
In the process of answering that question honestly, you will probably call to mind the Darko Miličić of your year—that is, the biggest letdown of your spending, the thing which had the largest gap from pre-purchase expectations to post-purchase emotions. Make a mental note of that disappointment, resolve to learn from it, and then move on. We will only dwell on those things to the extent they can serve as a learning opportunity for 2026.
For me, both questions this year ended up being pretty easy. The dismal letdown was an anniversary dinner that we expected to be at our favorite restaurant (Stanbury), but which, due to a comedy of errors I won’t delve into here, ended up being an extremely disappointing meal at what used to be a good downtown spot (redacted). Also a pair of shoes I regret purchasing.
The purchase that made me happiest was a guitar pedal from what is probably my favorite company: JHS Pedals. JHS builds amazing products in Kansas City, MO and operates my favorite YouTube channel, and actually this particular purchase was not a pedal per se, but a bunch of parts that I needed to put together in order to build a pedal. This turned into a whole family project that involved painting the pedal housing, clear-coating it, and then putting it together with the circuitry inside. Here is a picture of us and the pedal (sans Amy, who contributed an amazing painted quilt on the side of the pedal that I failed to capture).
What made this purchase great was the experience of a DIY build that we all got hours of somewhat unexpected joy from, and also the fact that the pedal is a genuinely delightful-sounding overdrive. It cost me $90. (By the way, the only thing that could have rivaled this purchase was the money we spent on a rental car to get us from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon and back. The Grand Canyon itself was free, which is another post for another day…)
Here’s something to keep in mind for this year, so that you will have more fun when you do this exercise next year: What you want and what will make you happy can be two very, very different things. Not mutually exclusive of course, but there is enough dissonance between those two ideas that it’s worth giving some serious thought to as you go about your business. The car probably won’t make you measurably happier, and it’s possible the house won’t either. The vacation might, but it might not. Be open to simple surprises: A chicken salad sandwich from Snoopy’s could very well bring more happiness than the Tecovas, and getting the kids out from school early one day might be more memorable than the trip to Mexico. The art of spending money well can be described in many ways, but obvious is not one of them.
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