My best purchases of 2022

As 2022 comes to an end, I was revisiting how I spent my money this year. Here are my top purchases of the last 12 months.

I'm normally very frugal so aside from guitar stuff, which is a guilty pleasure, I normally don't buy a lot of stuff. However, my life changed quite a bit in the last couple of years in many aspects so I had to do some changes and some of them involved getting some stuff. I decided to share the ones that impacted my life the most in a positive way.

Before I get started, just a little disclaimer:

This article is not about crypto or any other kind of financial investment. It's about stuff I bought this year that made my life easier and/or more comfortable.

Also, it has nothing to do with affiliate marketing, so you will not find any links to buy the things I will talk about here. Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course. I'm just setting expectations.

Prices are converted from Brazilian Reais to USD and represent what I paid here in my country so you may find different prices depending on where you search.

And, finally, the order in which the things appear has no particular meaning. I didn't bother to rank them because the items are very different from each other, so it didn't feel like it made much sense.

Without further ado, let's get to it.

JBL Tune 750BTNC headset ($90)

I live near an airport, and even though I'm getting used to the noise, it still can sometimes be distracting, making it hard for me to do activities that require concentration, like working, for example. This headset really helped with that.

The active noise-cancelling is not 100% effective, so loud noises will still get through, but it works well enough for my purposes. It is also very comfortable, and wireless and the battery life is very good, so I can go a long time without having to charge it.

It has many other features, such as multi-point connection, hands-free calls and voice control, but I don't really use any of that. I bought it mainly for work, and it gets the job done, no pun intended.

Acer CB311 Chromebook ($230)

My life has become very busy lately and I'm on the move a lot these days. I don't like using mobile devices to write long-form content mainly because I prefer to do that on a physical keyboard. Because of that, my activity on Hive dropped significantly.

To try and remediate that I started looking for a device that was compact enough but still had a physical keyboard and that was when I found the Acer CB311 Chromebook.

The CB311 is perfect for what I needed. It's light and compact so I can just put it in a backpack and carry it around without any discomfort. It has great battery life so I can go a long time before needing to plug it in and it's relatively cheap so, in case something happens to it, it will not be a huge financial setback.

System-wise, it's not very impressive and can't handle much, but, as I said, I got it mainly for content writing and browsing on Hive and it's good enough for that so I'm very satisfied with it.

Ledger Nano X ($230)

It took me longer than it should have to pull the trigger on this one but better late than never, I guess. I've been looking into getting a hardware wallet so I could finally move my assets out of Binance for a while now but for some reason, I kept pushing it back.

I would have done it sooner or later anyway but the whole FTX drama was a bit of an eye-opener so I finally got myself a Ledger Nano X.

Since it was my first experience with a hardware wallet I didn't know what to expect and when it arrived, I was preparing myself to spend many hours watching YouTube videos on how to set it up properly but, to my surprise, that was very easy to do. All I needed was to follow the instructions that the Ledger itself displays on its screen.

Before I knew it, I had my wallet set up and my assets out of Binance for good! Not your keys, not your crypto.

Bonus: My worst purchase of 2022 - Pelegrin PEL-4209 office chair ($250)

I have been working mostly from home since the pandemic hit and if everything goes well, I'm not going back to an office any time soon. That is great for sure but I had never had a home office before which wasn't an issue at first because my employer at the time let all employees borrow chairs and other stuff from their headquarters.

However, earlier this year I got another job at a global company and they only gave me a company computer so I needed to do some upgrades to my working place. I decided to start with a chair because I spend a good part of my day sitting down and I'm not in my 20's anymore so I needed some comfort. That's when I found the PEL-4209. Big mistake.

For what is worth, the chair is indeed very comfortable and it looks good as well, which, even though is less important, is a nice plus.

The problem, and it's a big one, is that the quality of the chair's components is not in the slightest compatible with the price they charge for it.

After a few months of use, the gas cylinder stopped working properly and meaning I could no longer keep the height of the seat on a comfortable position.

That is a deal breaker for me so I called the people who sold me the chair, but they told me my warranty was expired and the best they could do was sell me a replacement for the cylinder. Since it was a fraction of the price of a new chair, I took that offer.

To my utter disappointment, however, the new cylinder not only was "shorter" than the original one, but it lasted even less than the other one. I was tired of dealing with the manufacturer so I said "screw it" and now I'm on the market for a new, decent chair.

Final thoughts

Looking back, I believe I spent my money wisely this year, with few exceptions. None of the items on this list are actual investments in the financial aspect of the word but they do make my life easier, safer and more efficient and that reflects directly on my capacity to generate wealth and overall productivity so, in a sense, these purchases ended up being solid investment choices.

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