This week’s question is unrelated to trading but of course you can always give a trading-related answer.
What’s one thing you bought this past year that has been extremely useful to you?
If not life-changing, maybe it’s something that has saved you so much time or maybe even a significant amout of money. Could be a course, a gadget, or an investment.
Personally, mine would be an air fryer. Ha. It’s been such a game-changer for me to just throw anything and everything in the air fryer. It’s a huge time saver and allows me to eat a bit healthier. No preheating needed, no messy pans to clean, and no oil used!
What’s yours?
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Hmm - SWMBO has been talking about one of those - They stay pretty clean do they ?
I’ve treated myself to some cheap and Chinese toys to improve my “Repair, adapt and mend” abilities - Here is a pic of three I couldn’t decide between for this question - but since they only cost me about £70 in total - I’ll group them all as one item
Top left is a USB microscope (c£15) which allows me to see circuit boards components enlarged on a computer screen and to work on them using the Hot air station (Bottom right) The microscope claims mabgnification to 5000 or something which is totally fallacious - but it will do around 20x which is enough for my needs - it is barely adequate - but I do use it until I get something better.
The Hot air station (c£26) is ok and here is a pic of a BIOS chip (The 8 legger) I replaced using the microscope and the hot air station.- Note the clothes peg - used for scale - so this repair got the laptop up and running again and removed the simple issue of a BIOS PAssword 
The item I use most is the Power supply (Bottom left) (again around £26) - but I am very pleased with this - it does a maximum 30 volts and can be used to input a constant current (up to 10 Ams) using your chosen voltage as a limit so I can charge any battery up to a Lorry battery and to test and use any equipment which does not have a charger !
Yesterday I recovered this DEAD laptop battery - Green on 1st photo - which the computer refused to charge although I left it on charge for 6 hours. - The battery Li-ion had gone below the voltage the computer was expecting due to an issue with Dell’s lack of support for windows 10. And after I cut the casing back off teh battery (2nd photo) - I coud measure the actual voltage at around 6 volts. so I set the power supply to 14 volts and 1.5 Amps and banged the voltage up to around 10 volts using teh 1.5 Amp current (About 15 minutes) - Then I replaced the battery in the computer and the computer was happy thet the battery was sound because it has miore than the 9 volts or so it a=was expecting and continued to load teh battery with charge so it now reads “Fully charged” - 2hrs 10 minutes remaining (This is a good battery - but these Laptops use a pretty huge current because they were an Industrial (CAD design) Instrument costing over £2000 new !
So that saved me about £30 for a new battery and therefore paid in full for the entire power supplY 
The power supply can also be used to inect voltage into a circuit board and test fro short circuits allowing you to establlish which component s at fault because it is likely to be the one which gets hot ! - I love it !
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An Audible sub. Able to get through many more books now than before and helped to change my views on a number of things and motivate me.
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Mine has to be the Hair trimming machine I got. Not only this saves a lot of time and money but I am developing a new skill for myself. Throughout the last year I’ve been self grooming using it,
Granted first few times hair cuts were bit wonky and unfinished, but I am getting good at it. 
, I haven’t set foot to a saloon in 13 months thanks to that. And that is considerable time and money saving and worth everything.
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Is this a Clipper set ? or something else ? - can you use it for medium length hair - or just short hair ?
Not sue I fancy 13 months without any booze !
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It can be used for cutting and trimming. It got 4 different size clippers.
Oops, I just realized my mistake, Sorry I meant “Salon”
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This isn’t a life changer, but it’s a game changer for me, for sure.
An ergonomic mouse. The conventional mouse I had was starting to really hurt my wrist. And of course, what can follow is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Why not try to avoid it?
I was worried because I was really trying to take trading seriously, and then my hand started hurting. Fortunately, I found this vertical mouse, and it really changed my trading. It would be a quite unpleasant choice to choose between a trading career or a pain-free hand.
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Anything in particular? Was there any book/books that stood out?
I second the air fryer! I’m about to cook a whole chicken in mine for dinner tonight. It’s been a game changer in our house.
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The Mental Game of Trading by Jared Tender, The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters, Atomic Habits by James Clear to name a few.
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They do, yes! And if you do have to clean it, it’s a breeze to do.
We definitely nee more of this versus the throw away and replace mindset!
Where do you buy them from if I may ask?
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A trick I do is wait for their membership promo (they’ve been doing one every year since 2020 I think) and the download all the books I want. When the promo is over, I pause my membership and then restart once there’s another one! Sometimes it takes a while for me to finish an audiobook so it works out perfectly!
That’s a lot of money saved! Re: time, isn’t it more time-consuming doing it yourself?
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As someone who is constantly in front of the computer holding a mouse, I definitely agree with this. May I also add a wrist pad? That one has been a life-changer for me as well!
Wow! You must have a giant one!
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Treadmill. I hate running. Never thought I would own one, since, you know, nature and outdoors which I love.
But recently I decided to try to run at least 1 mile every single day. The treadmill gets me there some days, where I just don’t want to be outside. And even in the evenings, or really late at night, I can still get my run in.
It’s getting me off my behind! That’s progress!
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At first it is, but when doing it for few times it consumes less and less time, Plus considering time it takes to travel and wait time it’s really time saving actually, and most importantly I can do it at my convenience a time of my choosing, for me that’s a lot of time saved.
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Are you paying for the books as I thought you normally only get 1-2 tokens when I’ve seen free trials.
