Spending to make life better

[u/daughterofabiscuit]

What do you guys spend money on to make your life easier/better? Working is part of my identity and I love my job. My husband and I are also in the very fortunate position to be saving a ton already for retirement and 529 accounts for our 2 kids (3.5F and 2 months M). What are some ways to spend extra cash to make life easier/more enjoyable?

Things we already do:

Cleaner every other week

Paid someone to do mulch delivery/spreading

Paid for our pool opening/closing

Planning to take 2 nice vacations this year

I don't really have a set budget but maybe something in the range of $500-$1000/month? Or once time purchases ~$5000?

What can we afford to let our lifestyle inflate that has been "worth it" for you?

[u/frugaletta]

Currently we pay for wash & fold for my and my husband’s laundry every other week. I still wash our linens and the baby’s laundry myself, as well as our delicates, but this has made a huge difference in managing the laundry mountain.

We do grocery delivery 9/10 times and HelloFresh. Robot vacuum. Takeout.

We want to hire a cleaner but I have so much clutter I need to deal with since having our baby last year plus two scaredy cats, any advice from other moms here? Small apartment in NYC.

[u/plantainbakery → u/frugaletta]

I was nervous about my clutter when we first hired our cleaner, but she would put things away and organize things in a way that really minimized the clutter - like she lightly re-arranged a few things on our countertops and even though it’s the same amount of stuff, it looks like there’s less, it’s more streamlined in a way that I didn’t think of when I set it up. I still sometimes get stressed the night before she comes by, because I feel like I need to put absolutely everything away (how is she supposed to know where it’s supposed to go?) but somehow she does, and it looks a hundred times better after she leaves.