Be Excellent To Each Other

What's the "biggest" thing you've ever bought when you just happened to spot it in a shop or whatever, when you were out looking for something else?

I bought a car that was on sale at the side of the road for £500. It was a V6 Rover 620 Vitesse Fastback. It was ace.

I bought a 17 inch LCD monitor in 2001 for £450 on the spur of the moment. Maxed my credit card Still got the monitor, too.

Probably my recent aquisition of a Novation Drum Station, Yamaha CS-10 and Akai DD1000 which came to about £300 I think. Someone sent me a message on a forum and asked me if I wanted them. I couldn't help but say yes.

Unless you count the stock I'm buying in to the business tomorrow for £2700...

Hmm.. I can't actually think of anything expensive I've splashed out on while I've been out around town. All my impulse stuff tends to be on Ebay, but even then I don't spend an awful lot. Even completely unnecessary stuff like a third PS2, which I think I've used once, didn't end up being that expensive (about £90 a few years ago).

Odd that I agonise over purchases of stuff that's even £50-£100 considering the amount I've thrown away gambling over the years.

Hmm my current car kinda, wasn't really what I was looking for but it fitted my needs and I was sick of looking - £3,500

Other than that my PS1 - £250

Thinking about it, my first packet of fags. Cost me a lot over the years.

At about 8am, as I struggled home having foolishly stayed out all night, I purchased a Dyson vacuum cleaner for about £300. Felt I needed to apologise to my girlfriend/quench her fury.

Think she'd have preferred flowers.

About an hour after my ex finally left the house for good, I bought a £650 telly. I even drove to John Lewis's warehouse in Bristol so I could have it that day.

Is that what you did on the way back?


This is brilliant!

Awesome. Say it with domestic appliances.

How impulse is impulse? Pretty much all my internet purchases could count as impulse, as when I decide I want something, I just go click the button. The whole "should I buy this" internal dialogue doesn't really exist for me

Bought Mrs T a £350 micro-laptop/netbook yesterday, as her current laptop pissed me off one time too many. (A Lenovo Ideapad, looks pretty snazzy, should arrive this week I hope)
I didn't really want an iPad after the announcement and the presentation, yet clicked the buy button at 9am on pre-order day, just because I was in work at the time and my mate across on the next desk was ordering one.
A mini-moto off ebay - £200

I did go from deciding I wanted a Honda NSX, to having one on my drive in under 24 hours though, most of that time was waiting for the loan money to arrive, and driving to pick it up... £21k!

Secondary punchline: she'd forgotten something, so she came back as I was grappling the 40" screen out of the packaging, only a few hours after she'd left. I had a brand-new still-in-the-packaging Dyson DC14 too, and a few other high-end replacements for the hand-me-down crap she'd insisted on taking when she left. This was the exact moment she realised that I was earning a metric shitload as a contractor. The look on her face was priceless.

That's fantastic Rich!

I got drunk and bought a Macbook Air for £800 off eBay. Not sure that classes as an impulse purchase though.

Maybe impulse is the wrong word. The sort of thing where you're in B&Q to buy a ladder and you leave with an Aga.

In that case, then not much really. All my "impulse" shopping is pretty much done on the internet.
I did buy the full guitar hero instrument box when wandering around PC World, which was about £150 I think?

Every time I go within miles of an Ikea, I leave with armfuls of tat I didn't know I needed.

Once bought £40 of Turkish Delight at Borough market. Crazy crazy days

I used to regularly spend north of £6 on a burger in Borough Market. because the smells told me to. I hated working next to that place.

Neal's Yard is the most dangerous place in Borough Market. I spent £60 on cheese last time I was there.

Not really an impulse purchase though - at no point was I not going to buy cheese.

£60 on cheese is the norm isn't it? *worries he has a cheese addiction*

Does going in to a tat selling shop and buying tat count as impulse though? You're going to Ikea to buy home stuff, and end up buying a bit more home stuff...

FeeX.

You'll all be relieved to hear that, having visited Ikea upwards of 50 times in the last three years, most of those visits in a 12 month period, you do become amazingly immune to it's "ooh, that's cheap, I'll just pop that in my trolley" brainwashing the confusing store layout is deliberately designed to encourage. Now, even if I'm spending other people's money I can escape having simply bought what I wanted.

Stationery and art shops are a different matter, though. I have 8 unopened Moleskine sketchbooks. Which I don't use as the paper's too nice

Most expensive impulse purchase was my old Mondeo ST24. Granted, it was on HP, but it was 13k or thereabouts.

I've done plenty of silly ones for >£100 over the years. I once bought another DS with DoccyG just so we could play multiplayer mario kart. I've dropped £300 on a pair of sunglasses, I once spent £400 in Hugo Boss on 7 shirts FFS.

I understand this mentality totally. I have jars of random chutneys and sauces I've bought at a food festival that sit in my cupboard for years because the time never feels right to use them.

'Twas a great car, though!

HAH! I forgot about that. Yeah, that was awesome