Bought a titanium compass to attach to the wristband of my everyday tool/diving watch. I don’t need it but couldn’t resist the tacticool look. $80 or so.
Sold an older chair on Ricardo which was in perfectly good condition because I wanted to trade up to a Cassina Le Corbusier LC3 chair (which I’ve wanted since… university time). Spent too much money on it but the dopamine from looking at it / sitting in it in my ‘home office’ is nice.
I have a chair that costs like 3000 CHF new and bought it from a rich dude for 300 CHF in Zug (chair was less than 2y old and still looks like new). The chair is like 35kg (BIOSWING 670 iQ) full real leather. I think this is my best “stock trade” ever 10x lol.
Nice
Just so you know, your purchase was not from me
With AI you can make ricardo adverts so quick and compelling. It’s nice to convert unnecessary possessions into cash but main motivation for me is decluttering and not having the hassle of organizing disposal - people pay me AND they pick it up!
Thats a CHF 5k chair?! 
Depends a bit on the configuration.
It’s a classic though, very comfortable, and I like having a chair designed by Swiss Le Corbusier (I’ve always been interested in his architecture as well).
Furniture can be expensive, but that’s true for so many areas and sometimes you want to give yourself a treat.
To put things in perspective, like 90% of the world, we also have IKEA stuff at home 
Yeah:
That said, none of these were bullshit purchases, we have gotten real value out of them, but still the total is not small… Edit, I now recall some of them,
That’s ~CHF2600 for non-bullshit purchases, not bad!
But then…my own bill is quite a bit higher for unnecessary expenses: 10,000 for a motorcycle+all the gear+lessons+exam, plus 400/year in insurance not factored in, but then it opened a whole new universe of experiences and has given, and continues to give, immense pleasure!
cool thread.
Unfortunatelly i can contribute as well
Have around 50+ pairs of running shoes (yes, you guessed it, my wife does make fun of me, justifiably though:) ) and 10+ pairs of headphones.
I’ve categorised all these as ‘illness related expenses’, fortunately I don’t have an exact number of how much I paid for them, living in blissful ignorance.
I’m not sure if I’m making any unnecessary expenses at all. Everything I buy has its purpose.
Imho most spending of most people is “unnecesarry”. It of course depends a bit on how much you value certain characteristics of a service or a product, but in general, most spending of most people I see is in the category “Wohlstandsverwahrlosung”. I’ll give a few examples (obvious or not so obvious):
There probably are a few more and I am sure I triggered some people here with that, enjoy 
Most unnecessary but very fun: wheels upgrade for the gravel bike
720 CHF for bare wheels (Chinese OEM full custom) + shipping
40 CHF for import duties & fees
100 CHF for tires
130 CHF for brake disks
Didn’t realize that all of this adds up to barely under 1k until just now
As a foreigner living here 5+ years I have to say that yes, it was quickly obvious that the Swiss do like their gear
Even if you don’t buy, but inherit one…personal experience: huge liability and pain the ass. Repairs and maintenance, maintaining a garden, property taxes…
And then the fine print nobody tells you upfront: when you have a vacation home you feel that you have to go there, because why pay for hotel and travel elsewhere, right? Then when you do go, you need to spend half a day cleaning because nature (if it’s in a rural place, mine’s in a field) tends to invade in as little as a week so that’s a good part of the weekend already gone, then need to tidy when leaving not to come back to a schweinerei the following weekend. Of course you need to shop, cook, take out the trash…Wife was telling me it feels like our…everyday life?
There’s a substantial difference in quality between Migros and the rest, though…
Good reason to live where you enjoy living (not necessarily close to work) so you can have a vacation feeling at home.
I’ve been living in our newly built house for almost 3 years now and every morning I still stare in awe through the floor to ceiling windows which gives a view over Vierwaldstattersee plus surrounding mountains while I’m taking a shower!
Also, some purchases are a trade off. For example, we have installed a home gym in one of our rooms:
If life is only utilitarian, it would become f’in boring.
I don’t agree with this for most products. We exclusively shop at Aldi and Kaufland (Germany) and imho there is no real difference between supermarkets in quality. You’re just paying a premium based on a brand - what’s even crazier is the fact that Aldi is a privately held company, while Migros and Coop are cooperatives (Genossenschaften) - make it make sense.
Proportional smaller overhead since mass is simply higher, being more often in B-zones (out of city-centers ) so lower rents.
Crazier is actually that employment conditions for the lowest tier worker is apparently better than in coop/migros (I have no sources at hand though).
Would need to bother to test it, try to repeat what Tim Harford of the Undercover Economist did with Whole Foods (“premium”) vs Safeway (“budget”) in the US. He found that a basket of the same products cost about the same, and the real difference was the targeting and clientele.
(For flying)
(trains don’t make as much difference unless 2nd is fully booked and you might have to stand instead)
Food I don’t care (actually would try to get food at airport so can sleep earlier), but at least for me it’s basically how much you value an almost sleepless night vs getting some rest. (For overnight flights)
(And for long non overnight flight as a person with longer legs, premium eco is usually sufficient, eco can be fairly uncomfortable tho)
Aldi and Lidl pays more, that’s true.
I think (as with most swiss companies) they live off of old people having nostalgia or people with too much money. I doubt that if you truly listed the expenses on a yearly basis many people would say “sure I’ll easily pay 5000 CHF a year more in grocery costs, because the shelves look a bit better and I see less foreigners”
FIFTY?!
5 would already be stretching it, if they are all new-ish and not worn down.
How does that happen? Do you run two time and then think „hm maybe this other 99% similar shoes makes me run jsut 0.1% smoother?"
Sorry to be mocking this, but I just can’t fathom the mindset that gets to this
I also have long legs (not a 2m+ guy, but 185cm) and while of course everyone has their own definition of what something is “worth” - for private travel the cheapest option that gets me to my goal in my desired time frame is always the best for me.
I wouldn’t spend +50% just to have more leg room and I doubt it’s worth the 50% (as in flying 3x premium eco = flying 4 or even 5 times exo).
