1. Online coupon for Scrivener completely overhauls my novel editing process.
Cost: $32 (tax-deductible)
Benefit: New lease on creativity, productivity, and immortality. Joyful hours in which I imported 310 pages of fiction into hundreds of scenes and move them around the way I’ve wanted to since a brilliant friend recommended I buy a giant cork board to index card my scenes. Complete revolution to my writing and editing. Giddy eagerness to tackle an otherwise daunting project. Elated moments of productivity even in the wee hours when I’m usually at diminished capacity.
Thank you Literature and Latte for knowing what writers need and for coding it all into little computer goblins who move words around at my behest.

2. Local grocer has a bottle of organic lemonade on sale. I buy one, freeze into popsicles. My kids, who are used to homemade yogurt and orange juice pops go nuts, sit sweetly together in the shade and eat two popsicles each.
Cost: $0.16 per child (calculated just the juice by the ounce and figured freezer costs negligible since the freezer would be running, anyway.)
Benefit: 30 minutes in which I stripped and washed the car seat covers, vacuumed the car seats (ew), vacuumed the living room, and ripped four CDs.
Thank you Santa Cruz Organic for the $0.64/hour babysitting. I plan to recreate with our overburdened lemon tree and newly minted, knife-accomplished sous-chef six-year-old for improved cost effectiveness.

3. NPR interviews Daniel Pink, and a year later I finally remember to buy his book Drive at a local bookstore.
Cost: $8 something.
Benefit: Interesting research, good writing, and highly useful appendices get me on track for several professional goals.

Go buy his book. Read it. Work through the appendices. Change your work, your life, your family, your employees, your children, your world.

That’s money well spent.