The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Notes -
Not so much wellness but advice seeking:
I received a small sum from my grandmother at her death. Approximately $5,000 in an IRA account. Obviously for tax reasons I'll be completing the paperwork to transfer it into my own IRA. But to just put it in the market until I'm retired feels somehow small and niggardly, it feels spiritually wrong to take money my grandparents saved up over the years and left to me, and all it will amount to is a 1% increase in the value of my brokerage account when I open the app. So, talking to my wife, I want to make some kind of purchase that will act as a keepsake of my grandmother, despite the fact that she obviously has already passed.
Basic parameters:
-- I'm looking for something more or less permanent. Heirloom quality. So for example, a new computer would not be a good choice, as even though it might be a very high quality computer and I would enjoy using it daily for the time I had it, at some point I would throw it away. Obviously anything could be lost, stolen, destroyed in a fire, etc. But I want something I'm likely to have for decades with care and luck.
-- I'd like to spend a substantial amount of the $5,000. Obviously it will spiritually, though not directly, be the $5,000 my grandmother gave me, as that will be in my IRA. I'm comfortable with one degree of remove, though I found that my dad's suggestion to put it in a dividend account or CD and spend the proceeds each year on going out "on her" to be clever, but ultimately too far removed for my taste. I don't need to spend all of it, but I think anything under $500 is too miserly to notice properly as having inherited it. So for example a really good chef's knife would probably be too small to qualify. At the same time, nothing much over $5,000 qualifies even though I could afford it, as that seems to violate the concept of inheriting it, so not a used Jeep Wrangler unless it's a real heap of a jeep.
-- I'd like it to be something my grandmother would, if not like, at least not dislike or find strange. She was a pretty average Catholic grandmother, loved polka music and murder mystery novels and still had a picture of JFK and Jackie on the wall. I'm not necessarily looking to buy something that would be to her exact taste, but I would like to buy something that she wouldn't be weirded out that I bought if she knew. So, for example, I wouldn't buy a new Springfield Garrison 1911, even though it meets all the above criteria, as my grandmother would find that distasteful.
So far, the frontrunner is replacing my vintage knockoff (which I love) with an authentic Eames Lounge Chair. It's special, expensive to the point I'd never buy it myself, permanent, and very useful and comfortable. I read in the one I got off craigslist every day, it's really just a top of the line product, and I'd love to have a real one.
My wife suggested a watch like a newer Omega Seamaster, but that feels a little odd, and anyway she still owes me a new Armida from the bet we made on Joe Biden dropping out, and even though that's more like $400 it's too close to get two in the same space of time. I'd consider jewelry for her, I rarely wear any beyond a watch, but she has good stuff, I need to preserve the remaining roster spots for future holiday gifts, and honestly when it comes to inheriting jewelry my mother isn't far from leaving her an ABSURD amount.
Beyond that, idk, some original art maybe? I don't have too many good ideas, and I hate to make a big purchase like that without exploring additional options. So I'm turning to the crowd for suggestions.
TLDR: I'm seeking suggestions for an heirloom quality item between $500 and $5,000 that my grandmother would have approved of.
I gain a perverse pleasure from inputting the queries of random people online into ChatGPT.
I happened to throw in everything you said up till the specific criteria you envisoned, and to my surprise, it specifically recommended watches and furniture. To be clear, that's before you suggested them as options from yourself and your wife. Next token prediction is powerful. We're more transparent than we presume.
Then I read the rest of your comment, and ChatGPT suggested fine art as option 4, though that's the third and last thing you suggested. Huh.
Claude also suggests furniture and art, but also a nice piano or a grandfather clock.
If I ask it to be more creative, it suggests a custom stained glass window, a commissioned illuminated family history manuscript, a heritage garden installation, a commissioned tapestry or quilt.
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