The Best $50 I’ve Ever Spent as a Genealogist — updated for 2023

Most genealogists, myself included, cannot afford to purchase every item on our genealogy wish list. If we could – wow – my mind can barely list the possibilities fast enough: DNA tests, including Y and mitochondrial DNA kits going out to cousins around the globe. . . subscriptions sites? Sign me up for ALL of them. . . . Record retrieval services in repositories around the world?. . . .maybe . . . or would I prefer to spend my time traveling the world, going from repository to repository, obtaining those records for myself? And then there’s books. So. many. books. . . . Continuing education, genealogy institutes and conferences, etc. etc. To quote the song by Queen, “I want it all!”
Ok, back to reality – because that’s never going to happen.
No, we all have to pick and choose how we spend our genealogy dollars with the hope that we receive the greatest return on our investment