My family seriously struggled with cash when I was younger. Naturally, I never had any of the expensive toys that were all the rage with my peers. What I did have was books. My dad would go to a second-hand book store every day and pick out books that he thought I'd like. My dad couldn't read English very well, so I ended up getting a bunch of books that were definitely not intended for my age bracket - encyclopaedias, novels, textbooks (including a massive textbook on American law that I still have, despite the fact that I live in the UK) and so on. Everything good about me as a person is a direct result of what my dad did for me back then.