13 ways that people waste money
I am going to go over some ways we may be wasting our money. Of course, you are welcome to add your own thoughts.
1. Lottery ‘” Your chances of winning the Powerball jackpot are 1 in 195,249,054 or you could put together a Hummer made from losing lottery tickets.
2. Buying a new car every few years ‘” Buying even a used car can be a waste if you do it every few years. The exception to the rule might be someone like my uncle who can take the car apart to the last screw, clean all parts and make it look better than when it was bought, take it back to the dealer and make money on the trade in.
3. Anything you already have that’s ‘œnew and improved’ ‘” cell phone, computer, most technology or house ware appliance fit into this catagory
4. Credit Life Insurance ‘” This is a waste as it only prolongs payments you have to make anyway and the annual percentage just keeps ticking away on what you owe.
5. Fancy restaurants ‘” These are fine once in a while. But if you are having trouble paying down credit cards, eating out in general might be an item you will want to cross off your list until you have money leftover.
6. Sales ‘” Are you buying something just because it is on sale and getting multiples in different colors, just in case?
7. Courses that teach you how to buy real estate for no money down ‘” There is so much information on the web that you can get for free on real estate and the no money down idea has been torn to shreds.
8. Cable and Satellite services ‘” Again, if you are hard-pressed for money then extra cable channels aren’t a good idea. Unless, one, your job depends on it or two, you are laid up in bed due to illness.
9. Vending Machine Food ‘“ They suck you dry one quarter at a time. You know you can buy that bottle of soda at the grocery store for much cheaper in a 6-pack.
10. Lavishing expensive gifts on loved ones ‘” I do this on a rare occasion. Unless your family views love as what is gotten and not the thought behind it, then I think your family will love you even if you don’t give them a trip for two to the Bahamas.
11. Driving to work alone – A majority of us do it, but if you can bike or a scooter or even carpool, then great. Check with your local city or state websites to see if they have a carpool program that would work for you.
12. Designer label clothing – You can find many of the designers you love at your local thrift store for pennies on the dollar.
13. TV Shopping/As Seen On TV Products ‘” There is a reason these are on at night and on the weekends, we get bored or tired and don’t think straight and buy crap we don’t need!
—-
Dawn C. is site owner of FrugalforLife.com where this is a repost from: 13 Areas of Wasted Money. Dawn resides in Colorado with her spouse, Teri, of 12 years. You can follow her on Twitter – It’s like a party line for instant messaging.
Photo credit: stock.xchng.
Good point Dawn. Another total waste of money (imho) is movie tickets. Why not wait until it comes out on DVD?
Lottery tickets for me are an interesting one because while I generally think they’re quite foolish, it has been a long standing tradition to give people lottery gifts in cards. They’re the cheap dollar tickets, but it’s always fairly exciting to scratch them off and occasionally win five or ten dollars.
They work nicely because they’re more than a card but don’t involve the major of investment of a bigger gift.
@elizabeth
Lottery tickets are a nice idea for a card, I actually had not thought of that.
The odds of winning the jackpot on my local MegaMillions game is about 175,000,000:1, so when the jackpot is above $175M I put two dollars down and call it an “investment.” Yeah, so I’m the last of the big time spenders. And I know deep down that I’m not going to win. But I say that two bucks is well spent on a dream (’cause dreaming’s all I’m gonna get out of it.)
I could get all numberish and say that you don’t get all $175M if you take the cash value option. (You only get the $175M is you take it over 20 years — the cash value is the present value of the annuity at whatever rate the lottery commission pays). But that would just plain take the sport out of it.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with dreaming, and as long as you’re not spending the milk money, I don’t see the harm. And waiting until the jackpot is high limits the number of possible weeks I could buy tickets, so I spend maybe $20 on tickets in a year.
Why $2? One ticket for me and one for my sweetie — we’ve been doing this for years.
Helen: We’re a two ticket household too! I feel the same way… it’s an inexpensive opportunity to ask my sweetie if she feels lucky that day! We always feel lucky… but of course, we have never ended up with a winning ticket. It’s fun to dream and at twenty bucks a year, it’s hardly missed.