Money comes and goes, and when you consider the fact that more than half, or 58%, of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck, saving becomes as important as ever. This usually starts with cutting down on unnecessary spending.
To find out what people can do without, Redditor u/gejiw94601 made a post on r/AskReddit earlier this month, asking everyone, "What's the biggest waste of money?" Since then, it has received over 2.6k comments, prompting a discussion on our budgeting, spending habits, and everything inbetween. Here are some of the most popular answers to their question.
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Weddings.
Crazy expensive day. Guaranteed at least one relative will kick up a stink. Massive pressure to be The Happiest Day of Your Life. Everything doubles in cost if you say its for a wedding (dress, suit, cake, venue)
Just do the quick registry office paperwork, have a surpise party and run away for a long honeymoon with the money you saved.
who did come up with the saying that this is supposed to be the "happiest day of your life" anyway? I can think of a dozen other days immediately which are far more life-changing. Come to think of it, does anything really change when you get married? Your daily life just goes on as it did before.
Those that are donated to house of worships, for pastors to buy private jets & catholic priest to play dress up
Cigarettes. $13+ for a pack of cancer
Giving your money to the Catholic Church. You’ve got to be f*****g kidding me.
I'm not in accord with this. I have plenty to say against my late priest as he didn't have time for his seminarists, but he always donated everything he could to the poors. Everyone who need something and went to his door got whatever he had, to the point that the local Charitas had a discussion with him because often he was tricked by conmen. The same Charitas help a lot of people, often people that didn't want any help to maintain the appearance, so they are helped in secret. A falling tree makes more noise than an entire growing forest
Donating to rich twitch streamers. I’ll probably never understand why people do it.
How about that time people donated to Kylie Jenner so she could be the youngest ever (“self-made” 😂) billionaire?
Buying pro-grade stuff you don't need is wasted money. My dad once told me to not spend excessive money on tools at first. Buy them for dirt cheap, learn which tools you really need, and when they break, replace them with quality ones.
Cryptocurrency.
It is fake money and only has value so long as people believe in it. It has become a way to scam people out of money. Incidentally values have dropped from about $3 trillion to about $1 trillion. So someone other than investors is getting rich. Also does not have the regulations of stocks.
Celebrity meet and greets.
I have a friend who is not very well off financially, and is complaining about money to me once a week. Yet she always seems to have money to pay for a celebrity meet and greet at least twice a year. Some of them are only a couple hundred dollars, but some can get really expensive, really fast. For what? A picture next to a famous person? They neither know you, nor do they care about you.
Overdraft fees. Like, the bank should know better than anybody that I have no money. So what are you trying to take?
And some banks charge an extra $5-$10 everyday your account is in the negative. This is why I switched to a credit union. The overdraft for mine is $12, but they won't let you get into the negative to begin with and sometimes they'll forgive the overdraft.
Third-party delivery i.e. DoorDash/Uber Eats/GrubHub
The fees + tips are exorbantly high, and a normally affordable fast food meal becomes the price of a sit-down restaurant meal or more.
This is from first hand experience lol
You have the option to spend time to get the food yourself, or spend money to have someone else get it for you. So it depends on whether you value your time more or less than your money
Gold Food, or more accurately food that are covered in something called gold leaf. In my eyes, food are worth buying if they provide a great amount of nutrition for considerably good prices. After all, you probably avoid paying 50 million dollars just to buy a few molecules that are useless to your health and needs
And then there's gold leaf food, sure the food looks fancy but at the cost of ludicrous amount of money! And with the gold having no usable nutrients at all, it just not worth it to buy such expensive food for relatively small amount of nutrients
For instance, Industry Kitchen(hopefully that's the name of the place) at NYC serves a pizza with a gold leaf covering for a whopping price of $2000. While at my home country which is Indonesia, Domino's serves an American Classic Cheeseburger Pizza(idk that's a thing) which is the most expensive pizza I could find on the website costs around $7 which is just baffling to me
An entire gold leaf (8x8cm or 10x10cm) costs around 1 euro/1 dollar. The small part used to decorate a cake, a pastry or whatever in a dish costs only a few cents. You are definitely not paying for the gold added. And stop with the b******t about nutrition, it’s purely a cheap (yes cheap) decoration, it’s not about feeding you. Then if you’re stupid enough to buy a $2000 pizza you’re a moron, it’s not about the gold leaf.
iPhones.
After getting an iPod back in 2006 I decided I'd never spend a buck on anything made by Apple. No Android device has ever failed me.
Yh, even though they're not 'cool' or 'trendy' the Nokia I'm using right now can survive my butterfingers
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My iPhone 6 is still going strong and I bought that in 2015. My son has it now, I got an iPhone Xs 4 years ago. It still works well and does everything I need it to.
eh i think "tech wars" are pointless. does it really matter what device you have?💀
Eh, there are good reasons for buying an IPhone. Remember when the FBI asked Apple to make a back door for law enforcement? Apple told them exactly where to stick that request.
expect that ur iphone takes infared pics of u every 5 or 10 seconds. look up videos about it if u dony believe me
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They are only a waste if you update your phone every year or two. Apple supports older models for several years and even then the phone is ok to use for app updates for another year or two after that. My previous phone was an iphone 6 plus that I bought new in 2014 and I was able to update all my apps until 2019. Even now in 2023 the phone itself and some apps are still working even though the apps can no longer be updated. But thats a good 5+ years of support and use which is pretty good value imo.
I hate iphones. I hade one and it sucked so i sent it back. Im an Android girl thru and thru
I do as well. Have a 6S Plus that still works better than my 2 year old Kindle Fire. That's over 7 years. Apple makes great devices and you get updates for years as long as your device can handle it.
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I have iphone and as someone who stood by android for nine years, I'll never go back to android. After five androids that gave me an error with my Gmail that I needed when I started college I ditched android. Never had an issue with my Gmail on apple.
I bounce between iphone and android devices regularly, and they are no different, I have had cheap phones and expensive phones, and if you get similar spec you can't tell the difference. It is brain washing and marketing that gets people to stick with a brand.
I greatly prefer Android's interface. But otherwise, there's no difference.
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Yeah but… I like how easy they are to use and androids confuse me. I don’t mind admitting they’ve dumbed it down for people like me. 🙂
I was forced to use an ipad at a job a few years ago. Absolute garbage.
Had my 5s until it stopped being supported. Survived being run over by a tractor. Only needed a new screen.
I just don't get the Apple brainwashing that so many people suffer from. It's a phone! It makes phone calls! It looks like every other f**king phone.
Mine is an IPhone XS, because I got it used from my aunt. The battery is trash and it gets really hot, but idc. I have been using it for a while now
You clearly haven't used one. Let me list why they're better, even though they ARE very overpriced. 1. Continuous location sharing with family for safety against violence. Useful. 2. One app screen so you don't get confused about where your apps are when they install. 3. Automatic cloud synchronisation is usefull if you have an apple desktop as well, so you get your clipboard pass between machines, your watch, your phonebook, your email, etc., everything just works. 4. Apps are vetted and do not contain malware. 5. Various music options from the supplier e.g. apple music (streaming only), icloud music library (so you can share your mp3s with your whole family on their devices), and then third party like spotify etc. 6. Low power mode when your battery is getting low. 7. Native scripting so you can automate stuff like go into do not disturb mode at night, turn on wifi hotspot when leaving home, etc. 8. Apple Pay. Only need to carry my phone and car fob now. Soon I reckon that will go.
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Cod points or any other online game currency bs. Yeah its cool at first but meh after you realize you spent $20 for basically nothing.
Ugh. I feel for this recently. And am not proud to admit it. A stupid mobile game no less. But the chests were so tempting. And it made my character stronger. Sigh.... I spent about 200$... :( lol
Bottled water.
Go to anywhere in central America, most anywhere in SE Asia, Flint Michigan.....drink the water from the faucet and then come back the next day (as your guts bubble and you struggle not to shít yourself) and mention how useless bottled water is.
Fireworks, i love them, but it's like 50$ per second for the good ones.
Traumatize and terrify your pets, the war veterans in your community, and all the wildlife nearby for just $50/second!!!
Any dating apps subscription - like find out who liked you now for only a billion dollars!
Tipping.
Note: this post originally had 44 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Personally I would put Jordans everyone is flexing them and why would you spend a lot of something on your feet
Timeshares. It starts out nice then the maintenance fees take over until you're paying more than what the week costs. And you're stuck for life paying unless you are able to get free of it.
You guys missed one: psychics. I feel really bad for people who pay a bunch of money to see a psychic. It is kind of the same as church. If you're emotionally vulnerable people will find a way to get money out of you..
shoes, iPhones, insurance are a must-have but you can literally invest in anything better than bitcoin
Load More Replies... Personally I would put Jordans everyone is flexing them and why would you spend a lot of something on your feet
Timeshares. It starts out nice then the maintenance fees take over until you're paying more than what the week costs. And you're stuck for life paying unless you are able to get free of it.
You guys missed one: psychics. I feel really bad for people who pay a bunch of money to see a psychic. It is kind of the same as church. If you're emotionally vulnerable people will find a way to get money out of you..
shoes, iPhones, insurance are a must-have but you can literally invest in anything better than bitcoin
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