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What's the most frequent way you see people waste money? (piefed.blahaj.zone)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] southsamurai 8 points 5 days ago

waste money?

I dunno, it's hard to filter out bias.

I guess I'd have to point towards vehicle selection. At any given price point, and for any given priority order, people seem to ignore long term costs for short term prices and/or whims.

By that I mean buying from company A that's a few thousand cheaper, but has a higher maintenance cost than company B, even when intending to drive it until the wheels fall off.

Or, they'll make brand choices on something that they like now, and forego any future concerns chase are likely to incur unnecessary costs while not providing any benefits beyond satisfying that urge.

That applies to a lot of things, but cars are where the a costs add up to big numbers. You get that TV on a whim because it has some cool feature, and it's less energy efficient; even over the life of the TV, you're looking at hundreds in extra costs. But cars, you can end up with thousands just in basic maintenance that could possibly be avoided.

I'm not saying that every decision has to be purely practical, or money is wasted. It's when there are other, equally impractical, options that will still cost less over time.

That seems to be the kind of thing that people end up spending money they shouldn't have to, which is what I think of as waste. If you can get the same thing, and it costs less long term, saving now is rarely money well spent.

See, even if the dollars involved were totally equal; a thousand less at purchase and a thousand over time for maintenance, you still end up with both opportunity costs and the fact that not all auto care can be planned. Tows, extra labor costs, missed income from lack of transport or needing to pick the vehicle up, all those little things. If you had the ability to pick an identical vehicle (in terms of features, looks, whatever), that cost a thousand more, you would still end up saving money over time.

Since most cars in any given category have feature parity, and similar enough space, looks, and functionality, using only purchase price as your determining factor leads to potential waste.