Casual Conversation

Here in the US South: Expensive pickup trucks. Holy shit are they a waste of money.

Every time I fuel up our hybrid sedan I will be done fueling and have enough time to go into the store to buy a drink/snack before they're done spending like $100-200 on gas. For their truck that's primarily used to commute to their office job that only rarely hauls something home from the hardware store.

Subscriptions. People don’t realise that small subscriptions add up to a lot of money over time. Calculate costs per year for your monthly subscription and you will realise the seriousness.

Chiropractors.

Things they don't need.

Do you really need a new phone every year? How many clothes do you have to buy? How many are in your closet still waiting to be worn once? And what about the car? How big does it have to be? Do you even need it at all?

1. Driving. Stop driving everywhere all the time. Walk your ass around the corner to the store. Ride your bike a mile down the road.

2. You don't need new shit. Fix it. Make it cool again. Just be happy with it. Stop buying shit just because your cousin who's bad with money had to buy it.

3. Amazon Prime - You pay a monthly subscription for free shipping. That ease of access allows to you to better spend frivolously. If you cancel Prime and have to pay for shipping, you start to wonder if you even really need what you came to buy in the first place.

When they send military aid to Israel

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.

Clothing.

Seriously, especially when they're not even good quality

Next would be alcohol. You don't need to get pissed drunk

Next, gambling

Lottery

If they're spending money on something that improves their life in some way from their perspective, and aren't prioritising that over needed expenditure, while also not making anyone else's life worse: who am I to judge?

That said, more luxury spending should be avoided if you're paying a lot of interest on debt. Paying interest is wasteful given you're not really getting anything tangible for the money, but it's not a normal expense you can just cut (usually, look for 0% balance transfer options if they're available to you). So work on minimising that expense as a priority, in order to limit how much you ultimately waste in the long run.

At a much grander scale, there is a lot of wasteful government expenditure I could go into around subsidising the fossil fuel industry and everything connected to it at the expense of our environment, but that's probably getting off topic

Edit: typo

Cars.

Consumer electronics, alcohol, cars

Groceries. Popping back and forward to the shops every day.

Cars on PCP finance. Very expensive way to not own your car.

Clothes, phones, cars, online subs would be the most obvious things I noticed people spend money for no good reason (beside pleasing themselves, that is).

But I would say the real issue is buying stuff that we (and this time I mean all of us) don't really need...

US taxes. Nearly zero value to 95+% of the people spending into it.

In my area I think it's fast food (it's very expensive here) and maybe clothes if we're talking about women (yes, men here don't do that). Other things don't seem very common here.