22 Things Broke People Waste Money On

Transcript:

On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, 22 Things Broke. People waste Money on.

What's up everybody, and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host Andrew, founder of Master money.co, and today on the Personal Finance Podcast. We're gonna dive into 22 things that broke people waste money on. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the Master Money Newsletter by going to master money.co/newsletter and follow us on Spotify, apple Podcast, YouTube, or whatever your favorite podcast player is.

And if you're getting value outta this show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple Podcast Spotify. Or give us the old subscribe and thumbs up on. YouTube now, today we're gonna be diving into 22 things broke people waste money on. And the reason why we're going through this is I want you to make sure that you are avoiding most of these at all costs.

Someone who is prudent with their money or someone who is good with money is going to avoid these as much as possible. Why? Because it's some of the small leaks can really sink an entire boat if you have way too many of them now. I am a person who does not want you to focus on the small stuff. If you wanna have a coffee every single day and you want to go out and order at Starbucks, hey, more power to you.

But if you are someone out there who has a bunch of small leaks all over the place, that can result in thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, that could cause you issues. And so what we're gonna talk through today is I'm gonna try to motivate you to kind of think through your finances in ways that is a little bit.

Different than everybody else. Some of these things are just accepted in society that this is what's going to happen, this is what you're gonna spend your money on, but I'm gonna show you what wealthy people actually do and some of the things that wealthy people will avoid. And so that is the entire premise of this episode, and we're gonna be diving into the 22 things broke people waste of money on now.

Alright, so the first one is unused gym memberships. Now this is one of those things that I have seen way too many people waste money on where they will a maybe join in January, but they quit going by March, but they continue to have the gym membership because maybe they're gonna go back in some point in time.

A lot of us have good intentions that we will be going back to the gym at some point in time, and so they continue paying that gym membership month over month over month. If you not are not going to the gym at least once every single week and you haven't done so over the course of the last couple of weeks, then you probably need to get rid of that gym membership.

Why? Because a, obviously, gym memberships are just gonna continue to auto renew over time. But the average cost for a gym membership in the US currently right now is $60. That is $720 per year. That is completely. Wasted. Now, if you look at the compound interest of $720 every single year, if you invested those dollars instead, that'd be $118,000 over the course of 30 years.

That is a huge, huge deal for some people that could change your retirement and give you that extra boost that you actually need. And so what happens with a lot of gym memberships is it's a psychology thing. Guilt stops people from canceling. They think, okay, I need to have this membership in place because I may go back.

Well, if that's you, I would encourage you honestly to take that $720 per year and start to build out a home gym if you have the space where you can have equipment in your house that you can utilize whenever you want. I built a home gym in my garage and it has been the best dollars I have ever spent. I spent thousands of dollars on it, but it.

It brings me so much value. I use it literally every single day, and it is one of the best things that I have ever done. No more driving over to the gym and wasting time, commuting back and forth to gym. Instead, I've got it in my house, so I encourage, most of you either do the CIA method, so cut out that expense, identify where you want those dollars to go, and then automate that money towards something.

Say for example, you wanna automate it towards your home gym. If you wanted to do that, I would make a high yield savings account and start putting money. Towards that home gym or start buying equipment used on Facebook Marketplace as you see it. That way you can start to build out a home gym that actually works for you.

So this is something I would definitely consider. Also, you can also do something like paying for classes. So maybe you pay per class instead of having that gym membership in place. That way each time you go, you're paying per class. You may be paying more per class, but at the same time, it is going to reduce the amount that you're spending.

Now, a lot of you out there, if you have a CrossFit membership or a Pilates membership or a yoga membership, those are gonna be 200 plus dollars every single month, and so making sure you utilize those can be a big one. Number two is along the same lines, but this is going to be one that a lot of people do is forgotten and unused subscriptions.

This is the low hanging fruit. This is easy. Pickens for a lot of you. I personally have forgotten or onus subscriptions right now at the time recording this. Most of you probably do as well, and so I, after this episode, I've already got something scheduled in my calendar. I'm gonna go through those unused subscriptions.

I'm gonna start cutting 'em out. Business owners, you probably also have a bunch of unused subscriptions that you need to start cutting. Out. It may feel like, ah, it's not much. It's 30 bucks a month. That 30 bucks a month could be going into your pocket instead. And so if you are someone out there who is wasting money, you need to make sure that we are cutting out unused subscriptions.

This is gonna be, again, we'll use the CIA method when we do this, but the average person in the US right now, according to CNR research is wasting $133 per month on non-US subscriptions. So if you took that $133 every single month and you compounded that at a 10% rate of return over the course of 30 years, that is an.

Additional $274,000 that you would have in your retirement accounts if you took those dollars and shifted them over. Now, let me tell you something right now, okay? If you have the gym membership and you have those unused subscriptions, those two things alone would allow you to have well over $300,000 in retirement over the course of the next 30 years.

It's a huge difference in just cutting out the waste. If you can cut out the waste in your life, the stuff that you're not using, the stuff that does not bring you value, you can have so much more money. In fact, this could be a, it is a six figure decision. This could be a multimillion dollar decision if you actually make this impact.

And so most households, according to research, have four plus streaming services that are just letting go. They're spending over $133 per month on unused and forgotten subscriptions. So maybe this is something you signed up for a free trial, and then once the free trial was over, you forgot to cancel. Or maybe you have duplicate streaming or music apps, and I've seen that happen a number of different times.

Maybe some of these small changes just kind of slip under the radar. So what you wanna do is you wanna use either apps out there that can help you track some of your subscriptions, or you can just print off your bank statements, dive in there and just highlight the ones that you think you're not using anymore.

Then what I want you to do is use the CIA method, meaning you cut out the subscriptions you don't use anymore. You identify where that money is gonna go, because if you leave that money in checking, guess what's gonna happen? It's gonna get commingled in checking, and you're just gonna spend those dollars every single month.

So instead, I want you to identify where you want those to go. Do you want to pay down your mortgage faster? Do you want to save that money on your emergency fund? Do you want those dollars to go towards your investments? Wherever you want those dollars to go, then I want you to identify that and then automate it into that specific location.

Otherwise, again, the money's just gonna get stuck in checking and you're gonna spend it all. And so that is the second one is looking for unused subscription. Number three is. Lotto tickets. The average American, this is shocking to me, spend $70 to a hundred dollars per month on lotto tickets. Now obviously there's gonna be outliers in an average where some people are spending way more, and some of you probably don't spend any dollars on lotto tickets.

Now, the odds of winning the Mega millions jackpot is one. In 302 million. Now, let me say this about lottery tickets, okay? If you are someone who just likes to buy the Powerball, when it gets to $500 million or $1 billion as it has been doing over the course of the last couple of years, and you just like to have that fun and you like to hope, you like spending whatever, it's five bucks.

I don't know what a Powerball ticket costs. Obviously I don't play the lottery. But if you go out there and you wanna spend, you know, your money on one Powerball ticket, you're not buying 500 Powerball tickets, but you're buying one just for fun, just to have the hope because you enjoy that. There's nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

But if you are the type of person that you are living on this hope, and you're going to the gas station every single Friday when you get paid or every other Friday on payday, and you're buying a bunch of different lotto tickets to try to hit, or you're buying scratch offs constantly, or you find yourself just constantly playing the lottery, just trying to hit it big one time.

You have yourself something that is going to drain your wallet. If you would've taken those dollars and invested those dollars instead, it would have a massive impact on your financial future. But there are a lot of people out there. If you took $70 to a hundred dollars every single month, it is going to have a huge, huge difference.

In how much you are gonna have over time. In fact, if you put a hundred dollars per month into lotto tickets, that's just $25 every single week. That is $206,000. That could be in your portfolio over the course of 30 years and over the course of 40 years, that is $555,000. This, my friends, is a huge difference maker.

You must avoid things like lotto tickets that just have no odds for you to ever win. Now again, you can treat it as entertainment. You can treat it as something that is just fun to do, but this is not for income. And the problem is it is a weekly habit for low income households. 'cause they're trying to figure out, okay, how do I get outta this situation?

Because they don't know how to fix their finances, and so instead they're going out and buying lotto tickets. I do not want that to be you. If you are someone who doesn't make a lot of money right now, and you are trying to buy lotto tickets just to hit it again, stop it. If you have extra income for that, then put it towards investments.

Start to try to help yourself. Okay? The book of Proverbs in chapter 13, verse 11 says, wealth gain, hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it. And that is such a powerful lesson in long-term investing and making sure that we understand that just small amounts of money over time can grow to very large amounts of money.

Okay? Four is some of your bad habits, specifically when it comes to cigarettes and vaping. Those of you who are smokers, smokers spend on average $2,292 per year on cigarettes. Vaping costs add up too. Now the average smoker has declined. A lot of folks in the millennial generation in the Gen Z generation smoke a lot less cigarettes, at least now, vaping had been something that had sought to rise, but they smoke less cigarettes, and so that is a, you're damaging your health.

B, you're damaging your wallet. The two things that most people do not wanna damage is they're taking advantage of this by smoking cigarettes. A pack a day habit is $180 to $300 every single month. And so making sure that you remove this from your life is gonna be one of the most important things. Do not smoke, do not vape.

Number five, and this is one that most people who live paycheck to paycheck need to start avoiding is these high interest payday loans, payday loans. Or a business that I would avoid at all costs, Amscot, all these other different payday loans that are out there. All these companies who are having this average a PR of 39.1%, now 12 million Americans use payday loans yearly and 80% roll those over into new debts.

So 12 million Americans. Actually are using payday loans and over 8 million of them are rolling those over into new debt. If you have to use a payday loan, typically it is because you don't have the money on hand. So where do you think you're gonna get the money afterwards instead? I would try to figure it out in a different way.

'cause fast cash becomes endless payments for a lot of people and the psychology behind this is not something that is good. And so for a lot of these businesses, they are making the money on the interest. A 40% interest rate is gonna be so incredibly difficult for you to pay off. It is gonna cause damage to your credit score.

It is going to cause financial stress on your family for a very long period of time. So avoiding them at all costs is gonna be your number one priority when it comes to figuring out how to pay the bills. Instead, focusing on your finances and focusing on ways to increase your income are gonna be two big things that you need to make sure that you are doing.

You gotta avoid that at all costs. Now, for those of you out there who is like, well, I always have to get a payday loan when something happens in my life, maybe I go out and my car breaks down, well, then I need a payday loan to make sure that I can actually fix my car so I can get back to work again.

Guess what? Instead, we need to focus on building up something called an emergency fund. Now, if you've never heard an emergency fund, we have entire episodes on that. But an emergency fund is a place where you save your cash for a rainy day. Your car breaks down, you have cash just there. Your house has an issue.

You have cash just there to take care of it. It is one of the most powerful and freeing things to have an emergency fund, and you gotta make sure that you build that. See if you keep borrowing money, the borrower is a slave to the lender. And so if you just keep borrowing money over and over and over again, you are just working to pay off that lender.

You gotta make sure that instead you are working for yourself and building wealth for your freedom. Because if you can break the chains of debt, if you can break those financial chains of debt, you will never have to worry about somebody else. Instead, all you gotta do. Is worry about yourself. Number six is late fees on Bills.

Now, probably most people listening to this podcast have forgotten to pay a bill at some point in time in their life. If you haven't, awesome. You are great with money, but Americans pay $12 billion a year in late fees. $12 billion per year in late fees, and they forget due dates or they waste money on specific things.

So one late payment can actually cut your credit score by 100 points depending on what it is. And so how do you prevent this? How do you prevent late fees on bills, setting up automations for bill pay? Okay, so when it comes to setting your money on autopilot, and we have a community coming out soon that is gonna be talking through exactly how to do this step by step on setting up your bills on auto payments.

But what we want you to do is we want you to a, take your checking account and connect it to your bill pay. So let's say, for example, your electric bill. If you're someone who's just like I, I just keep forgetting to send in a check for my electric bill, or I keep forgetting to log in and pay that electric bill.

Okay. Instead, what you need to do is set up automatic payments. I don't care if it's $2 more set up that automatic payments, so that just automatically comes outta your checking account every single month. I. No more late fees. You don't have to worry about it. Do this with every single bill. Your cell phone bill.

Do this with your cable bill. Every single bill needs to be set up on auto pay, okay? Now, if you're saying to yourself, well, when I get paid, I am worried that my auto pay is going to cause me to not have enough money in my account. Here's what you do is you can set up payments for each and every single bill on specific days.

So you can time it on days that land when you get paid. So if you get paid biweekly, and maybe those dates are changing, but if you get paid biweekly, maybe you wanna do it early in the month, or you wanna do it later in the month or in the middle of the month, you can set it up in, break it up into days.

So every two weeks you can break up, okay? These bills are gonna get paid these two weeks. Two weeks later, the next bills are gonna get paid. All you do is call up each carrier and say, Hey, I wanna adjust my billing date. How do I do that? Sometimes they'll make you make the payment for the remainder of where you are currently, and then you can adjust those billing dates based on that.

But if you are worried about not having enough cash on hitting your checking account, just adjust the days that you make that payment and then you can move on from there. Now, some of the utility companies may not let you do this. If they don't, then I would adjust the rest of my bills around. Some of the payments that won't let you make those adjustments.

And then always, always have a small cushion in your checking account for this. 'cause when you're making automatic payments, you just wanna make sure you have a small cushion in your checking account so you don't have to worry about that. If the power bill's a little bit higher this month, you have that cash on hand so you don't have to worry about that.

Because this is what the checking account is for, is it's there to help you funnel through autopay. Secondarily, if you are someone who is good with credit cards, you've never been in credit card debt in the past, using your credit card for things like your cell phone bill or using your credit card for your cable bill or using your credit card for some of those things that allow you to pay them with a credit card is gonna be really beneficial for you.

'cause then you can automate your credit card payment as well, uh, and make sure that everything is set up on autopay. All bills always, if you wanna be good with money, should be set up on autopay and you should be tracking what is happening with those bills. You should know the due dates of those bills and then you won't have to ever worry about that stuff ever again.

Number seven is overdraft fees. So overdraft fees are something again that banks collect $7.7 billion in overdraft fees over the course of the last year alone. The average overdraft fee is $35 and multiple fees a month are going to add up fast. If you are not tracking this properly, you should never, ever, ever pay overdraft fees.

In fact, if you find yourself paying a lot in overdraft fees, one, you are obviously mismanaging money and maybe you don't have enough income to survive currently. So we need to look at increasing our income, but two. Look at switching to a bank that doesn't charge these overdraft fees. Maybe they have overdraft protection and maybe they have something in place that will allow you to not have to pay these fees, because, for example, if you're paying four overdraft fees per month at $35, you are paying $140 every single month.

That is a large amount of money. In fact, $140 over the course of 30 to 40 years is gonna make a huge difference. Over the course of 40 years, it is $770,000. If you invested those dollars instead, $140. That's all it's. It could be $770,000 over the course of 40 years, and over the course of 30 years, it would be $288,000 with that 10% rate of return.

Absolutely amazing. Just these small amounts, what they will add up to over time if you actually reallocate those dollars and just make some differences. Also, if you are having a lot of overdraft fees, I encourage you to budget. Make sure you have a budget on hand, and we have something called the five minute drill, where every single day you spend five minutes on your budget, categorizing transactions from yesterday, categorizing some of the transactions that happened today, and then when you do that five minutes reel, you'll be on top of your money every single.

Okay. So that is one of the most powerful things, uh, that you can do is make sure you budget your dollars so you know where your money is going. It is one of the best things that you can do. Number eight, and this is one where there's a lot of consumerism involved in this, but upgrading your phone every single year.

So brand new phones cost anywhere from 800 to $1,200 per year, and the average upgrade cycle for a lot of people is about every two years. Now I have had my iPhone for the last three and a half years. I try to keep iPhones usually around five years because not much changes year over year. Secondarily, they last a very long time.

The only issue with a lot of phones is if your battery does not stay charged. And a lot of phone companies, I feel like this is just a conspiracy Andrews coming out right now, but I feel like a lot of times after two years, they start to really slow down that battery life. And for a lot of people, that's probably just naturally a battery life cycle.

But for a lot of people out there, that's when they start to begin to really think about upgrading. But if you're the person that upgrades every single year because you want that brand new iPhone, or you want that brand new Android or Samsung or whatever else, and you are someone who goes out. Out there and just upgrade your phone every year, and you really don't get much value out of it.

There's no point in doing that. Okay? If you're someone who pays a monthly fee for your phone, it's obviously much better to just pay cash for your phone if you have it, uh, instead of paying it off monthly. And if you have that cash on hand, I would just pay cash for the phone. And then try to hold it as long as you possibly can.

That is the best way to do this. Uh, and the best way to think about this, every new phone means a higher monthly bill. If you are paying month to month, and if you keep phones for longer than two years, you're probably in good shape. Again, I try to keep mine three to five. My goal is always really to try to keep 'em for five years.

And then repairs are always cheaper than replacing typically, so that is another one as well. And investing in a sturdy case, obviously a screen cover is gonna be the two big things that you can do to make sure those last way, way longer. Number nine is designer close on credit. So Americans carry $986 billion on a credit card.

Currently, according to the Federal Reserve and store credit cards equals high a PR. So store credit cards usually have really high interest rates, 25% plus a store. Credit cards are some of the worst credit cards to go out there and get. They don't give you very many benefits and they don't really help you out.

With the exception of the Amazon card, I would say that's the only one that I know of that really has tremendous benefits where you get like 5% cash back if you shop at Amazon a lot. It is a pretty decent deal to have that Amazon card, but outside of that card, every other card that you see is just not gonna make sense if it's a Macy's card or if you get a Dillard's card, or if you go out there and get, you know, a TJ Max card.

Those don't have the benefits that you would get with other credit cards out there. Some of my favorites, and if you go to the personal finance podcast.com, there's a little, uh, menu at the top that says credit cards. And those are my favorite credit cards. It's my page with all my favorite credit cards that I use day in and day out.

Chafe Sapphire, capital One Venture, the Amex Gold. All of these are some great cards out there that you could look at getting into more. Okay. Never ever put designer clothes on credit though. And then number 10, and this is one that I think some of the folks who maybe are younger are gonna really relate to, but it's buying rounds of drinks for everyone.

Now, when I was in college in my early twenties, when you're going out a little more and you're just hanging out with friends a lot more when you go out now, you wouldn't catch me dead in a nightclub or bar past 7:00 PM But nightlife, overspending can add up and it can add up dramatically. And if you're the type of person who just buys rounds for everybody all the time because you feel like it's fun or that's the way you wanna give back to your friends.

I get it, but at the same time, that gets very, very expensive. Specifically if you go out and buy shots, or if you go out and buy drinks that are way more expensive, those are gonna have a big impact on your wallet because one round with five people can cost you over a hundred dollars. Easily nowadays.

Okay. I was just on a golf trip in Orlando. We bought a round for four people in the round. It was over a hundred dollars for that specific round. It is out of control the cost of what alcohol is currently, and so most people don't pay you back. They either forget or they're just out and about. And so if you want to do this, I would have a cash budget set aside.

But if you are struggling to pay your bills and you're buying rounds also for other people, you have your priorities mixed up, making sure that you do not buy rounds of drinks. Four people when it doesn't make sense is a huge, huge thing. In fact, the Bureau of Labor actually did a study. The average American spends $3,000 per year on dining and drinks out.

And so if even a big chunk of that is drinks out, really rethink about that if you can, or just have that cash budget set aside for bars. So those are some of the sneaky budget killers. Now we're gonna get into some of the lifestyle money drains Next. Alright, so a number 11 is going to be one that a lot of people are doing right now and is buying brand new cars that you can't afford.

So new cars lose 20 to 30% of their value in the first year according to Edmonds. And this is something we have talked about at length in some of our car buying episodes. The average new car payment is $738 per month according to Experian. Now this is a massive, massive issue for a lot of people. Seven $38 per month on a car because the prices of cars are rising.

Is not the best financial decision for most people, and so many people will stretch their loans for six to seven years. In addition, fancier cars equal higher maintenance. One of the worst purchases I ever made was a luxury vehicle, and the maintenance on that luxury vehicle, which was a brand that rhymes with sch Mercedes, was something that was absolutely astonishing.

You wanna get an oil change? Guess how much an oil change is for a brand that rhymes with Mercedes? $2,000 per year. You heard that right? $2,000 per year. Oh, and if you want to get the higher level oil change, which they recommend every other year, it's $3,500 for the whole year. Ya boy almost had a heart attack the first time they told 'em that.

And this is something where I could not get rid of that car faster. I was in my twenties when this happened and I could not get rid of that car faster. It is one of those things that just did not make sense for a lot of people. In fact, your insurance goes up, your taxes goes up, all those different things.

And so I have a rule, and I even bought that car used by the way, but my rule is I buy used or certified pre-owned, and we have a car buying rule, which we'll talk about here in a second, but I like to buy anywhere from two to three years old. It takes that big depreciation hit and now you have a car at a deal.

We bought a car over the course of last year because we had a new baby, and so we had to get a bigger vehicle, uh, because we had three kids instead of two. And so we got a bigger vehicle for my wife and we bought a car that was two years old and saved ourselves tens of thousands of dollars just because we bought this SUV.

Two years old. Now, here's the car buying rule that we talk about here. First, we want you to buy it used, but we talk about the 24 12 10 rule, okay? 20% down is what I want you to have. Obviously, it's always best to buy cars cash, but 20% down is going to be the rule that we talk about here, because if you buy a brand new car and it gets in an accident, guess what?

It took that depreciation hit. I don't want you to be underwater on that car. Okay? So 20% down. You can also get gap insurance and compare the prices on those if you wanted to, four years or less on your car loan. Meaning that I don't want you stretching this out seven or eight or nine years. In fact, I'd really rather you have it three years or less, but four years or less on your car loan.

Okay? 12% or less of your income spent on your car payment, your insurance, your gas, and your maintenance. Those four things, typically this comes around to about 7% or less on your car payment. And the rest, the other 5% goes to maintenance and gas. Okay? And then lastly is 10. You need to drive that car for 10 years or more.

So all of my cars. My goal is to drive them for 10 years or more. That is how you get the true value outta them. The longer you drive them, the better off you will be financially in the long term. 'cause you won't always just have car payments 'cause you're just re and up over and over and over again. So long term, you need to drive that car for 10 years or longer.

As long as it's safe to drive, obviously. But the number one thing to do is just pay cash for cars. If you can't do that, then follow the 24 12 10 rule. Okay. Along those same lines, car modifications. So custom wheels for cars are gonna cost you anywhere from a thousand to $4,000 and mods rarely ever add any resale value.

So this is something where insurance can go up with mods and you're gonna end up spending way too much money. So if you go out and you buy a Tahoe, for example. Let's just say you get that Tahoe, but it's got some plain wheels on there. You wanna get the black rims, you wanna delete the chrome off the Tahoe so that you have the black on black, and now you're driving around town with that brand new looking Tahoe with the nice rims.

If that's you, I'd rethink that or making sure that you make enough money for that to make sense. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever, but I just think car modifications are just a waste of money that you're just throwing money. Into the fire. Number 13 is overpriced cable TV packages. Now, I've told this story before on this podcast, but when I had just last year alone, I got an updated cable bill and the cable company decided to upgrade my cable.

I have had streaming services for years, but did a bunch of cost analysis and figured out, okay, actually cable right now is cheaper. And so for the first year it was absolutely amazing. I signed up for cable. It was way cheaper. It was like less than a hundred dollars a month for cable and really fast internet.

And so I had that for years. Then I got a bill in and I saw the bill probably a month later and they auto charged me $240. I wasn't looking close enough like I should have been. So I said, what the heck is going on? And I had an overpriced cable TV package that they added me into. And so then I went back and started negotiating with them.

We got it back to 125. I ended up cutting out the cable anyway 'cause I didn't like how they raised the price on me so much. And went back to you. Now I have YouTube TV again, and so we went back and forth on that, but I cut out this overpriced cable that I did not need, save myself over $140 every single month by cutting this out.

It was a big, big difference for me. And so a lot of you out there, if you have cable TV packages, look at some of your cable packages and see if you are charging too much. 'cause a hundred dollars per month as you have seen in just some of these compound interest calculations. We can do it right now again and look at it, but a hundred dollars per month is 206.

Thousand dollars at a 10% rate of return over 30 years. And if you did it over 40 years, this is gonna be a big number, $555,000. So huge difference on what will happen with your money over time, just by making sure that you're controlling some of these subscriptions. Alright, number 14 is fancy gadgets you don't need.

So US Households spent over $1,500 a year on new electronics according to Statista, and it's usually new tablets, smart home devices, kitchen devices, all those different things. And there's nothing wrong with this whatsoever. In fact, there's a lot of times that I will buy this stuff. It brings me value.

But if you are the person who is doing this every 15 to 30 days and you are buying these new gadgets and you're constantly just buying the next new thing, ninja has an ad and you buy the brand new Ninja Gadget, and then you get the brand new iPad the next month, and then you go out and you get the Ninja Creamy the third month, and then you go out and get the brand new Dyson vacuum cleaner the fourth month.

If that's you. If you're the person who just keeps buying gadgets and you can't stop buying gadgets, this is something where I'm talking to you right now because if you have to buy something like this, at least use the 30 day rule where I usually like to sleep on things for 30 days. If it is something that is not a necessity and it's over a couple hundred bucks, okay, that is gonna be something that allows you for that cooling off period and something that really is going to make a big difference in you just making these impulse purchases because the folks who treat money in this range.

The 200 to $500 range as if it is $20 are the folks who typically are broke. So if you are someone who goes out there and you're treating 200, 500, $700, like it is nothing like, you don't have to think about it twice, even if you make good money and you spend those dollars without even thinking twice, without having a real conscious thought about this.

Typically those are people who make high incomes that are broke. It's treating 500 bucks, like it's nothing. That is something I want you to think through and make sure you have that cooling off period before you just buy that stuff. Number 15 is trendy diet pills or gimmick supplements. So Americans spend $2.1 billion a year on weight loss supplements according to NIH, and many pills don't work as promised.

If you're the type of person who just buys all these crazy different supplements. And understanding that it's just diet and exercise is gonna make the biggest difference for you. But if you're the type of person who just always wants to find the next pill, it really is not worth it, especially when it comes to your wallet.

Instead, just making sure you focus on having a right exercise plan, having a diet in place that really is gonna work for you. Those are the two big things that will absolutely change your life. It's not worth wasting. Your money. 16. Along the same lines is fad beauty treatments. The US beauty industry is worth over a hundred billion dollars now, and much goes to expensive trends, so things like lip plumping or eyebrow microblading or fad facials.

These temporary results are earning big, big money. These are big, big businesses out there. If you look at like Kylie Jenner has a massive. Business when it comes to the beauty world, Hailey Bieber has a massive business. I think she just sold her business for a billion dollars. Some of these things are just not worth it.

Focusing on the skincare basics and looking for deals are gonna be the two big things that you can do. A lot of times you can get sold into different makeup or creams or lotions or shampoos or whatever else. All that stuff is typically overpriced if you don't think through it or understand the science behind it.

Number 17 is retail therapy. So if your go-to is to go spend money. Every single time you get stressed or you have a big win, or something happens in your life where you're just bored, if retail therapy is your thing and you cannot invest your dollars towards your financial future, that is a problem. And so we gotta make sure that we are looking at the ways that our psychology is impacting our wallet.

'cause typically retail therapy is a psychological thing and it typically is. To give you psychological relief or stress or anxiety or whatever else. And if that is you, just learning how to cope with that is gonna make a big, big difference. Number 18 is monthly subscription boxes. So subscription box industry is now worth $22.7 billion according to sub duh.

And. They could be beauty boxes or snack boxes or surprise goodies, and they often lead to you paying for things that you wouldn't buy yourself. Now, I know they're fun. It's like getting a Christmas present every single month in the mail, but if you're not using the things inside that box, then it may be something that's just adding clutter to your house.

Here's a great example. They have since passed away now, but we used to have two dogs, and when we had two dogs, we got the BarkBox. If you've ever heard of BarkBox, it's like a subscription that sends them treats and toys, and they absolutely loved it. Every single month we would get brand new toys and treats, and so we did it for like 12 months straight and.

After the 12th month of getting three or four toys every single month, we have 50 dog toys in our house that we just couldn't handle any more toys coming in. In fact, we would start to like stash away the toys to save them for the dogs when we would throw out a big stack of 'em. And so we started to have way too many treats and we started to have way too many toys, which just didn't make sense anymore.

It was building up. So if that's you, if you're not using 'em anymore, if it's just kind of building up and back logging, then try to cancel those subscriptions. 'cause a lot of times they can get pretty expensive depending on what you're looking at. A lot of those can be fun for a couple of months, but if you're really not using it, then look at canceling 'em.

Number 19, this is a big ticket. One, okay. Is expensive weddings that you can't pay off. So the average wedding costs $30,000. And my take on the wedding is that if you have the money and you wanna spend it on a wedding, more power to you. In hindsight, after my wedding, I wouldn't spend as much as we did on our wedding, but many couples are taking on debt to fund their weddings.

That my friends is not something you want to do. If you have to take on debt to fund a wedding, you are making the wrong decision. It's point blank, black and white, right there. If you wanna have a wedding, fine, but if you take on debt to fund a wedding, that is not something that you should be doing because payments are gonna linger on year over year.

For a party, and that is not something you wanna be doing. So if this is something where you don't have a huge budget, look for budget friendly venues. Look for ways that you can save money. Prioritize the guests that really matter. Look at the food costs, look at the music costs. Try to think through ways that you can save money on your wedding.

This is not a wedding competition. This is something that is special between you and your future spouse, and you need to make sure that you are spending consciously when it comes to, we'll do an entire wedding episode 'cause there's a lot of things that I could dive into on that, uh, but it would take way too much time for this one.

Number 20 is holiday gifts beyond your budget. So 35% of Americans take on debt for holiday shopping according to LendingTree and overspending to impress family and friends is the main reason why they do that, and they also impulse shop at holiday sales. Now we have a system here on how to tackle holiday debt, so you never go into debt again on the holidays, and it is treating the holidays like a bill.

So what you do is you look at how much did I spend during the holidays last year? You can look at your November or December statements add up. Every single dollar you spent for the holidays last year, and I don't care if you're listening to this in July, but in January, every single year or in July or whenever you first listen to this, what you wanna do is you wanna set up a bucket or a budget category in your high yield savings count, and you wanna start to allocate dollars towards the holidays at the beginning of every single year.

So if you start in January and you spent. $1,200 last year on the holidays, you're gonna put a hundred dollars every single month in that high yield savings account. And so by the time the holidays roll around, there's no stress. There's no anxiety. Why? 'cause the money's just there. You already have the money available and you can take that money and enjoy your holiday.

Instead of stressing and worrying about money and having anxiety about money. That is the way to treat the holidays properly, and that is the way to save for the holidays properly, so you have enough cash on. Hand really, really important, uh, to make sure that you're doing that. Every single person listening to this podcast should be doing that.

They should have a holiday fund. Number 21 is unplanned vacations on credit. Now, if you go into debt to go on vacation, you are doing it wrong. All vacations, no matter what, always need to be paid for in cash. Always, always, always, no matter what. Okay? If you do not have enough cash on hand, but you still wanna have the experiences with your family, either wait an extra year, continue to save and or.

Find a cheaper vacation each and every single year until you make more money. There is no reason whatsoever to ever go into debt for a vacation. It is going to destroy your financial future. You're gonna have high interest rates on your credit cards. It is never, ever, ever an option for you. Make sure you get that down.

It is never an option to go into debt for a vacation plan and save first, and it'll be so much better, so much more rewarding, so much more relaxing than taking some lavish vacation that you cannot pay cash for. Alright, and then number 22. The last one is lending money to friends that you know won't pay you back.

So one in three Americans lose money lending to friends and family, and it creates these really awkward relationships. So if you're gonna lend money to somebody, I would treat it as a gift. And I've always done this, I've talked about this in the past, because otherwise say you lend $2,000 to a friend, okay?

What's gonna happen is if they can't pay you that $2,000 back right away, now you're gonna get frustrated. And when you get frustrated, then you're gonna start to ask 'em, Hey, can you start paying me a little bit of that $2,000 back so I can kind of recoup what I sent over to you? And now what's gonna happen?

They're gonna get mad at you for asking for the $2,000 back. Is it fair? No, but this is always what happens when it comes to money. Psychology is now you're putting pressure on somebody else and they are going to get frustrated that you're putting that pressure on them when they don't have it yet. And so now your relationship is going to start to get damaged because you both feel like you're somehow being wronged in some way, shape, or form.

And this is what happens when it comes to money and with friendships. So instead, if you're gonna give somebody money, give it to 'em. If you value that friendship. Give it to 'em. Yeah. You heard me, right? If somebody asks you for a hundred bucks, just give it to 'em. Or if you don't have it and you don't want to give it to 'em, just say no.

Just say, Hey, I don't mix financials with friendship. I just don't think it's good for our friendship. And it's a very simple response, but you do not have people borrow money and then they pay you back and definitely don't co-sign for anybody. But those are the two big things that I want you to know and I want you to learn as time goes on here.

So these are the 22 things broke people waste money on that I want you to avoid. Listen, thank you guys so much for being here. I hope you got value outta this episode, and if you guys have questions at all, join the mastermind newsletter and you can respond to any of those newsletter issues that come out every single week.

Listen, thank you guys so much for being here. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you, and we will see you on the next episode.