Web Wealth: Money wasters
A lot of everyday spending is really a waste of money. Here are websites where you can admit your wastefulness, examine other people's spendthrift ways, and learn how to correct yourself.
A lot of everyday spending is really a waste of money. Here are websites where you can admit your wastefulness, examine other people's spendthrift ways, and learn how to correct yourself.
Spendster.org. See the adult who bought a Harry Potter sword, a kid who spends money on guitars but can't play one, and a woman who buys anything with a sunflower painted on it. Spendster.org asks people how they've wasted their money, then calculates what that money would have been worth if invested wisely. Upload your confession video.
Big-ticket waste. Yahoo Finance offers a selection of big-ticket consumer purchases that don't get used - at least not much. Among them are swimming pools, outdoor kitchens, and espresso-makers. As one commenter notes, a number of the listed items are of the sort you should buy used, if you buy them at all, including exercise equipment and that espresso-maker.
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Bad habits. Kiplinger.com's practical list of 25 financial habits that waste money. Among them are carrying a credit balance instead of paying the bill each month, paying ATM fees, impulse buying, attempting to time the stock market, and failing to unplug "energy vampires" - TV sets and other electronics that draw electricity while turned off. Auto waste. Fake-news and bad-advice site Frumious Bandersnatch says there's no way to avoid being had, so it gives advice on satisfying ways to do it, starting with how to be most wasteful in buying a new car, or a used one. In the latter case, it suggests, "If you feel compelled to purchase a warranty, only pay extra for the warranty if the car dealer's offices are in a trailer which still has its wheels on." Stacks of waste. This podcast from NPR talks about one way the government wastes money - it continues to manufacture, by congressional decree, $1 coins that nobody wants. Apparently, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the pocket weights are stacked in vaults around the country.
Contact staff writer Reid Kanaley at 215-854-5114, rkanaley@phillynews.com, or @ReidKan on Twitter. Read his columns at www.philly.com/kanaley