Do Not Throw Away Your Money
Hello dear readers! This post continues the series of articles about what you should never do with your money. Without further ado let’s get to the list of things that will make a hole in your budget.
Expensive Coffee
Photo by Fahmi Fakhrudin on Unsplash
The first thing on today’s schedule that you should never do with your money is buying expensive coffee at a coffee shop. I think we can all agree that people spend way too much money on caffeine whether it is from Starbucks or wherever you are buying coffee beans and brewing your own coffee. At the same time, I do not think we quite understand how big of a problem this coffee spending addiction actually is. According to a report Money Matters by Acorns the average person spends $1,100 each year on coffee on top of that 41% of the Millennials surveyed admitted that they spend more money on coffee than they contribute to their retirement account. That is ridiculous to be spending more than you are contributing towards a retirement account.
If we look deeper at what the actual cost difference between coffee at a coffee shop is then you would be surprised to learn that when you brew your own coffee at home it can cost you as little as 27 cents a day and a simple math gives us just about $100 each year. So when you compare the cost of making coffee at home at $100 per year to the amount the average person spends at a coffee shop which is $1,100 per year it is crystal clear that people are spending over 1,000% more when they go and buy coffee at a coffee shop. Stop doing that and better opt in for a cheaper option of making your own coffee at home.
Gym Membership
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The second item on the list of things you should never do with your money is paying for a gym membership that you are not using. There is the great value of a gym membership if you actually use one and this is one of the best investments you can make in keeping up your own health and making sure that you know you look pretty good at the beach.
Let’s get back to the unused gym membership problem and it is apparently a lot worse than you could imagine. According to a report from RunRepeat on gym memberships and participation they have some staggering results. The average cost of a gym membership is $44 per month and if you use this membership regularly it is a worthwhile investment. However, they found that only 37% are actually using that gym membership and the rest 63% of gym memberships are never used. It makes it around two-thirds of the people out there who have a gym membership never go to the gym. Please check if you have active gym membership but do not actually use it, do yourself a favor and cancel it today.
Rebates
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The last thing on today's agenda of things you should never do with your money is buying products with rebates if you have no intention of filling out the rebate and getting a discount at a later date. It might sound like common sense but it is really not and stores will use it to their advantage for as long as people will be buying things and forgetting to claim rebates. It is pretty common for someone to buy something from a store, get the receipt and mail the rebate in to only figure out three months later that they forgot to attach the receipt. As I have said before rebates actually make a lot of sense from a marketing perspective because it is a way to advertise a lower price than you are actually getting charged for at the store and the companies that offer rebates know very well that many people will never even fill out those rebates and as a result they are offering them a sale price. Having said that, it does not mean that you should not fill rebates out, especially if you are spending money on something you would not ordinarily buy simply because it has a rebate.
Now, if you are curious how much money people are wasting on unused rebates you are not alone. A report from Consumer Affairs shows over $500 million in rebates go unclaimed every year. That is why companies offer rebates on their products because many people never redeem them. Buyers are leaving half a billion dollars on the table because they are not going to mail in the receipt and take those steps to fill out that rebate. This is why it is important to make sure if you buy a product with a rebate to fill out the form and mail it in.
These are the things that you should never do with your money and if you know somebody who is doing any of these things with their money please share this post with them and maybe it will be a wake-up call for them. Please check other articles in the series on what you should never waste your money on.
