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Money comes and goes, and when you consider the fact that more than half, or 58%, of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck, saving becomes as important as ever. This usually starts with cutting down on unnecessary spending.
To find out what people can do without, Redditor u/gejiw94601 made a post on r/AskReddit earlier this month, asking everyone, "What's the biggest waste of money?" Since then, it has received over 2.6k comments, prompting a discussion on our budgeting, spending habits, and everything inbetween. Here are some of the most popular answers to their question.
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#1
Weddings. Crazy expensive day. Guaranteed at least one relative will kick up a stink. Massive pressure to be The Happiest Day of Your Life. Everything doubles in cost if you say its for a wedding (dress, suit, cake, venue) Just do the quick registry office paperwork, have a surpise party and run away for a long honeymoon with the money you saved.
PinchAssault52 , Photos by Lanty Report
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Bernd Herbert Bernd Herbert Community Member Follow
who did come up with the saying that this is supposed to be the "happiest day of your life" anyway?I can think of a dozen other days immediately which are far more life-changing. Come to think of it, does anything really change when you get married? Your daily life just goes on as it did before.
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#2
Buying ridiculously expensive clothes to flex.
PinkLemon4 , Valentin Angel Fernandez Report
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Loverboy Loverboy Community Member Follow
People who are really rich don't dress like it. Designer clothes usually aren't the best quality anyway.
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#3
Those that are donated to house of worships, for pastors to buy private jets & catholic priest to play dress up
hhempstead , Clay Banks Report
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Loverboy Loverboy Community Member Follow
Just give to the needy yourself. I feel like they donate more because of the religion and less because they actually care.
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#4
NFT artwork.
mila_OF , KAL VISUALS Report
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Beautys solace Beautys solace Community Member Follow
right click 'save image as'
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#5
War...what is it good for.......?
Bladerunner2028 , Pixabay Report
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LK LK Community Member Follow
What is it good for... raising the profits of the war industry. Thus raising the wealth of a few individuals. What is it bad for .... I don't have enough time to answer this question.
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#6
Cigarettes. $13+ for a pack of cancer
Myzx , Mikael Seegen Report
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DarcyRose DarcyRose Community Member Follow
$50 AUD
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#7
Giving your money to the Catholic Church. You’ve got to be f*****g kidding me.
Differentdog , Channel 82 Report
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Gabriele Alfredo Pini Gabriele Alfredo Pini Community Member Follow
I'm not in accord with this. I have plenty to say against my late priest as he didn't have time for his seminarists, but he always donated everything he could to the poors. Everyone who need something and went to his door got whatever he had, to the point that the local Charitas had a discussion with him because often he was tricked by conmen.The same Charitas help a lot of people, often people that didn't want any help to maintain the appearance, so they are helped in secret.A falling tree makes more noise than an entire growing forest
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#8
Donating to rich twitch streamers. I’ll probably never understand why people do it.
dring157 , Fausto Sandoval Report
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Olivia Lisbon Olivia Lisbon Community Member Follow
How about that time people donated to Kylie Jenner so she could be the youngest ever (“self-made” 😂) billionaire?
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#9
Gambling for sure
snazyfragz , Kaysha Report
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LK LK Community Member Follow
My husband and I fairly often bet. But only with each other, and only with kisses. One of us wins, but the other doesn't lose. :o)
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#10
Donating to politicians.
__Arty__ , Andrea Piacquadio Report
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K W K W Community Member Follow
In the US, before Citizens United made corporations people and allowed them free reign to donate everywhere, it did matter where people donated their money. There have been some amazing grassroots campaigns funded mostly by actual citizens.
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#11
Buying pro-grade stuff you don't need is wasted money. My dad once told me to not spend excessive money on tools at first. Buy them for dirt cheap, learn which tools you really need, and when they break, replace them with quality ones.
HarlequinSyndrom , cottonbro studio Report
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Con O Cuinn Con O Cuinn Community Member Follow
Cheap tools are a great way to get hurt
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#12
Coronations and monarchies in general.
Fife_Flyer , wikimedia.commons Report
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DarcyRose DarcyRose Community Member Follow
Aussie here. Bring on a republic. Monarchies are outdated and irrelevant
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#13
Diamond rings.
stoned2life , Sabrianna Report
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Gillbella Gillbella Community Member Follow
But... But... Sparkly!
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#14
Twitter verification.
Ev_anaga , Brett Jordan Report
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K W K W Community Member Follow
For only 8 USD you can affect the stock market with fake tweets. I think it's absolutely horrible but that seems like an extremely cheap way to advance your supervillain career.
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#15
Cryptocurrency.
ImAnAgentOfChaos1322 , Behnam Norouzi Report
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David Wambold David Wambold Community Member Follow
It is fake money and only has value so long as people believe in it. It has become a way to scam people out of money. Incidentally values have dropped from about $3 trillion to about $1 trillion. So someone other than investors is getting rich. Also does not have the regulations of stocks.
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#16
Celebrity meet and greets. I have a friend who is not very well off financially, and is complaining about money to me once a week. Yet she always seems to have money to pay for a celebrity meet and greet at least twice a year. Some of them are only a couple hundred dollars, but some can get really expensive, really fast. For what? A picture next to a famous person? They neither know you, nor do they care about you.
PuddlesRex , Thirdman Report
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zena bena zena bena Community Member Follow
Really how dumb
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#17
Astrology.
Tink2013 Report
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Panda Boi Panda Boi Community Member Follow
My ex was into astrology, it Taurus apart.
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#18
Overdraft fees. Like, the bank should know better than anybody that I have no money. So what are you trying to take?
Dominion_23 Report
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Billy Harrelson Billy Harrelson Community Member Follow
And some banks charge an extra $5-$10 everyday your account is in the negative. This is why I switched to a credit union. The overdraft for mine is $12, but they won't let you get into the negative to begin with and sometimes they'll forgive the overdraft.
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#19
Third-party delivery i.e. DoorDash/Uber Eats/GrubHub The fees + tips are exorbantly high, and a normally affordable fast food meal becomes the price of a sit-down restaurant meal or more. This is from first hand experience lol
aylubb , cottonbro studio Report
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BewilderedBanana BewilderedBanana Community Member Follow
You have the option to spend time to get the food yourself, or spend money to have someone else get it for you. So it depends on whether you value your time more or less than your money
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#20
Playing the lottery.
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Helena Helena Community Member Follow
For a couple bucks you can daydream about what you would do if you won the lottery. It is cheap hope you can get occasionally.
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#21
Starbucks - bahhhh
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Gommaus Gommaus Community Member Follow
As an italian no starbucks for me. To be fair I thought it ended like Domino, opened here and closed in 6 months.
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#22
Unnecessary plastic surgery
No-Independence-6842 , cottonbro studio Report
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Loverboy Loverboy Community Member Follow
Some people struggle with body image and feel like they need to, and while it is a waste of money, you can't really get mad at them.
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#23
Gold Food, or more accurately food that are covered in something called gold leaf. In my eyes, food are worth buying if they provide a great amount of nutrition for considerably good prices. After all, you probably avoid paying 50 million dollars just to buy a few molecules that are useless to your health and needs And then there's gold leaf food, sure the food looks fancy but at the cost of ludicrous amount of money! And with the gold having no usable nutrients at all, it just not worth it to buy such expensive food for relatively small amount of nutrients For instance, Industry Kitchen(hopefully that's the name of the place) at NYC serves a pizza with a gold leaf covering for a whopping price of $2000. While at my home country which is Indonesia, Domino's serves an American Classic Cheeseburger Pizza(idk that's a thing) which is the most expensive pizza I could find on the website costs around $7 which is just baffling to me
ScopeRicrit , Dani Rendina Report
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Donkeywheel Donkeywheel Community Member Follow
An entire gold leaf (8x8cm or 10x10cm) costs around 1 euro/1 dollar. The small part used to decorate a cake, a pastry or whatever in a dish costs only a few cents. You are definitely not paying for the gold added. And stop with the b******t about nutrition, it’s purely a cheap (yes cheap) decoration, it’s not about feeding you. Then if you’re stupid enough to buy a $2000 pizza you’re a moron, it’s not about the gold leaf.
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#24
iPhones.
UnitedSteakOfAmerica Report
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Daria Daria Community Member Follow
After getting an iPod back in 2006 I decided I'd never spend a buck on anything made by Apple. No Android device has ever failed me.
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#25
Cod points or any other online game currency bs. Yeah its cool at first but meh after you realize you spent $20 for basically nothing.
ididtrybutijustcant , Axville Report
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OneSoulHero OneSoulHero Community Member Follow
Ugh. I feel for this recently. And am not proud to admit it. A stupid mobile game no less. But the chests were so tempting. And it made my character stronger. Sigh.... I spent about 200$... :( lol
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#26
Bottled water.
Mhyra91 , Francesco Paggiaro Report
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Weasel Wise Weasel Wise Community Member Follow
Go to anywhere in central America, most anywhere in SE Asia, Flint Michigan.....drink the water from the faucet and then come back the next day (as your guts bubble and you struggle not to shít yourself) and mention how useless bottled water is.
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#27
Pod style coffee makers
LOUDCO-HD Report
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Aileen Grist Aileen Grist Community Member Follow
Bad for the planet too - all those pods in the landfills
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#28
Fireworks, i love them, but it's like 50$ per second for the good ones.
endisnigh-ish , Zuza Gałczyńska Report
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Weasel Wise Weasel Wise Community Member Follow
Traumatize and terrify your pets, the war veterans in your community, and all the wildlife nearby for just $50/second!!!
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#29
Any dating apps subscription - like find out who liked you now for only a billion dollars!
tonyhawk101 , Tim Mossholder Report
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Barbara Barbara Community Member Follow
A friend of mine paid on Tinder to see who liked him. That's how he met his now wife.
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#30
Tipping.
Mediocre-Material102 Report
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Charmaine Blackley Charmaine Blackley Community Member Follow
I don't get this. Just pay your staff a decent living wage.
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Note: this post originally had 44 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
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Julie Snelling Julie Snelling Community Member Follow
If something makes you happy it's not a waste of money.
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Bruhwhydothat Bruhwhydothat Community Member Follow
Personally I would put Jordans everyone is flexing them and why would you spend a lot of something on your feet
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kitties kitties Community Member Follow
Money may not buy happiness, but it sure seems like more fun to cry on a yacht.
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Julie Snelling Julie Snelling Community Member Follow
If something makes you happy it's not a waste of money.
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Bruhwhydothat Bruhwhydothat Community Member Follow
Personally I would put Jordans everyone is flexing them and why would you spend a lot of something on your feet
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kitties kitties Community Member Follow
Money may not buy happiness, but it sure seems like more fun to cry on a yacht.
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