If you like to waste money by being stupid, forgetful, and lazy, here’s five ways to do it.

DMV Registration Late Fee – $39

Why pay your car registration on-time? Live life “dangerously” by delaying your smog check and car registration. If you hold out long enough, the penalty fee along with your chance of getting car impounded increases exponentially!

Fix-It Ticket from Expired Registration – $10

If registering your car late isn’t cool enough, try driving around a busy city with expired registration tags, you’re bound to get noticed by a police officer or two — especially once they run your plate and realize your car is registered from a county 400 miles away!

Street Cleaning Parking Ticket – $50

Pulled over by popo too exciting for you?  Just ignore NO PARKING signs or assume that the street you parked on is a-okay. For extra cool points, get yourself pull over along with a parking ticket within the span of 3 hours — Lord knows someone was able to pull that off.

Balance Transfer Snafu Finance Charges – $161

If you think using 0% APR offers and credit card arbitrate is cool, try taking advantage of 18 months offers when credit was abundant (circa 2007) and ignore/forget when your balance transfer promotion ends. From 0% to 14.95% on a $13,000 balance? Super cool.

Overdue Fees for Library Books – $16

For the less adventurous types, overdue fees from returning library books  late is the perfect way to rack up dollars in stupid tax.  Score bonus points by bringing books with you while on vacation abroad and neglecting to renew the books ONLINE — because we all know that extra convenience factor the library added for you is just for show.

Got other ways to waste money that wasn’t listed here? Maybe something your brother’s friend’s cousin did? Sharing (anonymously) is caring.

This post "Five Ways to Waste $276 Because Money Grows on Tree" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

• Intel Atom 1.6 Ghz (ala Pentium M 1.2 Ghz in performance), 512 MB of RAM, 80 GB SATA HDD, GMA 950, 1.3 mp webcam, 3 cell battery and Windows XP Home.
• 9.8 x 7.2 x 1.08 inches; 2.4 lbs; $429 MSRP.
• Hands-on Video from Laptopmag on Youtube.

When the netbook market started getting more of a traction last year due to the release of the Asus EEE PC — I proclaimed aloud into an empty room on how I’ll never buy a wannabe laptop with zero functionality, battery life, and processing power. Soon after the declaration, I closed the Firefox tab and went back to my intensive game of Minesweeper.

A little over a year later, while on a different Firefox tab browsing through Fatwallet, I saw a ridiculously low-priced Lenovo IdeaPad S10 ($362 after coupon and Live.com cashback), whipped out my credit card and hit the submit button on the ordering page before I even knew what happened.

Hmm… f*ck.

But truthfully the impulsive purchase wasn’t as impulsive as it reads, because I knew there was quite a time frame involved before the Lenovo S10 was available to ship, giving me some time to cancel the order (and now it seems that shipping time frame will be even longer, maybe all the way into November).

After some consideration of other netbooks in similar configurations — such as the Asus EEE PC 1000H; the MSI Wind; the nicely priced Acer Aspire One ($400 for 6 cell on Amazon); and the recently released Dell Mini 9 — I decided to keep my order of the Lenovo IdeaPad S10, even with Lenovo’s entire sketchy pre-ordering ordeal (if you’ve also ordered an IdeaPad S10, you’ll know what I’m talking about).

The decision process was as follow:

1. Not much of a laptop person (in fact, never owned one), but got sick of bumming laptops off friends and family when I needed the mobility.
2. With netbooks pricing of around $350 to $550, you’re coming close to various categories of budget laptops, which are usually 15″ machines weighting at about 6.5+ pounds.  Not my cup of tea.
3. A full-feature portable laptop (that’s under 3 or 4 pounds) will cost more than $1,500… and I’m just too much of a cheap ass to spend that much.
4. Recent netbooks are equipped with bigger hard drives and Windows XP, giving you the option to run other applications so you can do more than just surf and type.

In either case, the Lenovo isn’t shipping until supposedly September 23rd (realistically a much later date), so I’ll have many more nights to sleep on the purchase.  But I think I’ll end up keeping the order — after all, blogging in a Starbucks or Panera Bread has always been my childhood dream.

Update: Just for those people stumbling in via search engine looking for updates, Lenovo has updated the ship date to 10/21/2008. If you’ve ordered a white one within hours when it was available on Lenovo’s site, you should have yours shipped recently on 9/23/08. Supposedly the white ones are shipping first. Meh!

This post "Woops, Bought a Lenovo IdeaPad S10 Netbook" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

Just came back from a weekend getaway cruise (first cruise! snapshot above).

Here’s what I’ve learned:

• The ocean can be quite scary at night.
• Tall places with little railing is also a bit scary.
• Apparently, I’m still a wuss.
• Not locking or turning off your cell phone while roaming can cost you an extra $24.95 in charges.

I forgot to lock the keypad on my Blackberry while I was dancing badly aboard the cruise ship, and an accidental call was made to a friend. Thankfully her answering machine only allowed a message length of four minutes, or else I’ll be weeping terribly as I write this post.

Half an hour after the accidental call, my friend checked the message and called me back, wondering why she wasn’t invited to whatever party I was at. The call went straight to my voicemail box, as I didn’t have reception by the time she called back.

Here’s the kicker:

If you have T-Mobile, as per their International Roaming FAQ, unless you switch your device off or activate Unconditional Call Forwarding on your device, you will be billed for calls delivered to your voice mail box while you are roaming internationally.

So even though I didn’t pick up the call or check the voicemail, I was charged the spectacular rate of $4.99 per minute for receiving a voicemail message while roaming.

Ouch.

If you have T-Mobile and you see an expensive call coming from 805-637-7249 on your bill, you were most likely charged for receiving a voicemail while roaming internationally. Turn off your phone or lock your keypad and save some money.

The really stupid part is that this is the third time I’ve accidentally made a call while traveling abroad. You’d think I’ll learn by now…

This post "Stupid: Not Locking Your Phone While Roaming Internationally" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

I know. It’s not very exciting.

Pre-ordering the latest iPhone; splurging on a Pleo; or painting my car in ‘race flame red’ would all be a more exciting headline. But alas, being the boring hermit that I am, I bought a $30 bookshelf at IKEA.

After all, I need a sensible place to put my adult material DVDs — I mean, reference books for personal development…

Right. That’s it. Reference books.

One gripe: the IKEA site listed the bookcase as $19.99, but the store in Costa Mesa, CA has it for $29.99. Oh well.

This post "Woops, Bought a Bookcase" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

So the pay day has finally come. I can finally cash out and say what I’ve always wanted to say to colleagues, family, and friends — because I’m stinking rich. It is strange that lucky events often happens to me on April First of every year – but who am I to deny destiny?

What to do first? Perhaps buy myself another private jet? Or another 3 series from BMW? But why stop at the poor man’s M3?

With odds of 1 in 175,711,536 for the Mega Millions, many of us would expect that many Americans would know better to avoid sinking money into lottery tickets — but unfortunately according to a survey from the Consumer Federation of America, 21% of Americans still believe lottery to be a practical means of wealth accumulation.

You can argue that when the jackpot reaches a certain astronomical value, the positive expected value would warrant a lottery ticket purchase. And we can throw other factors such as after-tax results, taking the lump sum, more than one person winning into the equation, and have some math debate about probability theory — but in general, it is still safe to say that most lottery tickets are a crappy bet.

Anyhow, who cares? I’m stinking rich.

Sure, it’s a bit strange that I’ve won a lottery that I haven’t entered myself into, but hey, a “National Lottery” from the city of Istanbul can’t be wrong!

Related Post & Articles:

• Woops, I Bought a Priavte Jet
• Woops, I Bought a BMW 325i
  
• Stop Buying Crap #15 – Lottery Tickets
• Why poor people win the lottery – from MSN Money

This post "Woops, I Won the Lottery!" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

There is a very, very good reason why this post is showing up in the middle of the night.

1. Maybe I’ll get less heat for buying this.
2. Maybe I can delete this post before anyone reads it.
3. The picture from the previous post is creeping me out.

Last year, I tried to buy some new rims for the car. The deal didn’t pan out, so I just sort of pretend I never wanted the wheels in the first place.  All was well until the tire tread on my Bridgestone Potenza RE950 started wearing out.

And so, after some tough decision making while in the bathroom, I decided to buy some new wheels along with the new tires.  My justification? Uh… I can save some money by putting them both on the car at the same time? Hah.

Of course, the wheels were delivered to my house after I left Southern California for Northern California. I never got to put them on at the same time.

Here are some reasons why this purchase was stupid:

1. The wheels are still NOT on my car. They’re 400 miles away, sitting at home.
2. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the original wheels on my car, other than them being “ugly” steel wheels with hubcaps.
3. Car accessories tend to depreciate in value, along with the already depreciating car (kindly noted by dforester in the previous post).
4. Did I mention I bought something that I’m not even using?

Other than those reasons above, they’re pretty cool. Cost a little bit under $400 for all four. About 12 pounds each at 15 x 6.5, 4 x 100, and +38 offset.

Can’t wait to put them on the car one day… heh.

Related Post:

• Woops, Bought a Blackberry 8100
• Woops, Bought a Widescreen 19″ LCD Monitor

This post "Woops, Bought Some New Wheels/Rims" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

Last month, in anticipation of my move from one part of California to another, I decided to ditch Verizon Wireless and switch to T-Mobile, as my plan didn’t have free long distance, nor did it have nationwide coverage (it was some obscure, cheap local plan that Verizon doesn’t even offer anymore).

Anyhow, long story short, I went with the white Blackberry 8100 Pearl, since you can now find it “free” from many online retailers (plus $50 cash-back after mail in rebate). Got the white one because it’s prettier (heh).

At first, free for a ~$300 phone sounds cool, but of course you gotta get the two year contract. Plus a plan that’s at least $39.99, and a data plan for $19.99 (minimum of six months). Don’t forget the setup fee of $35.

So in total I paid $10 for some random service charge the wireless dealer charged for the phone. The $50 rebate will cover that charge plus the initial setup fee, whenever the rebate gods decides to mail the check to me.

First month’s bill? $89.95 (eeesh).

And so the phone’s hardly free, as I’m required to have a $20 data plan for six month that I otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.

I’ve also bought a $27 micro SD memory card (2 gb). Which was a bit stupid because:

1. It’s been establish that I don’t listen to music
2. I don’t really care much for taking pictures too

I was thinking about canceling the data plan after six months, but now that I have email, internet and Google map (at a slow speed of 115 kbps) at my fingertips, I’m swaying a bit in my decision (plus you can plug the Pearl into any laptop and use it as a modem).

At the end, I’ll still most likely cancel the data plan, as $60+ a month for a cell phone service is just too bling bling for this cheap bastard (although Google map really saved my ass lately as I roam around the streets of Mountain View and San Fransisco).

The phone’s camera is fairly neato too:

Yesterday, I went to Target in Sunnyvale to stock up on food and random household supplies. To my ghetto surprise, the Target in question was a two-story building! Wowzer!

My first thought was: how the heck are they going to get the shopping cart onto the second floor? And then my question was answered:

An escalator for shopping carts! Wooooo!

Naturally, I quickly took out my fancy new phone, snapped a picture (as my fellow escalator riders looked on with dismay), and continued to ogle all over the contraption as people walk by trying not to stare.

Good times.

Related Post:

• Stop Buying Crap #9 – Mobile Phones
  

This post "Woops, Bought a Blackberry 8100" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

Being the super famous, A-list, filthy-rich professional blogger that I am, I decided to get myself a nicer ride than the poor man’s M3 that I bought last year, the Gulfstream 550 (coincidentally purchased on the same date).

At a price tag of about $40 million, my new Gulfstream has a seating configuration of 16 (because all A-list bloggers should have a decent size posse). With cruising range of around 12,000 km, I can now travel to from Los Angeles to São Paulo without any issue.

Some Gulfstream 550 facts:

• Crew: 1-2 pilots, 2 attendents
• 14-19 passengers
• Cruise speed: 0.85 mach
• Range: 6,750 nautical miles
• Price: $33 ~ $43 million
• Annual fixed cost: $820,000
• Variable hourly cost: $3,500

At a somewhat hefty fixed cost of $820,000, about a quarter of which is for the captain and co-pilot, I decided to be the thrifty blogger that I am and get an airline transport pilot certification (and also lasik surgery to get my eyesights corrected).

Unfortunately pilot training was tougher than I thought, so I’m now down about another $60,000 for the non-refundable tuition fees. It’s alright though, the point was to travel in comfort, and although the Gulfstream’s four electronic flight instrument system displays are quite spiffy, looking at it for hours on end is not my idea of fun.

Now to look for some hot (male or female) flight attendants…

This post "Woops, I Bought a Private Jet" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

Everytime I act like a cheap bastard, I get my ass handed to me.

Most college students know that college and university parking spaces availability are always built to accomodate a third of the student population; because of the scarcity, most college students also know that when you park at school without a permit, you’re asking for a parking ticket.

Knowing this, I still tried to avoid paying for the extremely low-priced parking permit, which was $20 per semester (ticket is $17). I kept thinking that since I have night classes I can get away with it; because you know, it’s dark at night and they can’t see my car. *rolleyes*

Related Stupidness:

• Consistently Winning the Dumbass Award
• Don’t Be a Cheap Ass Like Me

This post "Woops, Got a Parking Ticket for Being Cheap" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

Unfortunate long time readers (i.e., my dad) would remember that I bought a brand spankin’ new 17″ monitor back in May 2005 — for a wacky price tag of $350 (just because it can pivot, rotate, and have a 8ms response time).

So why buy another monitor, the Samsung 941BW?

Um… because it’s widescreen? And there was a rebate?

$225.35 from Buy.com + $17.47 (tax) – $20 (Google checkout discount) – $40 (Samsung rebate) = $182.85

As if I really need the non-standard 16:10 aspect ratio, the extra screen space from the uncommon 1440 x 900 resolution, and the fast 4 ms response time.

What happened to the old monitor? It’s now set at the vertical portrait view setting, sitting beside the new monitor. Do I really need two monitors? Uh…

At the end, H.264 on widescreen + hypocrisy = yummy.

This post "Woops, Bought a Widescreen 19″ LCD Monitor" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

I think I’m now dying? Sure feels like it.

At least I get 3% back for using my newly converted Chase Freedom card. That’ll pay for the future heart transplant. Woot!

This post "Woops, Kept Buying Fast Food" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

That’s what I get for buying an el cheapo $40 power supply. If you read the Newegg.com customer review, you’ll notice a spike in negative review after the one year period as the power supply starts to fail (mine lasted for two years). Quite funny.

Was about to blow $100+ on a new power supply till I caught up on my hardware knowledge and decided on the Enhance ENP-5140GH, an 80-plus certified 400W bad boy for a fairly low price of $60. Woot!

This post "Woops, Bought a New Power Supply" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

Looks like I got the ending date for one of my 0% balance transfer off, and thus incurred some finance charges.

If you’re curious about making money via 0% balance transfer, MyMoneyBlog.com has a very good series on “How To Make Money From 0% APR Balance Transfers.”

One key thing on doing these offers is to actually remember when the 0% offer ends. Hah.

This post "Woops, Got Finance Charges from Balance Transfer" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

Probably because of this:

According to the email, the incomplete transfer was due to insufficient fund—which made me realized that I must have tried to make the transfer from the wrong checking account. Having poor alphanumeric capability is quite a curse.

A quick phone call to the number above got me a service rep, telling me that only a “techie” can un-suspend bank-to-bank transfer, and that they’re only available at 8 AM EST.

Another call at 8:01 AM got me a different service rep, who told me that she’ll forward an inquiry to a techie, who’ll get back to me via e-mail or phone within 4 business days.

In the mean time, a friendly reminder to all who use HSBC Direct, if they ever encounter any problem with a bank-to-bank transfer, you will most likely have your bank-to-bank transfer service suspended immediately without notice. It’s all in the User Agreement.

Reinstatement shouldn’t be an issue. I hope.

In the mean time, the dinero was sent to the new Amboy Direct account instead.

This post "Woops, HSBC Bank-to-Bank Transfer Service Suspended" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

Two months ago I placed a 50% deposit on new wheels for the car: big, shinny, spinning wheels. Hah, just kidding. They’re actually 15×6.5, 4×100, +40 offset, and only about 11 pounds each. Somehow convinced myself that I needed these new rims.

Unfortunately (or luckily), I received a refund on the $200 deposit today. The rims have been out of production in Japan for some time now, and the new attempt to get the rims back into production fell through.

Other lightweight 15″ rims are around $400 each. Argh.

This post "Woops, Bought Some Rims" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

Couple of things to consider.

1. As the lie gets more complicated and detailed, the fact that it’s a lie becomes even more apparent.
2. The B&N cashier can careless why I’m returning it.
3. The real truth, that it’s buyers remorse, or—it’s too flippin’ expensive—would have been just fine.

Flash black to last week.

“Oh snap, the new book from ____ is out!”

“Ack. The queue at the library is over 10 and there’s only 3 copies.”

Went to buy gift certificate for mommy. Suddenly I’m in front of a B&N. “Hey, do you have a copy of ____? I can’t seem to find it.”

After five minutes of searching. “Ah it’s alright, I’ll just come back another time.” Whew. Good thing they don’t have it in stock. Saved!

No joke here, right before I left, the B&N worker stopped me at the door. “Hey, weren’t you looking for ____?”

“Ah you found it! Sweet! Thanks.” Dammit all.

“That’ll be $27.65,” said the cashier.

• $20.76 + shipping at B&N.com
• $16.35 + shipping at Amazon
• $15.53 + $1.40 at Overstock

Free at the library, if I would just have the patience to wait.

This post "Woops, Bought a $27 Book" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

Investigators in South Bend, Ind., said there has been a rash of oven door thefts recently, and now they know why.

Oh man. When I first read the story, I thought people were crazy (aka stupid). Turns out, there were some level of sophistication involved in the scam. Check out the story over at Wesh.com, and take a look at the slideshow.

I hate doing repost, but yeah this one is too wacky to pass up. Story from the Consumerist.

This post "Woops, Bought Fake Flat Panel TVs (aka Oven Doors)" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

Spring break and all. Too much drinky-winky (just kidding I don’t drink).

I paid my Citi Dividend card late by two days (it was due 3/20), so it was hit with a late fee. See, I was fiddling around with my money by opening a new checking at my credit union, and they were ACHing around—blah blah—and in the mist of things I forgot to schedule payment to the new checking. Poor excuse, I know.

Man, $39.00 is a lot of money. That’ll buy 15 boxes of Cap N’ Crunch. Hmm…

I think I’ll ask them to remove the fee. Because if you want to get rid of fees, just ask!

Update: Citi refunded the late fee. Woot!

This post "Woops, Paid My Credit Card Late!" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

But yeah I probably could have waited longer, maybe till November when prices drop more, as next year’s model roll out.

My new 2006 BMW 325i 6MT:

It was a really tough decision, I’ve been debating over it for the past few months now between the new 3 series versus the new 06 Lexus IS line-ups, specifically the BMW 325i versus the Lexus IS 250. After many debates, I went with the “Ultimate Driving Machine.”

The lowdown on Invoice:

• 2006 325i 6MT: $28,300
• Premium Package: $2,640
• Metallic Paint: $430
• The silly iDrive Navigation System: $1,820
• Invoice Total w/ destination: $33,885

What I paid:

• Negotiated $35,300 for car
• 7.75% CA sales tax + fees
• Out of the door: $38,140
• $24,000 down, 5.49% APY
• 36 months loan, monthly payment of: $427

Not really a spectacular deal or anything, but at least I didn’t get rip off.

So, can I afford it?

Who cares!? It’s only a little bit more than the previous ride’s monthly payment. No biggie! Insurance adds up, but eh I’ll worry about it later. It’s not so bad really, first 3 year’s regular maintenaince is on BMW.

Already found a buyer for my old 2001 Honda Civic, gonna see if I can get rid of some small dents and scratches before I unload it, otherwise my other car’s in pretty good condition. (Oh man, always wanted to say that).

Yeah it’s a poor man’s M3, but hey it’s 5 years already, time for a new ride!

This post "Woops, I Bought a BMW 325i" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.

Came back with extra goodies.

Couldn’t help it. They were going 3 for $4.50. It’s a steal.

This post "Woops, Bought More Crap (Again)" is from StopBuyingCrap.com.