Stop Buying Crap #1
Posted by Cap in Stop Buying Crap! |Stop Buying Crap #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 | #7 | #8 | #9 | #10 | #11 | #12
With the help of my friend Peter, I’m going to list some crap we can all stop buying.
Books that you won’t read. My friend Peter is a real book worm (and he loves to play with frogs). He got me into a series of silly fantasy books. (yup, we’re geeks) “Hey Cap! Let’s read them together and discuss about them later okay??” And Peter never read them. He’s too busy with school or some other crap. Wasted money? $34+
Movies that you won’t watch. My friend Peter is also a real DVD addict. He loves to buy movies. This is good for me, because I get to borrow them for free. Sometimes, he buys so many movies that he doesn’t even have time to watch them all. Again, he’s too busy with that silly school thing. He wants to become a doctor. *pff* Well Pete my boy, a doctor doesn’t have time to watch DVDs! Stop buying them! Wasted money? $200+
DVD-R/CD-R that you don’t use. Now my friend James thinks he’s smarter. He doesn’t buy DVDs or CDs. He gets his fix from DVD-R/CD-R. The thing about this is that he ends up with a bigger collection than Peter, which he doesn’t even have time to watch, play, listen to, or use. It should also be note that although CD-R Medias are dirt cheap now, the same can’t be said for DVD-R Medias. Here are some questions you should ask yourself. Do you honestly need a DVD collection of 500 movies? You save money by buying them in bundles, but do you really need to burn/copy all those things? Do you find yourself just looking for things to download so you can burn them? So yeah. Wasted money? $50+
Fast Food that’s bad for you. Okay, I’ve ate my share of $0.99 two tacos at Jack in the Box. Or $0.99 double cheeseburger at McDonalds. In fact, sometimes my dinner would be 6 tacos from Jack in the Box. My freshmen year in college consist of 70% fast food, 20% cereals, and 10% junk food. Besides being bad for your health, they really do add up in prices, even if you eat the value meal. Refer to my “Eating out and Thin Wallets” piece. Wasted money? $365+ (assuming $0.99 Two Tacos per day at Jack in the Box)
That’s all for this edition of Stop Buying Crap. Got some crap in mind that all of us should avoid buying, or at least buy in limited amount? Let me know!
9 Comments to “Stop Buying Crap #1”
Leave a Comment
Easiest $100 Ever »
« Market Research that Pays $100 for your time
January 15th, 2006 at 11:25 am
I decided to stop eating at McD’s and spend the money on a course to upgrade my job. It’s much more satisfying in the long run.
I do buy too many books, but I sell the ones I don’t have time to read — at a small profit of course. =) And I watch lots of movies… that and reading is my entertainment.
January 16th, 2006 at 6:42 am
good idea on that. I still gulp down fast food occasionally, the sodium amount is killing me.
I use to spend too much on books too, I had this dream of a private library collection.. now, I just visit the local library.
June 4th, 2006 at 7:01 am
I have found the last few times I ate out fast food, it would have been better skipping the meal. For the love of God, can we not have healthy,GOOD fast food???? The fried chicken(Chicken Express) was the worst, then there was Whataburger,I actually sent a nasty email to corporate on that one,not only was the food bad, they didn’t get it right,and they shortchanged me.
I have decided if I eat out, I will go to a decent place,and sit and enjoy the food.We have a small Italian place here that has the best you can find.
We need to wake up to the fact we are killing ourselves with CRAP.
August 22nd, 2006 at 1:52 pm
You have to do a segment, especially for women, about buying relatively inexpensive, but stupid and blatantly unuseful “gifts” given for stupid occasions. If I could have a nickel for every $15-$25 gift my wife has bought for someone just to be “polite”…it’s one of the biggest wastes of money I know, and I’ve only been married for two years! Why do men not give these gifts? Why don’t men get mad at other men when they don’t give each other these gifts. It would save everyone a lot of time and money if friends just jointly decided to save the money they spent buying each other useless gifts so that they could go on a fabulous vacation together – now THAT would be a gift worth giving! Why must we give gifts for EVERYTHING these days – what happened to a sincerely written letter or card. Today, I consider a handwritten letter the ultimate flattering sentiment, as no one ever does anything by hand anymore – to take the time to do this is truly impressive – and it only has to cost the price of a piece of paper, an envelope and a stamp!!!
Thanks for the blog and keep your ideas going!
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Gee, you’re how old and you’ve only just realized that you don’t need to buy all the crap you see foisted on you by slick marketers?
How long did it take you to realize you could get the same books at the library that you’ll pay $$$ for from amazon or anywhere else?
Wow, DVDs and CDs are really expensive? Did you know that you can get them at the library too? For free?
And have you heard of these newfangled things called mp3’s? There’s shareware that lets you rip the tracks and keep them stored on your hard drive (with storage going for almost $1/GB, there’s no reason not to do it), and you can create your own mix CDs any time you want.
Ever heard of DVDshrink? It lets you copy pretty much any DVD (that you’ve checked out of the library) out there and store it on your hard drive also; burn a “hard copy” any time you want, or play it directly over your wireless network to your HDTV.
You’re welcome.
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:56 pm
oh man I’ve never heard of any of those before!!
heh.
dvdshrink’s pretty decent for a free program, considering there are better compression method out there that keeps more quality within the compiled image.
Chris: thanks for the comment! may go w/ your idea but I might get murdered in the attempt…
August 24th, 2006 at 8:02 am
this is so true. Being on my own after high school and working full time sorta requiring me to eat out. But then I realised that im spending 10-15 bucks a day for breakfast and lunch during work days. I end up spending around $280 bucks a month.
Dont forget the fact that I used to smoke ciggarettes. A pack would be $5-7 and I would smoke a pack a day.
$5-7 x 7days x 4weeks = $140+ dollars a month.
April 25th, 2007 at 7:16 am
From the female side: Amen to what Chris said! Now, I actually understand the impulse, when I see something that would be really fun for a friend or a relative and exactly them, and you know what? I’ll get it then and give it! No occasion, no nothing – just, I saw this and thought of you. The flip side: I try really, really hard to be a considerate gift giver – I don’t give things that I want for myself, and I think very hard about really important stuff like, How much room does this person have to store stuff? I’m not giving presents that will make their lives worse!! It’s like the sweet guys who try to give teddy bears for every occasion – what am I, the World Wildlife Fund? Where am I gonna store fifty stuffed bears? Especially if I’m not particularly partial to bears! I have a very sweet sister-in-law, who loves shopping in museum catalogs – and I can understand the lure. But really, what am I supposed to do with a toy dinosaur egg with a dinosaur inside it?? It’s a great stocking stuffer, it’s a cute toy, and it’s one more thing that I need to find a place for!
November 8th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
I’m not crazy about fast food but I did have also a dream about my private library…. which of course stop when I realize how many trees I’m killing, how I could find them at the library, little time I have to read, and all the times I moved and having to carry TONS and TONS of books didn’t help.