If you are looking for extra cash you can look no further than your daily activities that could be wasting money. By cutting out or being more aware of these money draining actions you could direct that money to something more beneficial. Think about what you could do with an extra $200 a month and start saving!
1. Lottery Tickets
There are infinite ways to spend your hard-earned money from day to day, and all of us are guilty of forking over cash (or using credit) for purchases that provide little (or no) true benefits. Some such purchases do provide what you could argue to be short-term benefits, but doing the math of long-term costs for many such purchases (smoking, drinking, gambling) makes them out to be nonsensical wastes of money.
Being in the habit of buying lottery tickets is one obvious waste. People who pony up a few bucks for a record-setting Powerball ticket once in a blue moon are hardly wasting much of their income (though the chances of seeing a return are one in hundreds of millions), but those who buy scratch-offs or lotto tickets on a weekly or daily basis are uniformly throwing money down the drain.
2. Smoking
Smokers are not only shooting themselves in the foot by increasing the likelihood of significant medical bills down the road, but they also spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on cigarettes each year. A pack-a-day smoker of a brand costing $5 will spend over $1800 on smokes in a single year.
3. ATM Fees
If you pay a $4 surcharge at an ATM to withdrawl cash once a week, you will have thrown away more than $200 over the course of a year simply for not planning ahead.
4. Traffic Tickets
Aggressive driving and bad parking habits come back to bite your wallet and provide nothing in return. You’re willingly handing money over to the government simply, because you are impatient, irresponsible or just plain careless.
5. Botox Injections
If you fall into the trap of spending big bucks on Botox injections in the pursuit of everlasting youth, don’t go crying when your face ends up looking like a ventriloquist dummy.
6. Concession Stand Beers
There are millions of people who will argue that money spent on alcohol is not a waste. (I, for one, wouldn’t disagree.) All the money spent going to bars can cause you to think twice when you consider how much cheaper it would be to drink at home, but you can justify the spending by saying you’re paying for the experience of a night out. However, it’s hard to justify paying for the outrageous prices you are forced to pay if you want a beer or drink when you go to a major concert or sporting event. Dropping $9 or $10 for a 16-ounce beer at a concession stand is a waste when you can buy a 6-pack or 12-pack elsewhere for the same price.
7. Unused Gym Memberships
Gym memberships are either a wise investment or a total waste of money. If you’re truly motivated to be healthy and actively take advantage of your membership, then the money you spent was one of the most beneficial decisions you could have made for yourself. However, if you’re like a large population of Americans, at some point you paid up for a membership, made an effort a handful of times and never returned to the gym. The math balances out if you routinely exercise, but if you never go, it can end up equating to you having paid several times over what single sessions would have cost.
8. Gold Grills
If you’re one of the precious few people in the world who think gold grills are fashionable mouth bling, then you’ll probably argue that getting a grill is well worth the money spent. The rest of us will tell you that you’re dead wrong.
9.Credit Card Interest
Buying things on credit seems like it could be beneficial when you are low on funds, but in reality the insane interest you are paying makes those purchases far more expensive than they were in the first place. Should you fail to keep up with your payments as so many of us are prone to doing, the amount of debt you’ll acquire will make you wish you’d never have gotten a credit card in the first place.
10. Inefficient shopping. Not taking advantage of discounted gift cards online can cost you hundreds of dollars each month on basic needs. By using websites such as, giftcardrescue.com you can purchase gift cards for up to 35% on stores that you visit everyday.
With these tips from ChaCha saving a little bit of extra money every month won’t be as big of a hassle as you thought.