I'm thinking of things like:
Often we don't realise how much we base purchasing decisions on "everyone is doing it", without researching properly or even just stopping and thinking about it for a second. What other examples can you think of?
This is an interesting one because part of the value is circular: it's valuable because it's valuable.
People are just so used to gold and jewels being valued, throughout history, that they never stop to think that it's really just something pretty (and not as pretty as so many other, cheaper things).
Quartz watches above $200.
one too many 0s there.
Probably mentioned already -
Any and all gambleing, with <50% odds. Races, pokies, lottery etc
Still it can be fun to do.
Buying an investment house and having it flooded twiced :(
Raheem Sterling. Angel Di Maria. David Luiz. List goes on.
LOL.
Some of the high transfer values, have been for dodgy reasons in the past, to get past fair play rules. Especially that Luiz deal, can tell Roman and PSG had a deal in close doors.
I can't really think of any after reading 8 pages here.
Pokies obviously the big one, I love to gamble but only if there is a skill element involved. The lottery is pretty bad too but I am guilty of buying a ticket a couple of times a year for 50M jackpots.
Think you can justify most of the things here.. I personally think gym memberships are a waste of money, but definitely can see why people do it purely for the motivation.
Also I paid $18 for Wedges at Gold Class the other day which obviously is pretty dumb! (No issue with paying for Gold Class though, barely any more than a regular ticket and the audience is 10x better.)
New cars that drop 30% as soon as you buy it!
Spending over 1k for an iPhone or a Samsung. Soooooooo stoooooopid!!!
Dunno if you were being sarcastic or not, but it actually works out to be quite cheap per hour of use.
Brief calculations:
Use phone for 30 minutes per day, have phone for two years.
That is 365 hours of use. Sell for $250. That works out to be a bit more than $2 per hour. Not many purchases work out that cheap.
Comparison:
$25,000 car. Used for one hour per day, for 10 years. That is 3650 hours. Assuming you sell it for $5,000, that is $5.47 per hour. Actually that makes a car seem quite cheap :D
Is there any common expense more expensive than a car, though? By your calculations, most of the stuff people buy is in cents or fractions of cents per hour.
Besides, $500 phones are pretty great. Certainly more than half as good as $1000 ones…
Yeah fair enough. Yeah well, what about home entertainment costs?
TV for $1000, used for three hours per day for three years.
1000 / (3 * 3 * 365)
1000 / 3285
$0.30 per hour
Couldn't believe there's 8 pages of this and no mention astrology, fortune telling, palm reading, tarot reading.
At least an over-priced TV does something real.
Bottled water!!
Anything Organic.
I think people who sign up for a 24 month Gym Member ship and then they only go a few times and then they get charged a crazy amount. Getting out of those type of deals is next to impossible as well.
Agree with the $100 white t-shirt thing as well, you can buy a really good white t-shirt for like $15-20!
Happy Endings
I prefer happy meals.
Same!
Beer and cigarettes.
I wish I could give this +1000 more votes :)
This thread's pretty much just people judging others on how they spend their money.
Inkjet Printers and ink, so overpriced
Cars. I work in a low socio economic area. That doesn't stop people in their $650k McMansions driving $150k Range Rover Sports and $170k AMG Mercedes. I have a hankering suspicion that my tax dollars pay for those cars too. I guess when you've got 6 wives and 14kids, benefit money really adds up.
Anything apple.
Psplus
People that have to have the collector's edition, founders edition, GOTY edition of the latest video game on launch. Often those games are selling for $120 ish on release but 4 or 5 months later sell for less than $20. Its not like there is any shortage of video games to occupy your screentime. If you can hang on for a couple of months and dont need to be first to play it you can save heaps!
Water.
THIS x 100000000000 I used to work as a project director on a range of engineering projects, some of them water projects. I remember asking the engineers and scientists on the team about bottled water and they told me that the tap water (in Melbourne) was some of the best in the world and in some cases better than bottled water.
A friend of ours who is an Assoc Professor in Hydrology at UNSW basically said the same — makes no sense buying bottled water in Sydney unless tap water is not easily accessible.
I think jewellery is the dumbest thing, honestly why do people spend so much money on shiny crap that serves no function in life.
I know that guys are expected to buy diamond rings for their better half but honestly that is a scam
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5kWu1ifBGU&html5=1
having said that I am one of the many suckers that wastes a lot of money on jewellery and will have to fork out for a diamond ring in the near future :/