You're Burning Your Hard-Earned Money If You Do These 8 Things

(The following is a transcription from a video Linda and I recorded. Please excuse any typos or errors.)

You’re burning your hard earned money if you do these eight things often. Are you doing these eight things? I hope not.

So, we just found this article and haven’t read through it to know what these eight things are yet.

And I don’t know if we’re burning our hard-earned money with these or not.

But, Linda and I are going to go through them and we’re going to find out what these eight things are with you.

Before we get started, if you’d rather join our YouTube SeedTime community and watch our discussion, you can do so here:

And, if not, enjoy the video transcript below!

1. You Justify Buying The Cheap Stuff

Linda: You justify buying the cheap stuff. Like what?

Bob: “We think we’re saving money if we opt for the cheaper options, but in truth, quality lasts longer. Looking at more expensive options as an investment rather than unnecessary expense is a better mindset to have.”

Linda: I absolutely agree with this. We have had this conversation recently because for me, this is like when I’m buying for our home. There’ll be the one thing that I really want-

Bob: Let’s tell them what we’re talking about. We’re talking about whatever, buying this crazy expensive rug versus buying a cheaper rug. So I think the danger here is when you think that you always have to spend a ton of money to get something good. Because that’s the balance point here. But yes, I think always going for the cheapest thing, you might be saving a little bit of money, but in the long run, yeah, you’re wasting money.

2. You Justify Buying Sale Items

Bob: Number two, you justify buying sale items.

Linda: Oh my gosh. This is my dad.

Bob: “We’re led to believe that buying stuff on sale is saving money. If you’re in a supermarket and what you intend to buy is on sale then great. But we can get caught up in thinking that we’re getting a bargain when really, we’d never have bought that item in the first place if it weren’t on sale.” I think this is my dad too.

Linda: Yes.

Bob: It’s that generation, it’s the boomer generation.

Linda: Is my dad a boomer?

Bob: Your dad might be older than a boomer, I don’t know.

Linda: This is so true though, because you fall into that trap of like, “Well, I’ve saved this much money.” It’s like, “Well, you still spent money to buy that.”

Bob: All right. So now is the point where you need to hit that like button to let YouTube know so that we can have more than you and our grandma and our mom watch this video.

Linda: What if we just go, “Ding?”

3. Your Savings Account Is Too Easy To Access

Bob: Number three, your savings account is too easy to access. Yeah. I understand that. For people who don’t have much self control, you need to put some walls in place. And if not having the savings account there is what you need to do, then that’s what we need to do.

Linda: Bob is the wall that I have in place.

Bob: I’m your wall to keep you from spending all of our money. Number four.

4. You Don’t Wait 30 Days Before Big Purchases

Linda: You don’t wait 30 days before big purchases.

Bob: It’s pretty long.

Linda Lotich: That’s a long time. Maybe big purchase like a house, is that what we’re talking about?

Bob: Maybe. Maybe a car, house, maybe a sunroom.

Linda: We’ve been waiting a lot longer than 30 days, I’ll tell you that one.

Bob: We’ve been wanting a sun room for a long time.

Linda: We still don’t have one.

Bob: We’re still waiting.

Linda: We’re still waiting. So I feel like we can check that one off the list.

Bob: Yeah, we still want it. Number five.

5. You Don’t Write Lists Of What You Need Before Shopping (and stick to it)

Linda: You don’t write lists of what you need before shopping and stick to it. This is extremely accurate, I think, with groceries. That’s a very common one.

But we’re doing a little bit of home improvements around our house and decorating. Bob was like, “How much money are you planning on spending?” And I was like, “I don’t know, just however much money it takes.” And he’s like, “No, you have to set a budget. And we’re going to write down everything we want.”

Bob: We have to decide on the front end how much we’re going to spend.

Linda: So he said, “Let’s write down everything we want and let’s figure out how much money we’re going to need in order to do that.” Just going in willy nilly, which is what I love to do-

Bob: It’s a bad idea. It’s a bad idea.

Linda: But then you get everything you want.

Bob: Yeah. But then you’re in credit card debt up to your eyeballs really soon.

6. You Waste Time Finding Cheap Deals

Linda: All right, all right. You waste your time finding cheap deals. The emphasis here is on time. I completely agree. We spend so much time researching in order to find the best deals. And often these moments, the best deals actually pass us by or sell out. This is so me.

Bob: Tell me about it.

Linda: Because my tendency is more of an impulse buyer, when I married you, you were like, “Let’s look around and see if there’s a better deal.” Well, now I research stuff to death. And by the time I’m ready to buy, I either don’t like it anymore or it’s gone. No joke.

Bob: Well, it’s good if you don’t like it anymore. That’s the waiting thing that has helped, right?

Linda: Yeah. But then I’m like, “Well, now what do I do? I got to start this whole process over again.” And I can’t make any steps forward because I’m paralyzed by researching the best deal. This is a problem for me. It’s not a problem for you. I feel like you have a good balance. But for me it is.

Bob: Yeah, I get that.

7. You Don’t Set Realistic Goals

We actually forgot to discuss number seven. But, setting realistic goals for yourself is very important!

8. You Don’t Carve Out Time To Declutter Your House

Linda: Okay. Number eight, last one. You don’t carve out time to declutter your house.

“Decluttering your living space is one of the best things you can do to save money. Not only because you can sell many of your old items and actually make money, but it also transforms the space in your mind as well. Once you realize that you don’t need so many possessions to make you happy, it will shift your mindset and make you more aware of unnecessary spending in the future.”

Bob: True. True. True. True, true, true. So I challenged myself to go around the house and declutter and sell stuff off. There was $2,147 we made in one month selling off junk from around our house.

Linda: I will say you do have a good bit of hobbies. I don’t think I have-

Bob: So I got rid of a good amount of hobby stuff.

Linda: Yeah. I don’t think I had that much to sell on my own, but I could be wrong.

Bob: But no, everybody’s wrong. This is the thing. There’ve been studies done that show that the average household has over $5,000 worth of stuff that can be sold online. Most people are like, “There’s no way. There’s no way.” And we didn’t find 5,000, but we found over 2000 in one month.

Linda: And I love the point that they talk about decluttering helps you see what you have and kind of appreciate more what you actually do have.

Bob: Yeah, that was a really good point.

Linda: There have been times when I’ve gone in my closet and I’ve said, “There’s nothing here to wear.” When I clearly have a closet full of clothes. But as soon as I start getting rid of things that I don’t like wearing anymore, then it’s like I can see all the stuff that I really love wearing. And it’s like, “I have plenty. I don’t need to buy anything else. There’s no holes in my wardrobe even.”