Despite the best efforts of the ancient Egyptians and other cultures around the globe, you can't take it with you—"it" meaning your Earthly wealth and possessions.
So, why not spend it all before you go? Except most of us don't know when we'll go, so the timing can be an issue.
Anyway, if you're spending money for the end, is any purchase that brings you joy a waste of money? I'm pretty much in the "not my money, not my business" camp.
But some people make a good case for why some purchases are a big waste of money.
Reddit user Business_Adv asked:
"What's the biggest waste of money you've ever seen people spend money on?"
Hobbies
"I'm into photography, and some people will immediately blow money on the most expensive gear, thinking it'll make them instantly amazing."
"They either get discouraged or just realize they're not that into photography."
"Thankfully it ultimately means barely used equipment being sold at a discount online."
~ youngatbeingold
"A lot of people marginally interested in a hobby will go all out buying top-end equipment then get disheartened when it doesn't make them immediately amazing at what they're interested in."
"I'm a self-taught hobbyist guitarist, and the best piece of advice I ever got from an older friend who also self-taught was to make sh*t equipment sound amazing first, then upgrade."
"Get good at the basics on used or cheap equipment, then the cool kit will just add to your skills."
~ ThisCharmingMan89
Gambling
"Gotta be gambling, and I'm a gambler myself."
"If you go to the casino just once a month with $200 to lose to have fun for an evening, more power to you."
"But I see so many people betting thousands who don't even know how to play the games properly."
"Blows my mind."
~ mousicle
Online/Mobile Gaming
"When I was at university I spent around £1000 on Overwatch 1 [online server based MPRPG] loot boxes [money for gameplay], and now the Overwatch 1 servers are offline."
"I have no idea what I was thinking."
~ Aquatico_
"I have spent about 9 thousand dollars in my life on mobile gaming—just thinking back on it makes you sick to your stomach."
"It starts out innocent: 'Oh, this banner is over tonight and I have better odds of getting something I want if I do a 10 spin, I can't grind for currency and only need to spend 2 bucks to get what I need'."
"And then the worst thing that can happen happens. You get lucky. You get what you want. So now your brain has accepted it is OK. Even if next time you fail, you still remember the beauty of success. So you start spending more money."
"Eventually, something comes up and you start doing math. 'Oh, I can pay $3 for 5 meta-currency, or... if I spend $80 I can max it out for 210 meta-currency. If I am spending money already then I might as well get the most bang for my buck'."
"Time goes on, and you spend tons of time playing the game. 'Why not spend $80 every month, I don't play typical games anymore, I will just plan on spending the money here. To support them!'."
"Then two banners come up in a month. 'I can afford a second purchase this month'." Then someone you really like is on banner, and you have bad luck, and you can't stop pulling because you get caught up in the momentum."
"$200 is gone, or $300, or even as much as $800."
"And then you are in too deep, and money starts losing value, you have already f*cked yourself, why not keep spending?"
"If you are lucky, like me, you snap out of it eventually."
~ Evilsbane
Their Kingdom For A Horse
"Young couple living in a camping trailer in his dad’s driveway. No money. No jobs."
"Then she gets a few thousand dollars from grandma when she dies, and they promptly go buy a HORSE! Neither have ever owned a horse. Dad’s house is not remotely zoned for a horse."
"They can’t afford to feed the animal. But hey! They own a horse!"
"His dad took care of it right quick. Found the horse a good home."
~ JCKligmann
Smoking
"Quit smoking when I was 30. Napkin math says I've saved about $30k since."
~ Lampmonster
Scientology
"How has nobody mentioned Scientology yet?"
"Let's hope it's because Scientology is finally going to sh*t."
"Scientology literally makes you pay for every chapter in their 'bible'. It's called the bridge and it'll cost you your life savings."
"By the time you're buying courses for hundreds of thousands a pop—the OT Levels—they reveal they're secretly a UFO cult. Because they rightly assume that if you're that invested, you won't allow yourself to doubt anything."
"Scientology is to religion what hard liquor is to wine."
~ hemlock_harry
"Scientology has a literal pay-to-play model. It cannot be compared to, for example, a church that asks for donations to cover its upkeep costs. It’s just not the same."
~ JaapHoop
"Look, I'm just another $25k away from getting to OT-4. OT-8, here I come. I am crossing that bridge, baby!"
~ NomNom83WasTaken
"It’s really funny, they know they’re burning away so about twenty years ago, they decided to start investing in real estate all over the world - but only in wealthy countries, of course."
"Their spiel was that they were going to buy abandoned properties and fix them up to turn into their special cult schools to 'aid the local community', because the local community needs things like learning how to win a staring contest and vitamin overdoses to thrive."
"They bought a very large historic building in my city using that bullsh*t reasoning. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they’re gonna rehab it and establish some nonsense 'learning center' or whatever and God damn it, they’re gonna do it, yes they are, don’t you deny it."
"That building’s been sitting vacant for years. They refused to give it up because that would mean tacitly admitting they failed and they don’t have the money, membership, or resources to do what they said they were going to do."
"It slowly rotted in bits and pieces while they swore on their grand plan for improving the lives of everyone with their salvific and generous gift to the community."
"They quietly put it up for sale a couple years ago. Whomp-whomp."
~ Karnakite
Weddings
"I can't believe how much people spend on weddings."
~ SeaShore29
"I've had friends that spent between $30k to $70k on their wedding. I've also heard that people gamble on the chance they get their money back from the gifts/money guests give (which is insane in my opinion—even if you had 200 guests, each guest would have to give hundreds of dollars to recoup $70k)."
"The irony is that most of them didn't have time to enjoy their wedding because they were too busy doing stuff (greeting guests, taking pictures, etc...). Sometimes I feel like the wedding is more about the guests than the couple themselves."
~ naumectica
NFTs
"I know someone who spent 15k on 3 pictures of digital monkeys."
~ bad_arts
"I personally think it’s hilarious that rich people spent luxury car amounts of money for JPEGs."
~ A-bigger-cell
"NFTs, a solution waiting for a problem."
~ doinnuffin
Take-Out Delivery
"Getting take-out delivered as a regular way to eat. Doing it more than once a week is definitely wild."
"But I know personally how easy it is to fall into the trap of just hitting that button. Where I live, driving is such a pain in the a** and then trying to find street parking where the restaurants are is enough to make me stomach the outrageous fees once in a while."
~ evenphlow
Cleanses
"Cleanses that literally just make you defecate and get dehydrated, and make you think you’re losing 'weight'."
"Eat some fiber and exercise."
~ AnotherBodybuilder
Impulse Purchases
"When I was little, my uncle died. It was the hospital's fault, and my aunt sued them. She won A LOT of money and proceeded to spend it on whatever impulse buy she saw."
"She bought a mansion. Bought a fleet of four wheelers. Motorcycles. New car and truck. An in ground pool with a huge water slide."
"She bought Apple computers for every room in the house—even the kitchen. Bought a photography studio with tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment."
"Overnight, she went from renting an apartment to living like some sort of celebrity. Going over to her house as a kid was awesome—but within like two years, she lost it all and was right back where she started, renting an apartment in a not so great part of town."
~ mrghostwork
Kids Clothes
"Brand name clothes for their infant or toddler. I was on marketplace a few weeks back and someone posted a pair of obviously worn toddler shoes for $75."
"I thought, who is going to pay that for worn shoes? So many people were commenting on it."
"I Googled the brand (Golden Goose), and they go for $250 for a pair brand new. I just cannot wrap my head around dropping $250 on a pair of shoes that my kid is gonna grow out of in six months."
"Bananas."
~ ZolaMonster
"Six months? Little kids—infants until about age 4 or 5—grow way faster than that."
"You'd be lucky to get a month of use out of them."
~ trogon
Souvenirs
"Overpriced souvenirs."
"I live in Paris and the way tourists go about buying low quality souvenirs at crazy prices is just unbelievable."
~ Reasonable_Act_8654
Rapidly Depreciating Assets
"A friend inherited $250k USD when his grandmother died. He bought a boat, a corvette and a bunch of other stupid crap."
"He doesn’t have any of it any more."
"Had he bought a house, he’d have made a wise investment. Nope, just bought stupid stuff."
~ shavemejesus
Keeping Up Appearances
"A guy I worked with had a long distance relationship with this girl he'd yet to meet in person. Then suddenly she tells him she can fly and meet him in a month."
"At the time, he lived in the basement of his folk's place. Not something he had declared earlier in their chats."
"In a panic, he rented an apartment."
"Why not Airbnb? This was 2004 or 2005. Airbnb didn't exist. Why not a hotel? He had told her that he had his own place for quite a while. Something like a year or so. A hotel wouldn't have cut it."
"Then he went to one of those furniture rental places and rented an entire apartment's worth of furniture. Couch, tables, dinette set, bedroom suite, TV, etc..." The whole fkn apartment was rental furniture which if you don't know, gets expensive really quickly."
"Why not a furnished apartment? They're pretty rare in our city and the ones that do exist are for seniors or age 50+."
"So after all this the girl finally shows up. They go to his apartment and that's when she tells him that they should break up. She didn't want to do it over text or email and without meeting him at least once. She thought it wouldn't be fair to him."
"Why did she fly there just to break up with him? She did and she didn't. The way he told it is that she was on her way to Europe to do a bus tour with friends and the route she took with her flights to get there brought her through our city."
"She stayed one night and got on the plane the next day. Apparently her stop in our city was just an extended layover as she was heading to Europe to do a bus tour with friends."
"She slept in the rental bed and he slept on the rental couch. Why did she get the bed and he got the couch? She offered to take the couch but he refused."
"My coworker was really tall too, like 6ft 8in tall. So he painted the story of his legs being draped over the armrest. She really insisted he take the bed, but he told us he felt chivalrous so took the couch instead."
"Then the next day he drove her to the airport in his rental car."
"I don't know how many thousands he dropped for that one breakup date, but man...what a waste."
~ aussydog
What's your idea of a waste of money?
