Budget Budge-it Budget

[Alex]

The Consumerist posted today their list of the Top 10 Ways Smart People Waste Money. Several things have been mentioned (and I disagree with some) here but thought it would be apropos. The link has more info on each item.

1) Forgetting To Pay Bills
2) Bank Fees
3) Tickets [Moving violations and parking]
4) Memberships
5) Subscriptions
6) Letting food spoil in the fridge
7) Wasting Energy
8) Letting your money sit in a checking account
9) Buying DVDs you will never, ever watch, or books you'll never read, or clothes you will never wear...
10) Paying too much for cable

[Gemini Cricket]

1) Forgetting To Pay Bills - I pay all of my bills through wamu.com. It's so handy and helps me keep track of what's paid and what's not... Love it.
2) Bank Fees - I got hit with an overdraft fee last week. Total suckage.
3) Tickets [Moving violations and parking] - None to report... thank goodness.
4) Memberships - Just Costco. Split with Ralphie.
5) Subscriptions - None
6) Letting food spoil in the fridge - Does gin spoil?
7) Wasting Energy - I never leave anything on when I leave for work. Occasionally, I will leave the fans on... I don't want to boil the fish in my aquarium.
8) Letting your money sit in a checking account - I tried not to let it sit and then I got that overdraft.
9) Buying DVDs you will never, ever watch, or books you'll never read, or clothes you will never wear... - I have a rule of thumb now. I don't buy DVDs unless I am for certain that I will watch it over and over. It really did cut down on my DVD buying...
10) Paying too much for cable - I got rid of my cable. Nothing to watch. I only have internet to pay for...

[Snowflake]

Following GC's lead:

1) Forgetting To Pay Bills - (many are e-pay and get paid once I get the email, everything else is sorted by date and paid on time)
2) Bank Fees - Sad, but I do not have enough in there warrant free accounts, yet.
3) Tickets [Moving violations and parking] - None, I have my parking sticker for my neighborhood, and speed enough to keep up with the flow of traffic, so no citations, yet
4) Memberships - Costco is through my office, so I'm good, and I rarely go. The big waste, so far, this year is the unused AP sitting in my wallet
5) Subscriptions - TCM Viewer's guide $9.95 a year
6) Letting food spoil in the fridge - I'm good with leftovers, try to be, my problem is hitting the store too often and not sticking to the list
7) Wasting Energy - I suppose I do, but I really do turn the lights off when I leave a room, etc. Now that it's just me & the cat, PG&E has gone down by $10
8) Letting your money sit in a checking account - guilty, just not too long
9) Buying DVDs you will never, ever watch, or books you'll never read, or clothes you will never wear... - very guilty, or books that I've read once. I offloaded a ton before the great drive back to CA, but I still moved way too many boxes of books, according to some.
10) Paying too much for cable - cable is a ridiculous expense, looking for ways to cut it down as we speak.

[Kevy Baby]

1) Forgetting To Pay Bills - Yep
2) Bank Fees - Yep
3) Tickets [Moving violations and parking] - Yep (although it comes in spates)
4) Memberships - Yep
5) Subscriptions - Yep
6) Letting food spoil in the fridge - Not too much since we tend to eat out a LOT (which is another money burner)
7) Wasting Energy - Yep. We have six dragon enclosures in our house, each with a heat lamp. This warms up the house significantly. We run the AC a LOT to compensate
8) Letting your money sit in a checking account - Nope
9) Buying DVDs you will never, ever watch, or books you'll never read, or clothes you will never wear... - Nope; they all get watched and books get read repeatedly
10) Paying too much for cable[/quote] - How much is "too much"? We pay for it and we use it. Now what IS stupid is that we stopped using Dish Network several months ago. Yet we are still paying for it each month. Why? Because we have a warranty return receiver that when (if) we return it, we will get that $100 deposit back. In the mean time, we have spent a few hundred dollars paying for a service we don't use. Makes sense, doesn't it?