What do you think? Should you begin to pay attention to these top money wasting activities?
Convenience Stores. Many people don't think about the markup they pay for convenience store items.
Cell Phone Plans.
Soft Drinks.
Unnecessary Bank Fees.
Magazines.
Annual Credit Card Fees.
It seems to me that the advice should be more like" take one less vacation a year, don't buy a new car so often, stop eating take-out so often," and so on.
Dave Ramsey says you will waste $5,000 a year if you spend little purchases of $13.70 a day. So I guess you could take that second vacation for one person. The other person will have to save their own $5,000.
There seems to be substantial differences on how we waste money. Another article says these items
insurance we don't need
refinancing home too often
making minimum credit card payments when you can afford more
giving too much power to emotional spending ... and a few more
We Canadians are known for 10 ways that we waste money. More ways than U.S. folks. Ours are things like not comparing prices, buying brand name products, eating out, daily coffee trips, overspending on utilities, neglecting home and car maintenance, paying for services you don't use, forgetting automatic charges and renewals, unnecessary bank fees, overpaying for life insurance. What about this statistic? Canadians waste over $1,300 per family per year in food waste. That seems like a lot.
Ad to that articles says that Canadians also produce more garbage per capita than any other country. More than the U.S.? Wikipedia says the U.S. produces more garbage per capita. We both produce a lot.
Here's one of my favourite lily images from Brian's hybridizing field.
Is waste a natural part of the ecosystem? It says there is no waste in nature. Plants grow in soil, animals eat plants, dung replenishes soil. The sense of "garbage" does not exist in nature.
There are some interesting examples of this cyclical system.
Dead wood-eating beetles are considered the insect world's best decomposers. Along with lichens, mushrooms, sow bugs and earthworms, these insects spend their time turning dead plants and animals back into usable nutrients.
Birds are considered nature's greatest recyclers. The Bowerbird from New Guinea and Australia constructs elaborate "bowers" consisting of colourful human trash.
Hermit crabs salvage shells abandoned by other sea life, usually from sea snails. They've used glass bottles and cans. If you have a pet hermit crab, you can get artificial shells for them.
Orb-web spiers decorate their webs with debris such as leaves and twigs. They often make a new web each day.
And dung beetles live to collect and repurpose poop. They build their homes out of feces, they eat feces, and lay their eggs in it. They roll excrement into balls and offer it to a female. Then they happily roll it away together... into the sunset.
The Octopus builds shelters out of discarded debris - from cracked coconut shells, to sea shells, glass jars, and other containers.
And what is special about monarch butterflies? Monarch caterpillars eat their old homes once they've exited.
Here's our latest Monarch Wreath - it has already gone to a new home.
